College Pitchers Face Time Crunch To Prepare

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.—J.B. Bukauskas worked through four scoreless innings in his third start of the year, as North Carolina was en route to defeating visiting Fairfield at Boshamer Stadium as part of a three-game series sweep. The Tar Heels, on their way to a 10-1 start, were counting on Bukauskas to be a key piece of their weekend rotation, as he was as a freshman in 2015, and gave Bukauskas an 8-0 lead through four innings.

Bukauskas gave up two runs in the fifth, though, on a pair of hits sandwiched around a walk. He finished the inning and pitched into the sixth en route to his first victory of the season.

The win pleased Bukauskas afterward, but not as much as pitching deeper into the game did. It was the first time Bukauskas pitched enough innings to earn a win. I didn’t ask Bukauskas for his feelings on the efficacy of the pitcher win as a statistic, but it was obvious the longer outing was crucial in his mind.

“My arm feels good. Last outing (against Oklahoma State), I struggled trying to find the zone,” the 6-foot sophomore righthander said. “My breaking ball was better, my fastball command was better.

“I threw better in the first week against UCLA than I did against Oklahoma State, and I threw better today. I’m still trying to finish my pitches more, get my arm through, but I have to do that next week when we start conference play.”

Bukauskas and the Tar Heels, like most college teams, have to hit the ground running. In mid-March, Bukauskas has to be as close to ready as he can, because North Carolina was ready to start its Atlantic Coast Conference season. His teammate, junior righthander Zac Gallen, was moving his way up 2016 draft boards by getting off to a strong start, pitching at least seven innings in each of his first three starts with 26 strikeouts and a 1.21 ERA in 22 innings.

Gallen’s peers being evaluated for this year’s draft are at varying degrees of “ready.” The top college pitcher on BA’s draft board, Florida lefthander A.J. Puk, is part of a loaded Gators pitching staff and has lasted five innings only once, in his third start against Dartmouth. The Phillies, who draft first overall, reportedly had seven evaluators at Puk’s second start, at sixth-ranked Miami, and Puk didn’t make it out of the third inning.

College draft prospects get scrutinized in February and March, with millions of dollars potentially on the line with their performance. Meanwhile, peers who signed out of high school were either just starting to report to minor league camp for spring training or were throwing an inning here or there early in camp, getting their side work in, going through PFPs (pitcher-fielding practice drills) and trying to learn from their elders if they are lucky enough to be in big league camp.

Different Standards

Bukauskas ranked No. 33 on the 2014 version of the BA 500 draft rankings, and he’s been throwing in games that matter in February and March. The top prep pitcher in the ‘14 class, No. 2 overall pick Tyler Kolek, pitched in the low Class A South Atlantic League last summer; none of the other top prep pitchers in the class has progressed further than Class A. Most if not all of the prep pitchers who signed that year will start pitching games that count in April if they are healthy.

To get ready earlier, college pitchers have to take matters into their own hands. Those who go to schools on a semester system like North Carolina have to start getting ready for the “spring” season, which starts in the winter, as soon as they complete exams in early December.

“We have to count on them throwing while they’re home,” said Tar Heels coach Mike Fox, whose program had five alumni that pitched in the major leagues last year. “They have four weeks home, they have this throwing plan, they have to find catchers . . . You spend more time talking to them when they’re home than when they’re here, because you are texting and calling them every day to see, ‘What are you doing? Did you throw today?’

“Fortunately our guys all do their throwing, they’re all very dedicated. But when I fill out my NCAA paperwork about the time our student-athletes have spent on their sport, I think that’s not really a problem for us considering we get to work with the full team for only 18 days before our season even starts.”

Of course college teams are doing it with fewer coaches as well. Modern big league organizations have added layers and layers of coaches and analytical information, from statistics to hard data from TrackMan and other sources about the spin rates and velocities of every pitch. Scouts evaluating college pitchers and their coaches would love that level of information.

Apples & Oranges

The information asymmetry makes it hard to know how much stock to put into early-season performances, and why draft stock can swing so quickly.

That’s why scouts were so encouraged by the strong outing by Oklahoma righthander Alec Hansen in his third start against UCLA in the Dodger Stadium Classic. He had managed to pitch just four innings in his first two starts, which didn’t help the Sooners as they stumbled to a 5-7-1 start and fell out of the Top 25. That poor start also hadn’t helped Hansen’s draft stock, and he has 10 starts maximum left before the draft starts on June 9 to make his case.

The amount of information professional teams and scouts have about players versus the information on the amateur side is a chasm. I go back to the story Doug Laumann, then the White Sox’s scouting director, told me about the club’s scouts hunkered down in a hotel room during the Winter Meetings, going over video of a player the team was considering acquiring in a trade.

They saw hundreds of swings and gone over reams of data, Laumann said, but still had not decided to pull the trigger. “Meanwhile, I had to decide about whether or not to take Tim Anderson with our first-round pick,” Laumann said the following spring, “and I had seen him face maybe three pitchers who would be in pro ball all spring.

“When I said that to (Sox owner) Jerry Reinsdorf, he said, ‘Is that what you do?’ I don’t think he understood the difference in the amount of information.”

If the guy who has owned a major league team for more than 30 years and who has won a World Series championship in that time doesn’t know the difference, neither do most fans. The coaches do, the scouts do and it sounds like Bukauskas does as well.

He’s aware of what he needs to do both to be a first-round pick next season and to help North Carolina this season to get back to the NCAA tournament after missing out on a regional berth last season for the first time since 2001.

“Right now, I’m a two-pitch pitcher,” said Bukauskas, who re-classified from being a junior to being a high school senior in 2014. “I only threw a few changeups today. One I know I bounced, and one I got a swing-and-miss on. But right now, I’m pretty much throwing the fastball and slider and trying to work on commanding them better.

“I know I have to throw more changeups as I go on in my career, but I’m trying to finish my pitches better. It’s all about my mechanics right now and throwing more quality strikes.”

Fox added, “Obviously he wasn’t happy with his first two starts, and I thought his start today was important to maybe calm down . . .

You look up there and you see 96-97 (mph) up there, that’s great, but don’t focus just on that. He was better at that.”
Fox knows to be patient. It’s just March. He also knows he doesn’t have time to be patient.