By LOU PAVLOVICH, JR.
Editor/Collegiate Baseball

TEMPE, Ariz. — When Arizona State’s Spencer Torkelson finished his senior season at Casa Grande High School (Petaluma, Calif.) in 2017, there were 1,215 players chosen in the MLB Draft over 40 rounds.

He wasn’t one of them.

During his four years at Casa Grande H.S., he only hit 11 home runs in 110 varsity games.

Fast forward three years.

Torkelson could easily be the No. 1 overall pick in the 2020 MLB Draft.

His freshman year with the Sun Devils, he belted a nation-leading 25 home runs in 59 games in 2018.

It was the most amount of home runs ever for an ASU freshman as he snapped Barry Bonds’ freshman mark in just his 25th game of the year. Bonds hit 11 home runs in 64 games as a freshman in 1983.

The talented first baseman was just one home run shy of the NCAA freshman record.

In 2019, Torkelson hit 23 more homers in 57 games despite pitchers trying to pitch around him.

That is 48 home runs in 116 games against much tougher pitching than he faced at Casa Grande H.S.

He is only the third player in Pac-12 history to have back-to-back 20-plus home run seasons.

The last time a college player was picked No. 1 overall in the draft and wasn’t drafted out of high school was in 2009 when San Diego State RHP Stephen Strasburg was chosen No. 1 overall by the Washington Nationals.

The obvious question is how did Torkelson become an elite power hitter when he really didn’t show it as a high school player?

“He is a generational type of player, and a combination of things came together for him,” said ASU Head Coach Tracy Smith.

To read more of this story, purchase the Feb. 21, 2020 edition of Collegiate Baseball or subscribe by CLICKING HERE. ASU hitting coach Mike Earley explains why Torkelson has hit so many home runs with the Sun Devils.

By LOU PAVLOVICH, JR.
Editor/Collegiate Baseball

IOWA CITY, Iowa. — Jack Dreyer is the ace of the University of Iowa pitching staff and does something rare for college athletes.

For the past 15 months, this gifted southpaw has been designing and constructing six foot tall murals out of cubes that are nearly identical to Rubik’s Cubes.

It is a huge artistic challenge since there are only six colors (white, red, blue, orange, green and yellow), and each cube is 2 1/4 inches on each side.

When Dreyer is done, each mural features 720 cubes and takes up to 10 hours to complete.

Dreyer, who saw his season cut short last year when a shoulder injury sidelined him after two starts, posted a 1-0 record, 2.45 ERA and fanned 11 batters as he took a medical redshirt.

He is healthy now for the Hawkeyes as he enters the season as the Friday night starter.

Virtually everyone is familiar with the Rubik’s Cube, a 3-D square combination puzzle which has nine squares on each of the six sides.

Invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Erno Rubik, over 350 million cubes have been sold across the world. It is the top selling toy in the world and has caused hours and hours of frustration in the quest to solve it.

A beginner may take days and even weeks to get each side the same color unless he uses a cheat sheet.

The world record for solving this puzzle is 3.47 seconds by Yusheng Duo.

To read more of this article, purchase the Feb. 21, 2020 edition of Collegiate Baseball or subscribe by CLICKING HERE. Jack Dreyer explains how he designs and constructs these 6-foot tall works of art which utilize 720 cubes.

By LOU PAVLOVICH, JR.
Editor/Collegiate Baseball

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — If college baseball had a Comeback Player of The Year, Drury University RF Clay Engel would have been a landslide winner last season.

He hit .337 with 21 doubles, 12 homers, 5 triples, 61 RBI and stole 12 of 13 bases in 54 games.

Those are incredible numbers when you consider he nearly died two years prior.

Engel was lucky to be alive after suffering a skull fracture, fractured vertebra and leg injuries which required skin grafts during a serious hiking accident in the summer of 2017.

He had just finished his freshman season with the Panthers and was preparing to play summer ball for the Denver Generals of the Mile High Collegiate Baseball League.

Engel, who enjoyed hiking back home in Springfield, Mo., was in Denver for about a week and realized that he had a great opportunity in the coming days to go hiking.

His job that summer was being an umpire beside his playing duties.

He drove to Fort Collins and worked several games in the morning and afternoon. When Engel finished, he got dinner and drove to Estes Park which was 30 minutes away.

 “I got into Estes Park and took my time surveying the area. There was a full moon out so you could see quite a bit of the area.

“I parked on the side of the road at about 9 p.m., got out and hiked up the mountain which was a little more than a mile up. It was a nice, upward climb but not too difficult.”

Engel said he didn’t hike with anybody else and never left a message with his host family that he was going to hike in Estes Park that evening and would be there the next day.

“I had camping gear on my back which included food, water and a hammock to sleep in. I didn’t wear a head lamp on my forehead since there was a full moon that evening. It was night time, but the area was lit up enough for me to see where I was going.

“I have done a lot of hiking in the past in Springfield, Mo. and also in northern Arkansas. But I had never hiked in the Rocky Mountains before.

“The area I was hiking in was mountainous and rocky but there were trees all the way up. It was more or less like a forest that I was walking through as I started my ascent.

“I was looking forward to spending that evening and the next day in this area. There are a lot of things to do.”

Engel said when he arrived near the top of the mountain, it was like a bluff which had exposed rocks.

To read more of this article, purchase the Feb. 7, 2020 edition of Collegiate Baseball or subscribe by CLICKING HERE.

By LOU PAVLOVICH, JR.
Editor/Collegiate Baseball

ACTON, Calif. — The biggest story in baseball centers around the illegal sign stealing scandal involving the Houston Astros in 2017.

One or more players watched the live feed of the centerfield camera on a monitor, and after decoding the catcher’s signs, a player would bang a nearby trash can with a bat to communicate the upcoming pitch type to Houston hitters.

Major League Baseball handed out 1-year suspensions for Astros’ manager A.J. Hinch and GM Jeff Luhnow.

The organization was fined $5 million and stripped of first and second-round draft picks in 2020 and 2021.

The duo was then fired by Astros Owner Jim Crane.

Red Sox Coach Alex Cora, a former Astros’ bench coach during 2017, was then fired by the Red Sox.

Mets’ Manager Carlos Beltran became the third MLB manager to lose his job after he was implicated in the sign-stealing scandal.

Baseball has had a storied history with sign stealing, and the greatest of all time was a gentleman named Rob Klein.

He was a brilliant assistant for 22 years with Coach Mike Gillespie (three years at College of The Canyons and then 19 more at the University of Southern California).

Let’s get one thing straight off the bat.

He did everything legally and never used live video feeds with a monitor to pick pitches.

Studying Klein at work in the first base coach’s box was like watching Picasso paint a masterpiece.

He began games studying every subtle movement of the pitcher.

He watched if the wrist was cocked differently on pitches or if the ball was put deeper in the glove for certain pitches or the glove was turned slightly different for one pitch compared to another. He even studied the forearms of pitchers to see if muscles tensed up on certain pitches compared to others.

Klein had amazing perception to pick up on even the slightest differences from one pitch to another.

If the catcher or infielders were tipping pitches, he picked up on that as well.

When he was certain of pitches coming, he flashed hand signals to the USC bench. Then a Trojan player would relay pitches verbally to batters.

He coached over 1,200 games in his career, and undoubtedly 50-60 percent of opposing pitchers were picked in his lifetime which gave hitters thousands of pitches to hit that they knew were coming.

Klein’s ability to pick pitches was fitting since he also served as a detective for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for eight years and an officer for 32 years overall.

For 19 years, he drove 55 miles to USC from his home in Acton, Calif. and back again after practices or games — a round trip of 110 miles.

This was all after working a full shift with the Sheriff’s Department on many of those days.

For the first time in any publication, Klein is sharing his secrets of picking pitches with Collegiate Baseball in this exclusive story now that he is retired from coaching baseball.

To read more of this article, purchase the Feb. 7, 2020 edition of Collegiate Baseball or subscribe by CLICKING HERE. Klein explains every facet of pitch picking from base coaches to players in the dugout to players in the bullpen. Plus he explains what signs were used to relay pitches to batters.