He’s touched 105 on the gun, but what team will take a chance on him?
If the Phillies — or any other major league team for that matter — want to improve their bullpen without giving up a prospect they might have a chance to do that on July 17. That’s the Sunday before the All-Star Game and the day MLB will conduct the first two rounds of its player draft. It is extremely rare for anyone to be major-league-ready the day he signs his first contract, but that might be the case with 21-year-old Ben Joyce.
Joyce is a 6-foot-5, 225-pound right-hander who pitched mostly in relief for the University of Tennessee this year. On May 1 he drew national attention when, in a game against Auburn, he threw a pitch that was clocked at 105.5 miles per hour.
That’s not a typographical error. The radar gun actually read 105.5,
That velocity was more than breath-taking. That pitch was thrown harder than any recorded pitch at any level of baseball in the past six years. In fact, it was the third fastest pitch clocked since the invention of the radar gun. The only two that ever topped it were thrown by Aroldis Chapman, the most recent coming in 2016.
Joyce pitched four innings that day and threw 28 pitches that topped 103 on the guns.
If your jaw isn’t dropping you’re not paying attention.
Wouldn’t a pitcher like Joyce make a big difference in the Phillies bullpen? Then again, will the Phillies even get a chance to draft him, or will he be gone before they select at number 17? Your jaw is about to drop again. It is almost certain that the Phillies will have a chance to draft Joyce with that selection. Even so, they will probably pick someone else.
After that the Phillies won’t get to take another player until the third round (pick number 93) and that will happen the following day. If they’re going to get Joyce that’s probably when they will do it. Surprisingly, he might still be available at that point in the draft. MLB Pipeline actually ranks him as the 116th prospect and unless some organization’s evaluation differs radically from that prospectus, Joyce is likely to be somebody’s third-round selection.
The reason he isn’t more highly regarded is because his durability is highly suspect.
Physically, Joyce was a late bloomer. He wasn’t big enough to compete in varsity sports until his junior year in high school. He attended a junior college for two years after graduation, but an injury kept him on the sidelines as a college freshman. His sophomore year was impressive — impressive enough to earn him a scholarship to attend Tennessee but another injury cost him his junior season and caused him to undergo Tommy John surgery.
This season was the only one he played at a major college level and it is clear that the Vols regarded him as fragile.
Joyce was pitched mostly in middle relief (he was never used to close games) and his outings were usually well-spaced-out short stints. He pitched in a total of 27 of the team’s 66 games and logged merely 32 1/3 innings. Only once did he pitch on consecutive days and in that instance he worked one-third of an inning both days. The four-inning stint against Auburn was his longest of the season.
His numbers were good and some were dazzling, especially the strike out total of 53. He also allowed only 18 hits, but five of them were home runs. He evidently had control issues since he issued 14 walks, hit three batters and was charged with eight wild pitches. The famous pitch that
registered 105.5 on the gun was well outside the strike zone,
As you can see, his resume is full of red flags. Joyce has played only two seasons in the last four and has already had Tommy John surgery. Talent evaluators have to wonder if he can stay healthy. They have to wonder what kind of a workload he could handle a major league level. Will his control be good enough to get big league batters out? How come five college hitters were able to take him deep in such a short time?
But next to those red flags are the once-in-a-lifetime radar gun readings that are impossible to ignore. Seldom, if ever, have major league scouts been required to evaluate such a dilemma.
A writer named Anthony Castrovince recently interviewed Joyce’s high school coach, Ben Buckner.
“I bet he hasn’t pitched 100 innings in his life,” Castrovince quotes Buckner as stating. “The track record is scary for a major league team but it’s scary if you don’t pay attention to him, too.”
Someone is going to pay attention. The only question is when will they do it?
When college baseball’s regular season ended Mississippi had a 2721
overall record which included a 14-16 log in the Southeastern Conference. They finished in fifth place in SEC’s seven-team Western Division and lost their only game in the SEC tournament. When the NCAA tournament committee filled out its 64-team field the Rebels were probably the last or nextto-last team included.
Somehow, Ole Miss won 10 of its 11 NCAA Tournament games and wound up winning the national championship.
Do you think something like that could happen in any other sport?
I certainly don’t.
If you watched any parts of the College World Series on television you probably noticed the Title IX insignia on the outfield wall. Perhaps you caught the between-innings public service advertisement extolling the virtues of the 50-year-old law, which mandates gender equality in college sports. Title IX has played a huge part in the emergence of female athletics over the past half century and now it seems the NCAA wants to take the credit.
The fact is the NCAA and many of its member institutions vigorously opposed the enactment and the implementation of Title IX
and seemed to resist it in every way they could. Even when forced to comply they usually did the least they could get away with and sometimes manipulated numbers in ways that were misleading.
The history of NCAA and Title IX is not something the NCAA should be bragging about.
In recent weeks I have received a number of very nice letters from readers. It would be impossible to reprint all of them but every one was deeply appreciated.
After reading them all my head no longer fits inside my hat,
A FEW STATISTICS (Wednesday’s games not included): Paul Goldschmidt has played in 40 of the 43 games won by the Cardinals and driven in 53 runs with a .409 batting average, He has played in 33 games his team lost and driven in only 12 runs with a .268 average…Jameson Taillon of the Yankees has walked only nine batters in 79 batters which works out to a major-league-best of 1.025 per nine innings…Travis d’Arnaud of the Braves is 16-for-29 when he has hit the first pitch. That includes five home runs and five doubles…Yordan Alvarez of the Astros entered June with a .265 average, but his average for the month is .434…The Rays are 10-2 in interleague play, which is why the AL holds a 77-70 overall advantage…Six pitchers have pitched complete games. No one has pitched a second one…The Cubs are 8-15 in one-run games… White Sox pitcher Dylan Cease has 1.41 ERA in 10 daytime starts. Under the lights (five starts) his ERA is 5.32…The Athletics are 8-28 in home games. On the road they’re 17-23…Kyle Schwarber of the Phillies has hit 11 homers in June. Aaron Judge of the Yankees and Mike Trout of the Angels are right behind with 10 each.
Former Hall of Fame voter Jay Dunn has written baseball for The Trentonian for 54 years. Contact him at jaydunn8@aol.com