Mitchell hoping for dream start with HarbourCats
Opening game at Royal Athletic Park today
It isn’t Iowa or a cornfield. Yet each summer, Royal Athletic Park is transformed into a sort of field of dreams. But pitcher Josh Mitchell, from the University of Pittsburgh Panthers, had to consult a map to find it.
“Where is that?” the personable 20-year-old from Ridgway, Pennsylvania, said with a laugh of his first reaction when told where he had been recruited to play summer ball.
It starts today with the Victoria HarbourCats’ opening exhibition game at 1 p.m. against the Canadian senior champion, Langley Blaze.
“This is my first time out of the U.S., and only my second time out west, after a trip once to San Diego,” said the lefty reliever.
But RAP has a field and Mitchell has the dream.
“My goal is to be the key guy out of the bullpen for the HarbourCats, Pitt and someday, in the pros,” said Mitchell, the first of the HarbourCats players to arrive in the capital for the 2015 West Coast League season.
“I’m still hoping to hear that phone call on draft day.”
Mitchell didn’t hear the ring in his first year of eligibility in Grade 12. The next opportunity comes when players are either in their junior NCAA season or have turned 21. Mitchell, who will turn 21, will be in the MLB draft mix again next spring after his sophomore season at Pitt. Because of shoulder surgery, Mitchell red- shirted his freshman season. He is in pre-law at Pitt “if baseball doesn’t work out.”
Coming off the shoulder surgery “after I couldn’t lift my arm,” six-foot-one, 210-pound Mitchell went 0-2 with a 4.56 ERA in 16 appearances and 25.2 innings pitched this spring in his rookie NCAA season at Pitt.
The HarbourCats have four exhibition tilts before the WCL regular-season opener Friday against the Kelowna Falcons, all at RAP. After Langley this afternoon, the HCats meet the Seattle North All Stars on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings and the B.C. Premier League all-stars on Thursday.
With the majority of HarbourCats players not arriving from their NCAA or U.S. collegiate teams until Monday or Tuesday, the team will fill in today against Langley with local Maverick League senior players and juniors from the B.C. Premier League.
Mitchell said he hopes to get a few innings of work during the exhibition games to ready himself for the season opener Friday. An all-rounder, Mitchell played varsity baseball, football, basketball and golf. On the diamond, he wears No. 40 in honour of his pitching idol, Madison Bumgarner.
“[Bumgarner] is the same guy every day and just goes out and gets the job done,” said Mitchell, of the type of player he is working toward becoming.
That work-in-progress continues through the 2015 WCL campaign in Victoria.