Cooper has Blue Jays at No. 1 in the country
Slugger and his ‘majestic’ homers have been the catalyst
No one can accuse Matthew Cooper of lacking boldness.
As the Johns Hopkins baseball team traveled to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, April 25, coach Bob Babb was worried. Injuries had sidelined two starters from making the trip, and of the program’s 21 losses to the Bullets, 15 of them had occurred in Gettysburg.
Cooper, a senior left fielder and designated hitter, sensed his coach’s concern and offered some encouragement.
“He said to me before the game, ‘Well, don’t worry. I’ll put the team on my back,’” Babb recalled two days after the Blue Jays picked up their 10th consecutive win in a 22-5 romp. “And he hit a home run in his second at-bat that kind of turned the game around. … I’ve had some [as confident as him], but none that were more confident than him.”
Cooper said he simply wanted to soothe Babb.
“I just wanted to reassure him that whenever I’m in the game, I’m going to do everything in my power to help this team win,” he said. “I wanted him to know that I was going to give him my all. I’ve had the utmost confidence in our team from day one, and I know a lot of our team has that, too.”
Cooper has backed up the talk this season. With 21 home runs thus far, he broke the program’s single-season record of 17 set by John Christ in 1998 and is two shy of Christ’s career mark of 35 despite playing in just his second year at Johns Hopkins.
Cooper leads all NCAA Division III batters in home runs per game (.55), ranks second in home runs (21) and slugging percentage (.980), and is tied for 15th in RBIs (57). With the Blue Jays (39-4, 17-1 Centennial Conference) ranked No. 1 in the country by D3baseball.com and in Collegiate Baseball’s American Baseball Coaches Association poll and fresh off winning their 17th conference tournament Sunday by rallying past Dickinson after dropping the first game despite a homer from Cooper, the slugger figures to be a candidate for Player of the Year. And that’s
the way Babb, coaching in his 44th year, sees it.
“I don’t think anybody across the board can put up the numbers he’s put up,” he said.
Cooper, a native of Chalfont, Pennsylvania, spent his first two years at Delaware. But after enduring shoulder surgery as a freshman and knee surgery as a sophomore, he chose to prioritize academics over athletics, even if that meant leaving Division I baseball.
Recruited by Carnegie Mellon and NYU, Cooper said he chose Johns Hopkins for its reputation in the field of business and upon the recommendation of graduate student center fielder Isaiah Winikur, a fellow Pennsylvanian who had transferred from Towson the year before.
In his first season with the Blue Jays, Cooper batted .327 with eight doubles, 12 home runs and 42 RBIs and compiled a .431 on-base percentage and a .735 slugging percentage. Solid numbers, but Babb noticed Cooper had a tendency to raise his head slightly instead of staying with the pitch.
“He had power last year, he just didn’t make the kind of solid contact he’s making this year,” Babb said. “He has worked really hard on his hitting mechanics and is seeing the ball better, and clearly it’s paid off.”
Babb described Cooper’s home runs as “long and majestic, not fence-scrapers.” Cooper admitted he has taken moments to admire his blasts.
“Baseball is a tough sport and it’s fun when you get to do cool things like that,” he said.
“I wouldn’t say I’ve had many cheap home runs this year. On most of them, I’ve gotten my barrel on them, and it’s been fun to watch them. It’s been fun to see my teammates embrace the celebration and embrace the fun that’s come with it.”
Graduate student relief pitcher Jaspar Carmichael said Cooper’s at-bats are usually must-see moments for his teammates.
“You just get the feeling when he’s out there, something special is going to happen,” he said. “So guys see that, and that’s how I
feel with our whole lineup, and it starts with him.”
As much as he enjoys being known as the school’s “home run king,” Cooper also relishes being a part of the university community. He helped organize a Halloween event on Oct. 30, 2021, for about 50 students from Henderson-Hopkins School who visited booths run by Johns Hopkins athletes to play games and collect candy. He helped promote a similar event last fall.
“Out of everything I’ve done at Hopkins, that was one of my proudest achievements,” said Cooper, who is co-president of community engagement for the Student Athlete Advisory Committee. “These young kids don’t really have a safe place to go trick-ortreat. There was a lot of help involved. It was cool.”
Carmichael pointed to Cooper’s generosity as one reason he was voted a team captain along with himself, Winikur and senior catcher Sam Frank.
“He’s always just thinking about other people,” Carmichael said. “He has a positive impact on a lot of people.”
With Cooper, the Blue Jays lead the nation in home runs (89) and runs scored (447). Babb said Cooper will be a critical cog in the program’s quest for its first NCAA championship. The Division III Tournament bracket will be released Sunday.
“We have good pitching, we have good pitching depth, we have a solid lineup one through nine. But having a power guy with a high average in the middle of all of those pretty good hitters has really paid dividends for the offense this year,” he said. “We’ve scored a lot of runs, and usually he’s in the center of it.”
Cooper has another year of eligibility stemming from the NCAA’s decision to award athletes an extra year because of the coronavirus pandemic. He is debating whether to apply to graduate school and play in 2024 or accept a job offer from an investment bank in Baltimore.
“This would be a hard team to walk away from because everybody will be back next year,” he acknowledged. “So it could be a chance to run it back next year.”