San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Bay Area pitchers gaining traction
More than half of those chosen on the first two days of the MLB draft are expected to be pitchers, and the Bay Area will likely provide a handful of those electric arms.
With the top 36 picks set for Sunday and rounds 210 on Monday, the local talent could be dotted all over the second day. Among them are Cal righthanders Grant Holman and Sean Sullivan, and Foothill HighPleasanton righthander Matthew Ager.
But the best of the group have developed at St. Mary’s and Stanford.
Gaels lefty Ky Bush has been considered the region’s top prospect, with the possibility of going in the second round. But it’s Cardinal righthander Brendan Beck who is shooting up draft boards and could challenge for a Day 1 slot.
“I’ve been proving it for a while now, and it’s gotten to the point where teams have noticed and are maybe getting excited to see how my stuff plays at the bigleague level,” the 6foot2, 205pound Beck said. “This year was kind of a culmination of a lot of things for me.”
Beck finished his Cardinal career 2210 with a 3.11 ERA and 289 strikeouts in 2891⁄3 innings. In four postseason games this season, he struck out 37 in 222⁄3 innings against some of the best teams in the country.
Maybe that’s why Beck made a bigger jump than anyone among MLB. com’s prospect rankings this month, rising from No. 166 to 99.
Beck easily could have been selected as a junior, when the draft was pruned to five rounds because of the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, he returned to Stanford to bump his fastball to 9193 mph and work on a curveball.
Having already developed a slider while putting up great numbers his first three years, the curveball demanded that hitters think about a second breaking ball and increased the perceived life on his average fastball.
Beck understands all of this, because he was primarily a shortstop until his senior year of high school in Corona (Riverside County). He started at Stanford as a twoway player before realizing that his future was on the mound, but he hasn’t lost the feel for reading swings, thinking like a hitter and figuring out what an offense is trying to do against him.
He’s usually a step ahead, working fast, pounding the zone and keeping his defense engaged. Beck is so competitive that he’s still in the Bay Area and asked his parents to make the sixhour drive up for the draft so he can train at Stanford.
“My name has been rising, but it never really matters until your name is called,” he said. “I’m trying to keep an open mind that it could be short, it could be long, or it could be anything in between. I’m trying not to get my hopes too high or get too bummed out by anything.”
Bush, a 66, 240pounder, has already experienced the bummedout days and has overcome that to become one of the Bay Area’s top prospects.
The Utah native went to three schools in three years — failing miserably at Washington State in 2019, reclaiming his confidence at Central Arizona in ’20 and fulfilling his potential at St. Mary’s this year.
Saying he “stunk” at Washington State when he was too young and immature to perform at the Pac12 level as a freshman, Bush was left staring at an 05 record with a 12.69 ERA by the end of the season.
“There are a lot of external factors that put those numbers up, but at the end of the day, it was on me. I didn’t really compete,” he said. “My numbers were awful, but I couldn’t be more thankful for facing that adversity at a young age. Every bad thing you could probably think about happened to me on the mound my freshman year, and it really shaped me into the pitcher I am now.”
Bush gave up five runs in his 31⁄3inning debut and never got his ERA below 11.75 before it ballooned midseason to 18.00. It was then that he decided to stop worrying about the stats and focus on the lessons in failure.
Understanding that he needed to change his sleeping habits, diet, understanding of recovery and offday training, Bush went to Central Arizona, where he went 51 with a 2.43 ERA and 43 strikeouts in 331⁄3 innings — great numbers that still didn’t get him into consideration for the top of the draft.
By the time he finished his junior season at St. Mary’s this year, Bush was sitting with a 9496 mph fastball that touched 98 mph. Using a changeup that had always worked and developing the grip and feel for a slider, he had 112 strikeouts to 19 walks in 781⁄3 innings.
The turnaround is eyepopping, but Bush said he isn’t done.
“It’s cool to hear all of the hype and to see your name on lists, but you can’t get satisfied,” he said. “Once you’re drafted, the grind starts all over again. You can celebrate for a little bit, but then you’ve got to get right back after it.”