The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Stepping up
UConn freshman Bryan Padilla emerging as the ‘Face of the franchise’
STORRS — When UConn shortstop Bryan Padilla moved from one conversation with members of the media to the next Wednesday afternoon at Elliot Ballpark, the second one in front of TV cameras, senior third baseman Zach Bushling took note and beamed.
“I mean, look at him right now, getting the interview, crushing it,” Bushling said. “He’s unbelievable, man. And he’s a freshman. I think that’s huge for the university. He will be the face of the franchise, for sure. I don’t think he could be. I know he will be.”
The Huskies have pushed their potentially-historic season into an NCAA Super Regional that begins Saturday at Stanford, a best-ofthree series with the winner awarded a trip to Omaha, Neb., for the College World Series.
UConn’s success has been about unique experiences and chemistry, first-year players and fifth-year players and transfers and all walks of life, a collection of guys from all over the map mowing down the Big East and making national noise to the surprise of many elsewhere but no one in Storrs.
So there are many reasons why the Huskies found themselves leaving campus on a bus in the Thursday morning darkness and later boarding a plane in Boston, bound for college baseball’s penultimate destination — not the least of which has been Padilla’s contributions since becoming the Huskies’ starting shortstop just a handful of games into the season, way back in February.
“Tough kid,” coach Jim Penders said. “He had a lot of adjustments to make with his diet, with his work outside the white lines. He always wanted to hit, he always wanted to take ground balls, but there was stuff he needed to do to transform his body and his mind. He understands that everything is merit-based here. He really had to earn that starting shortstop job. Once he did, he really solidified our defense and helped us become a better team.”
After a year lost to a knee injury, time spent learning to train and consider the game in truly healthy ways, Padilla has blossomed along with a team hoping to become UConn’s first to reach the College World Series since 1979.
He has started 57 games and is batting .288 with eight home runs and 36 RBI. He went 3-for-4 in both of the Huskies’ regional victories over Maryland, then stepped away from a frenzied infield celebration to yell into the camera, “We are not done!”
UConn is set at a shortstop for several years to come. This week, the Huskies are trying to make history with a big part of their future — a work-in-progress player in Padilla who has proven over time to be all work and all progress — as one of the leaders of the pack.
“He wants to be background noise more than the lead singer,”
pitching coach and recruiting coordinator Josh MacDonald. “You can’t really hide a background singer like that. With his talent, whether he likes it or not, he has to be more of a front man for us.”
Padilla grew up in Bushwick, Brooklyn, the geographic heart of New York City, and was a standout player at Poly Prep Country Day School in nearby Dyker Heights, where former Huskies Anthony Prato and Andrew Zapata also played for coach Matt Roventini.
UConn associate head coach Jeff Hourigan was the first to recruit Padilla, who also considered Boston College and St. John’s. Hourigan then sent MacDonald to one of Padilla’s games in New Jersey. Padilla did very little, offensively that day, but had six or seven unique opportunities on defense — routine grounders, a backhand, a difficult tag to apply, a slow roller, a pop up to snare out of left field, and so on.
“I remember coming back,” MacDonald said, “and saying, to Jeff, ‘He can make all the plays at short. He can make every kind of play.’ ”
The middle of UConn’s defense is sound, with T.C. Simmons of El Cajon, Calif., in centerfield, David Smith of Collegeville, Pa., at second base and Matt Donlan of Guilford catching. Padilla, a smooth player with range, has been the finishing touch. He leads UConn with 17 errors, making fewer lately. He is hardly a liability.
“It’s like getting a point guard from New York,” Penders said of Padilla. “You’ve got your shortstop from the City.”
At UConn, Padilla has no closer friend than Bushling, who understood the future of the shortstop position — even when he was playing it. Bushling started all last year, and early this year, until Penders shifted him to third base, replacing Chris Brown, so Padilla could become a regular.
Bushling, 23, is all West Coast, all California, gregarious, unflappable, chatty, a lot of “dude” in the way he talks. He is in his fifth year of college baseball, having transferred from Sierra College.
Padilla, 19, is all East Coast, Brooklyn proud, reserved, serious, shy but coming out of his shell, some lingering stress in the way he initially approached mistakes made.
Sounds like a collision, doesn’t it?
It was.
During intrasquad scrimmages in October of 2020, the two players collided. Padilla sustained a torn MCL and a depression fracture in his right knee, injuries that left him with a
medical redshirt for 2021 season and plenty of time to address attention to detail. He had to learn to work smarter, eat healthier, fine tune his game and forget whatever just happened.
“He always was tough, but in baseball, if he kicked a ball, it would stay with him until the next at-bat or the next opportunity,” Penders said, adding that longtime assistant coach Chris Podeszwa has worked tirelessly with Padilla on mental aspects of the game.
“Now he knows it’s a fluke if he kicks it and he knows he’s going to make the next one. And he wants the next one. (Podeszwa) has an expression, ‘Expect the ball hit to you — and want it.’ Bryan doesn’t just expect it now. He wants it. Now he’s got a lot of confidence and you saw that this weekend. He was one of our most reliable at-bats and looked at home in the moment. He’s got a slow heartbeat but quick feet and a quick head now.”
Padilla, who has been accepted to UConn’s sports management program, has a compact swing from the right side, one Penders said allows him to turn on inside fastballs as well as anyone in the lineup. He widens his stance dramatically and hits well with two strikes, and the team hits well with two outs.
“Coming into this year, I really wanted to play, and I had to fight for that starting spot,” said Padilla, one of three children with a younger sister, Kelsy, and an older brother, Franklin, who plays at SUNY-Oneonta. “This is a game of failure and it’s really important to move on, not only in baseball, but in life. … I think that’s something that applies to our whole team. When our backs are against the wall, we find a way to compete and fight.”
UConn was swept in a three-game series at Georgetown to close the regular season and had probably played itself out of an at-large NCAA bid. But the Huskies rebounded to win the Big East Tournament without dropping a game and then, as a No. 3 seed, won two of three games against host Maryland. Padilla went 7-for-15 in the four-game event, smashing a homer to leftcenter in UConn’s opening victory over Wake Forest.
No one showed more moxie on the big stage than the kid who showed up in 2020 with so little to say and so much to think about.
This makes Bushling so proud.
“He didn’t like me at first,” said Bushling, who is batting .275 and has played all 63 games. “But I kept pushing and now we’re like best friends. He hated it but I always gave him pep talks. I’d be like, ‘You got this, man. You’re better than me.’ Because I knew that he was. That’s probably weird to say, but I was like, dude, the kid is unreal. Now he’s got it together. He’s clicking. He has the confidence.
“This game, you’ve got to be smart but you’ve got to be dumb, too. Once you start thinking, you get the yips and it’s game over, man. You’ve played yourself.”