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D1 Baseball > Fall Report: Connecticut

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It's Fall Report time at @D1Baseball ! We kick things off with one of the more impressive consistent winners in college baseball -- @UConnBSB. @aaronfitt with an in-depth look at #UConn

Article is REALLY quite in-depth but here are a few cherry-picked highlights...

>>When Connecticut coach Jim Penders looks back at his 2011 team led by future big leaguers George Springer, Matt Barnes, Nick Ahmed, Scott Oberg and John Andreoli, he thinks to himself, “How the hell did I not win a national championship with that team? “And it’s like, well, we hadn’t been there. You hadn’t been to Omaha yet, you got to the supers. The year before (in 2010) you’re in the regional and you were overwhelmed in the regional because we were hosting it and hadn’t been in a regional since 1994 when I was playing. Then you’re in it, and it’s like, ‘How do we do this?’ And we’re playing tight. Then we got to the next step the next year and we’re playing loose.” The takeaway is that it’s easier to advance in the postseason if you have previous postseason experience to draw upon. So Penders hopes his 2020 Huskies will benefit from having been to the Conway Regional finals in 2018 and then pushing Oklahoma State to a decisive Game Seven in the 2019 Oklahoma City Regional finals. “I thought we were playing a lot looser in Oklahoma City than we were in Conway the year before. So I think there is something to that, I think it’s a little bit easier,” Penders said. “It’s never gonna be easy, but I think it’s a little bit easier year to year when you make that one more rung up the ladder, having been there you recognize the view from that perch, and you can make it up to that next rung.”

UConn has been to six regionals since 2010, so now this program knows what the postseason is all about. And there are plenty of holdovers from the last two NCAA tournament clubs to provide leadership and guidance to a slew of newcomers.<<

>>Heading into the fall, Vanderbilt transfer Justin Willis was already eligible under the new rules that allow players who received no athletic aid at their previous school to transfer freely. Willis, a 5-foot-8, 192-pound bulldog with a quick arm that produces 88-92 heat and a swing-and-miss slider, should be one of UConn’s leading closer candidates next spring. The Huskies are awaiting word on the eligibility of the other two D-I transfers, two-way players Ben Casparius (from North Carolina) and Erik Stock (Old Dominion). Casparius has some strength in his righthanded bat, but his biggest impact figures to come on the mound, where he was up to 92 with feel for three quality secondary pitches, making him a potential fit in the weekend rotation. Stock didn’t pitch last spring while recovering from Tommy John surgery, but he could add some depth to the pitching staff and provide athleticism, arm strength and speed at a variety of positions. Penders said he was pleased with how Stock was swinging the bat at the start of fall ball.<<

>>Yet another two-way player headlines UConn’s intriguing freshman class: first baseman/lefthander Reggie Crawford, who has big-time star potential. In Crawford’s first fall scrimmage appearance on the mound at Eastern Connecticut State (where the Huskies are practicing this fall while their new ballpark is built), Crawford touched 92 mph from a low three-quarters slot and flashed a promising sweeping slurve in the 74-79 range that was very tough on lefties. The 6-foot-3, 219-pound Crawford has a real chance to make an instant impact off the mound and at first base, where his his lefthanded power potential is tantalizing. He showed off his easy bat speed with a ringing double to the left-center gap and a sharp single the other way in the intrasquad I caught. “He could be the best freshman I’ve ever had. He was 98 (mph exit velocity) off the tee the other day, and it’s low effort. It’s just amazingly easy,” Penders said. “He knows he’s good, which is great. He’s got some confidence, so hopefully he can play first base. He’s also a lefthanded pitcher up to 93, and the slider, it’s special. He’s got a chance to be really good, but again, his bat’s going to be important, so you don’t want to tax him too much early on.<<

>>Shortstop is obviously a key question for UConn to answer after the departure of Prato. Other candidates for the job include sophomores Will Lucas and Andy Hague, juco transfer Zach Bushling, and freshman Todd Peterson. Out of that group, Lucas and Hague seem like the front-runners. Hague, a 5-foot-7, 157-pound spark plug, showed off his table-setter skill set in the scrimmage, reaching safely in all four of his plate appearances with two line-drive singles to the middle-away part of the field. He’s built like a classic scrappy second baseman, but Penders said he shouldn’t be ruled out as a potential shortstop because he has a strong arm and a very quick release. Lucas is a standout athlete who struggled mightily at the plate as a freshman but turned the corner in a big way in the NECBL and is now carrying himself with a lot more confidence. Bushling is a competitive left-handed hitter with above-average speed, good lateral range in the middle infield and a hard-nosed mentality. And Peterson is a lanky, rangy 6-foot-6 athlete with surprising quickness and natural defensive instincts. He needs to add strength and do some work with his swing, but he looks like a nice building block for the future.<<
 
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At third base, the favorite appears to be senior David Langer, who arrived at UConn last year as a juco transfer from California. Langer crushed a no-doubter solo homer to left field in the scrimmage, then got hit in the face by a pitch in his next at-bat. He returned to the dugout a little later, showing some of that UConn toughness that Penders talks about.

“David Langer has really gotten our attention,” Penders said. “He looks like a different guy, about 20 pounds lighter than he was a year ago and his swing looks really quick. He had a good summer, not a great summer, but he’s probably been our MVP so far in the last couple weeks we’ve been doing this. He’s been very good. He does have some pop, and he’s been moving around third base pretty well.”<<

>>As for the pitching staff, look for the Huskies to do a lot of mixing and matching, because this staff doesn’t have an established innings-eating starter like Feole or Kersten. Crawford and Casparius (if eligible) have obvious weekend starter potential, and redshirt sophomore Jimmy Wang made 12 starts last spring gaining valuable experience. Wang was outstanding in two scoreless innings at the scrimmage I saw, striking out four. A 6-foot-3, 208-pound righty with an over-the-top delivery, Wang worked downhill at 88-91 and showed the ability to spin a nice slurve at 78-80. Penders said he’s capable of running his fastball up to 95, but the key for him is to become more consistent with his slider, which came and went last year. But Wang has made huge strides since he showed up at UConn as a total unknown, literally. He was an actuarial science student from Beijing by way of Michigan who emailed Penders and said, “I’ve never been clocked but I think I’m somewhere in the high 80s, and I’m 6-foot-4,” as Penders recalls it.

“The rest is history,” Penders said. “We couldn’t try him out until the open tryout, which was like the second week of September. We’d catch him at the back end of our practices sneaking onto the field and literally throwing one ball from pole to pole and then sprinting after it, and throwing it back to the other pole. So we just kind of left a bag of balls where he could find it. He’s got arm strength for days, it’s impressive. He’s learned how to hold runners, he does have a lot of aptitude. You tell him once, he’s a pleaser. But he’s got a chance to be really good.”<<
 
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As @huskymedic said, this D1Baseball.com article is packed with all sorts of interesting info on UConn baseball. It is a terrific read. Also, it is the first in-depth team article that this publication has done this fall season. By making UConn the leadoff team so to speak, the Huskies have been accorded something of an honor that should be appreciated by fans of the team.
 
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Aaron Fitt seems to like what he sees with UConn. The article makes clear that he and Penders think that that UConn has a lot of young talented players, pitchers and position players alike, including a bunch of freshmen pitchers. If this talent develops quickly, UConn could have a bunch of quality depth on this team, especially on the pitching staff.

But obviously, not every player develops quickly or at the same rate. A prime example of this could be Ben Maycock, who in his three years at UConn was redshirted his freshman year, and barely got any at bats in the following two seasons. I figured at the end of last season that since Maycock was pretty much glued to the bench and with UConn getting a good looking recruiting class and a number of interesting transfers, that his spot on the 2020 spring roster could be in jeopardy.

This feeling of mine deepened when Maycock was not playing on any teams when the 2019 summer ball season started. But then Maycock joined the Mystic Schooners late in the summer ball season, and he immediately became a huge offensive force with the team, hitting .352 with power and getting a fair share of walks. While he only played in 14 games, it was still an impressive performance even if it was for a fairly short duration. The most interesting thing in his stat line was that his strikeout rate dropped quite a bit from the previous year where he played summer ball. During the 2018 summer ball season, Maycock struck out in almost half his at bats. During his short stint with Mystic in 2019, Maycock struck out 15 times in 54 at bats, which to me is a significant improvement.

After the summer season ended, I began to think that Maycock was someone who could either end up in the 2020 starting lineup, or he could end up being one of the last roster cuts if in fall ball he did not continue to build upon his quality play during the last half of July with Mystic. Anyway, in the Aaron Fitt article, Coach Penders has some very positive things to say about Maycock, saying hat it may have taken a number of years, but that Maycock may have finally figured things out and might be developing into a big power and speed guy. As they say, stay tuned for further developments.
 
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In his UConn fall ball review, Aaron Fitt gives a mention to most of the pitchers on the fall ball roster. One pitcher he did not mention is Joe Simeone, who I think was the best performing UConn pitcher during the 2019 summer ball season. With his summer with the Keene Swamp Bats, I thought Simeone pitched himself into strong consideration for a weekend starting spot.
 
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