Trevor Bauer for POY
The UCLA right-hander is the best player in college baseball this year
Jeff Sackmann
ESPN Insider
Since he arrived in college, UCLA starting pitcher Trevor Bauer has lived in the shadow of his more-famous, higher-touted, harder-throwing teammate Gerrit Cole. Yet for the second year in a row, Bauer is outperforming his co-ace, with eight wins to Cole's four, a 1.42 ERA to Cole's 2.78 and, most shockingly, 127 strikeouts to Cole's 76.
Bauer hasn't been just the most valuable player on his team, and he hasn't been the most accomplished pitcher in college baseball. Ten weeks into the season, he has been the most valuable player in college baseball.
With his dominant complete game, 17-strikeout performance against Stanford on Friday, Bauer became this year's first college player to reach 3.5 wins above replacement(WAR) -- a mark that only a few dozen players achieve each year in a full season. (We calculate WAR a bit differently than FanGraphs does for MLB, but the concept is the same.) With his dominant outing against the Cardinal, Bauer stayed just ahead of Arizona starter Kurt Heyer and leapfrogged Virginia ace Danny Hultzen to take over the top spot in WAR, and the UCLA star cemented his status as the college player of the year up to this point.
<OFFER>
Working hard
Bauer has been so unhittable, over so many innings, that the obvious question is whether he can keep it up. The junior has thrown more innings than anyone in college baseball.
Just about every stat is impressive: He has thrown 82-plus innings, tops in Division I; opponents are hitting .145 against him -- lower than against any other pitcher with 40 or more innings pitched. He has struck out 127 batters; he and Hultzen, with 104, are the only guys over 90. Put that another way: More than half of Bauer's outs have been strikeouts.
<!-- begin inline 1 -->Highest WAR this season
You'll notice that the top five is comprised of pitchers, but this isn't atypical for college baseball. Ace pitchers make roughly 25 percent to 30 percent of their teams' starts in college, while MLB pitchers rarely top 20 percent. If Roy Halladay started 40 games, he'd probably lead the majors in WAR.
<TABLE><THEAD><TR><TH>Player</TH><TH>Team</TH><TH>WAR</TH></TR></THEAD><TBODY><TR class=last><TD>Trevor Bauer</TD><TD>UCLA</TD><TD>3.8</TD></TR><TR class=last><TD>Kurt Heyer</TD><TD>Arizona</TD><TD>3.7</TD></TR><TR class=last><TD>Kyle Simon</TD><TD>Arizona</TD><TD>3.4</TD></TR><TR class=last><TD>Adam Conley</TD><TD>Washington State</TD><TD>3.4</TD></TR><TR class=last><TD>Danny Hultzen</TD><TD>Virginia</TD><TD>3.4</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
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All those innings -- and all those strikeouts -- have come at a cost, though. Bauer has averaged 125 pitches per outing, and the pitch counts in his four April appearances have been 128, 134, 134 and 135. Supporters insist that Bauer knows his body better than anyone else and that his rigorous long-toss routine prepares him for the workload. Skeptics, including ESPN Insider's Keith Law, question the wisdom of any college player throwing that many pitches.
If the workload does prove to be a mistake, we probably won't see the damage for a couple of years. There's certainly no sign that Bauer is fading, and he held up fine through 131 innings last year. In the 2010 College World Series, he threw 135 pitches in eight innings against TCU to put the Bruins in the national finals.
Team spirit
Not only has Bauer racked up the personal stats, but he has been one of the only Bruins saving his team from mediocrity. Of his 10 starts, UCLA has won eight; in the team's other 25 games, they are a mere 13-12, a record that would push them down the rankings even further than they have already fallen.
He's accumulated his eight wins without much run support, either. The Bruins' 4-1 win over Stanford on Friday was typical: big pitching performance, not much breathing room. While guys like Hultzen often sit back and watch their teammates put up one crooked number after another, Bauer has gotten double-digit run support only once.
Never was this more on display than on March 5, a chilly Saturday in Nebraska. The day before, Cole threw nine shutout innings only to see the game go into extras, where the Bruins finally triumphed. Bauer came out on Saturday, gave up a single run in the seventh, and he too saw his effort wasted. Amazingly, Bauer came back out for the 10th inning and posted another zero (along with strikeouts 16 and 17); UCLA ultimately lost in 12.
While the Bruins' offense has picked up some steam -- they've scored at least four runs in each of their last eight games -- they'll continue to rely on their pair of aces if they are to go deep into the postseason. Although Bauer impressed against Stanford, UCLA dropped the series. An even tougher test will come this week, when the Bruins face a red-hot Oregon State squad -- conference leaders and winners of 11 of their last 12.
Arizona dreaming
Major league teams don't draft based on WAR, or even entirely based on any measure of performance -- nor should they. But regardless of the workload and the lack of truly elite stuff, Bauer is putting up numbers that scouting directors can't ignore.
Before the season started, Bauer wasn't even a consensus first-rounder. Many rankings put him in position to be taken in the supplemental round. Every few weeks, it seems, the consensus has shifted, from a definite first-rounder, to a possible top 15, then top 10, and now, draft experts such as Baseball America's Jim Callis are saying they could Bauer him going to the Diamondbacks with the third overall pick -- right behind Cole and Rice slugger Anthony Rendon.
Between now and draft day, Bauer will have five or six more starts, including tough assignments against Oregon State, California and Arizona State. Without the raw talent and projectability of Cole and Rendon, Bauer is in a tough position -- he can't climb much higher on draft boards, but with dozens of scouts watching, a bad outing or two could knock him down.
There isn't much reason to worry, though: He has lost only four decisions in two years, and he's piled up double-digit strikeouts in eight consecutive outings. He has been the most impressive player of the first 10 weeks, and there's little doubt he'll be near the top of the draft in June, as well.
The UCLA right-hander is the best player in college baseball this year
Jeff Sackmann
ESPN Insider
Since he arrived in college, UCLA starting pitcher Trevor Bauer has lived in the shadow of his more-famous, higher-touted, harder-throwing teammate Gerrit Cole. Yet for the second year in a row, Bauer is outperforming his co-ace, with eight wins to Cole's four, a 1.42 ERA to Cole's 2.78 and, most shockingly, 127 strikeouts to Cole's 76.
Bauer hasn't been just the most valuable player on his team, and he hasn't been the most accomplished pitcher in college baseball. Ten weeks into the season, he has been the most valuable player in college baseball.
With his dominant complete game, 17-strikeout performance against Stanford on Friday, Bauer became this year's first college player to reach 3.5 wins above replacement(WAR) -- a mark that only a few dozen players achieve each year in a full season. (We calculate WAR a bit differently than FanGraphs does for MLB, but the concept is the same.) With his dominant outing against the Cardinal, Bauer stayed just ahead of Arizona starter Kurt Heyer and leapfrogged Virginia ace Danny Hultzen to take over the top spot in WAR, and the UCLA star cemented his status as the college player of the year up to this point.
<OFFER>
Working hard
Bauer has been so unhittable, over so many innings, that the obvious question is whether he can keep it up. The junior has thrown more innings than anyone in college baseball.
Just about every stat is impressive: He has thrown 82-plus innings, tops in Division I; opponents are hitting .145 against him -- lower than against any other pitcher with 40 or more innings pitched. He has struck out 127 batters; he and Hultzen, with 104, are the only guys over 90. Put that another way: More than half of Bauer's outs have been strikeouts.
<!-- begin inline 1 -->Highest WAR this season
You'll notice that the top five is comprised of pitchers, but this isn't atypical for college baseball. Ace pitchers make roughly 25 percent to 30 percent of their teams' starts in college, while MLB pitchers rarely top 20 percent. If Roy Halladay started 40 games, he'd probably lead the majors in WAR.
<TABLE><THEAD><TR><TH>Player</TH><TH>Team</TH><TH>WAR</TH></TR></THEAD><TBODY><TR class=last><TD>Trevor Bauer</TD><TD>UCLA</TD><TD>3.8</TD></TR><TR class=last><TD>Kurt Heyer</TD><TD>Arizona</TD><TD>3.7</TD></TR><TR class=last><TD>Kyle Simon</TD><TD>Arizona</TD><TD>3.4</TD></TR><TR class=last><TD>Adam Conley</TD><TD>Washington State</TD><TD>3.4</TD></TR><TR class=last><TD>Danny Hultzen</TD><TD>Virginia</TD><TD>3.4</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
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All those innings -- and all those strikeouts -- have come at a cost, though. Bauer has averaged 125 pitches per outing, and the pitch counts in his four April appearances have been 128, 134, 134 and 135. Supporters insist that Bauer knows his body better than anyone else and that his rigorous long-toss routine prepares him for the workload. Skeptics, including ESPN Insider's Keith Law, question the wisdom of any college player throwing that many pitches.
If the workload does prove to be a mistake, we probably won't see the damage for a couple of years. There's certainly no sign that Bauer is fading, and he held up fine through 131 innings last year. In the 2010 College World Series, he threw 135 pitches in eight innings against TCU to put the Bruins in the national finals.
Team spirit
Not only has Bauer racked up the personal stats, but he has been one of the only Bruins saving his team from mediocrity. Of his 10 starts, UCLA has won eight; in the team's other 25 games, they are a mere 13-12, a record that would push them down the rankings even further than they have already fallen.
He's accumulated his eight wins without much run support, either. The Bruins' 4-1 win over Stanford on Friday was typical: big pitching performance, not much breathing room. While guys like Hultzen often sit back and watch their teammates put up one crooked number after another, Bauer has gotten double-digit run support only once.
Never was this more on display than on March 5, a chilly Saturday in Nebraska. The day before, Cole threw nine shutout innings only to see the game go into extras, where the Bruins finally triumphed. Bauer came out on Saturday, gave up a single run in the seventh, and he too saw his effort wasted. Amazingly, Bauer came back out for the 10th inning and posted another zero (along with strikeouts 16 and 17); UCLA ultimately lost in 12.
While the Bruins' offense has picked up some steam -- they've scored at least four runs in each of their last eight games -- they'll continue to rely on their pair of aces if they are to go deep into the postseason. Although Bauer impressed against Stanford, UCLA dropped the series. An even tougher test will come this week, when the Bruins face a red-hot Oregon State squad -- conference leaders and winners of 11 of their last 12.
Arizona dreaming
Major league teams don't draft based on WAR, or even entirely based on any measure of performance -- nor should they. But regardless of the workload and the lack of truly elite stuff, Bauer is putting up numbers that scouting directors can't ignore.
Before the season started, Bauer wasn't even a consensus first-rounder. Many rankings put him in position to be taken in the supplemental round. Every few weeks, it seems, the consensus has shifted, from a definite first-rounder, to a possible top 15, then top 10, and now, draft experts such as Baseball America's Jim Callis are saying they could Bauer him going to the Diamondbacks with the third overall pick -- right behind Cole and Rice slugger Anthony Rendon.
Between now and draft day, Bauer will have five or six more starts, including tough assignments against Oregon State, California and Arizona State. Without the raw talent and projectability of Cole and Rendon, Bauer is in a tough position -- he can't climb much higher on draft boards, but with dozens of scouts watching, a bad outing or two could knock him down.
There isn't much reason to worry, though: He has lost only four decisions in two years, and he's piled up double-digit strikeouts in eight consecutive outings. He has been the most impressive player of the first 10 weeks, and there's little doubt he'll be near the top of the draft in June, as well.
