It’s been an eventful week for Ethan Long, ASU Baseball’s freshman standout.
After the Pac-12 Conference awarded Long with his third Conference Player of the Week honors; the Gilbert native received his first national honors. The National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association and Perfect Game agreed that Long’s performance warranted a National Player of the Week nod.
“It’s no secret he’s carrying us,” Hitting coach Michael Earley said of Long. “The guys are feeding off of it.”
Ethan Long’s 16 home runs this season are the most on the team; while he also leads the squad in RBI (52), total bases (109), and slugging percentage (a whopping .838%).
Long hit four of his signature “Long balls,” or home runs in the past week. Most impressively, Tracy Smith believes, is the timing of the bombs: “It’s not at a time when it’s meaningless,” Smith explained. “They’ve been big home runs that bring us from behind, or big home runs to put us on top.”
The freshman’s three-run walk-off home run Friday night versus Oregon State is pretty decent evidence of Skip’s claim.
He picked up his bat exactly where he left it, starting Saturday’s game with back-to-back home runs in his first two at-bats. Long set up a “goal board” at home in Gilbert, where his grandmother counts the accolades as he achieves them.
“I had: to beat (Spencer) Torkelson’s home run record, but I also had Player of the Week, Freshman of the Year, and Pac-12 Player of the Year,” said Long.
So far, he’s making good progress. No Sun Devil in the past ten years has held a candle to Torkelson’s 25-home run record set in his freshman season. Long’s 16 is the closest since Kole Calhoun finished the 2010 season with 17 dingers. As far as his other goals, Long has already asked his grandmother to cross off Player of the Week honors on his goal board.
It didn’t start so easy (EZ is his nickname, after all), though. It took eight games before Long hit his first homer in Maroon and Gold. His swagger and style are exactly what Arizona State Baseball needed this season. Since losing the top three pitchers to Tommy John surgery and exporting five 2020 MLB Draft selections, pundits predicted a grim outlook for the year. While pitching problems have persisted, offensive worries have been put to bed almost entirely. Long leads the Pac-12 in home runs and sits in the top five in batting average.
The competition for the Pac-12 Freshman of The year award is stiff. Arizona’s Jacob Berry and Daniel Susac narrowly trail Long in home runs, and both are hitting at a higher batting average than the Sun Devil. Susac has been named the conference’s Player of the Week once, in March of this season.
Long is the first player in the conference to be named Player of the Week three times in one season since Hunter Bishop did it in 2019.
His bat flipping antics have allowed for some national recognition on social media. While the bat flip debate divides baseball, Tracy Smith offered some insight.
"Ten years ago, I would've yanked my player out of the lineup," Smith said about the bat flips. But times have changed: "Even I've had to take a step back and say, 'I want to keep this wild colt in line, but don't want to stifle who he is as an individual athlete.'"
Smith went on to elaborate on a multitude of Long’s qualities, ranging from plate discipline to leadership to country music karaoke skills. According to Skip, the freshman sensation is a wild colt, whereas teammate and friend Kade Higgins says he’s “one of the funniest kids I’ve ever met.”
The hype that surrounds Long is a welcome reprieve for Sun Devil fans following worries of a wasted season, especially after the team’s 2-2 start to the season with losses against unranked Sacramento State and Hawai’i. It’s a reminder of the Spencer Torkelson days, but with a youthful and energetic take. Fans are interested in his extravagant In-N-Out burger order while also being enamored by his mechanically near-perfect swing. It’s a rare combination (both the burger order and his skillset).
Earley puts it best: “Ethan is Ethan.”
