An early ending to the 2020 season closed the door on what was a promising blend of talent and experience for the Arizona State baseball program. During the early portion of non-conference play, ASU showed signs of becoming one of the top teams in the country, posting a 13-4 record before the season was cut short due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The collective losses throughout a Sun Devil lineup, which averaged 7.2 runs per game – including No. 1 overall draft pick Spencer Torkelson – leaves a void which ASU has gone about filling through various methods. As the Sun Devils prepare for another year in which expectations will be high; members of the ASU coaching staff spoke to reporters Monday morning to discuss the program’s standing at the moment. Here are six takeaways.
Don’t over-complicate NCAA’s extra year
Shortly after the 2020 season was canceled, the NCAA announced that athletes participating in spring sports would be granted a waiver for an extra season of eligibility. In recent months that legislation has been extended to fall and winter sports, with all athletes having been offered the option to play in what is essentially an eligibility freeze or opt-out of the season altogether.
Arizona State lost the aforementioned Spencer Torkelson, Alika Williams, Gage Workman, Trevor Hauver and R.J. Dabovich in the MLB’s shortened, five-round MLB Draft. Still, the program should be less affected by an extra year of eligibility than others across the country, according to head coach Tracy Smith.
“The draft is more of an influence than the COVID legislation,” said Smith, who is expecting the MLB to expand the draft back to a middle ground between this year’s five rounds and previous years’ model of 40. “At a place like Arizona State I don’t anticipate us getting those years back.
“If we’re on the right guys, or we’re doing what we’re supposed to from a development standpoint -- this has been throughout the career, not just in COVID -- you don’t get guys traditionally as seniors anyway. I don’t think it has a huge impact with our roster.”
Expanded rosters for the 2021 season have allowed Arizona State to add extra depth, but Smith expressed interest in seeing how the governing body determines to return rosters to the normal limit of 35 players.
“The NCAA says you have an unlimited roster this year,” Smith said. “I don’t see it being an unlimited roster next year. I see it being a 35-man again. So, I think what’s going to be really interesting is when you see the roster movement at the end of this year at the end of the 2021 season, more so than what you saw this year.”
Drew Swift taking a clubhouse leadership role
Smith mentioned Drew Swift as the Sun Devils’ current replacement for first-round pick Alika Wiliams, who starred at shortstop for ASU during his time in Tempe. Along with his move from second base to shortstop, Sun Devil coaches praised the redshirt junior from Chandler, Ariz., for the added leadership role he’s taken in the clubhouse.
“The influence that he has had on our team has been beyond honestly anything that I’ve seen in college baseball,” said Smith of Swift, who batted .365 during the shortened 2020 season. “There’s this interesting piece, the psychological piece of coming back as a senior in college baseball. Sometimes that’s viewed as this failure, but he didn’t do that. And he’s not taken a cavalier attitude with it. He has embraced his role as a veteran on this team.
“You saw his play last year through 17 games; he had made a huge jump and was playing at a high level. I will tell you he has not missed a beat. In fact, he’s better than he was last year. What I love, though, is the leadership. He’s literally like having another coach on the field. He’s helping, teaching the young guys around him.
Production-wise, Swift made a massive leap in 2020, albeit during a smaller sample size in non-conference play. After hitting in the .200s during his first two seasons in Tempe, Swift’s average jumped .100 points, with the Sun Devil infielder falling just four RBI short of his 2019 mark in a third of the amount of games.
“When we look at who the voice of the team is; Drew has taken a hold of that and rallies the guys,” said associate head coach and recruiting coordinator Ben Greenspan.
Returning arms steady Jason Kelly’s nerves
Entering his second season as the pitching coach in Tempe, Jason Kelly returns to a pitching staff that has plenty returning. Of the five drafted players on the ASU roster in 2020, only one (R.J. Dabovich) was on the mound. Had the MLB Draft gone more than five rounds and 160 total picks, Smith and Kelly would have expected more Sun Devil arms to have been drafted.
“That’s a good feeling, going to bed at night knowing you’ve got four guys at minimum with starting experience in your group,” Kelly said. “Guys that I think were just coming into themselves last year as this thing got canceled. Those guys are pushing each other.
“When we finished up last year, and everything was officially canceled, and we got to communicate a little bit I made sure that the group understood that the slate was going to be cleared, and we were going to have to come in and earn jobs. Everybody was going to have to earn jobs no matter if you pitched on Friday last year or you didn’t pitch an inning.”
The top five pitchers in terms of innings pitched during the Sun Devils’ 17 games all return to a loaded ASU pitching staff. Smith mentioned Erik Tolman as one of the arms he thought could have been drafted in a non-pandemic year, with his return signaling strong things to come. With extra arms and added depth, Kelly said he could see “four or five guys” compete for the closer role following Dabovich’s departure.
“We’re going to kind of let it play out the rest of the fall,” said Kelly, whose pitching staff held a 3.56 earned run average in the abbreviated 2020 season. “We’re going to have some competitive maroon and gold inter-squads over the next two weeks, and I think that will pull some guys away from the group and then we’ll get into January and do the same.”
Top 10 recruiting class will show results over time
Collegiate Baseball News unveiled its recruiting rankings at the end of September, and with it, Arizona State was ranked in the top 10 for the fourth time in the last five years. Arizona State (ranked 10th) was one of three Pac-12 programs included in the top 10, with Arizona (4) and UCLA (6) representing the conference at the top. The rankings were adjusted for talent lost to the MLB draft and late transfers and new signees.
Expanded rosters in 2021 allowed the Sun Devils to go into the transfer portal and add talent like former Auburn Tiger Conor Davis and Allbry Major from Xavier. Both players were ranked by Baseball America as two of the top-10 most impactful transfers in the country. Their additions could slow the impact made by true freshmen in 2021 for ASU but shouldn’t damper how the class is viewed in years to come.
“I really like the group,” Greenspan explained. “It’s going to be one of those groups where over time you’re going to look back and say, ‘all right, that’s a really good class.’ The way [Nate] Baez, [Sean] McClain, realistically, were getting limited reps last year, I could see a couple of freshmen this year getting limited reps and blossoming into really good players in the future.
“As you look at the group, I think it’s a really good balance of now guys and projection guys. You have a couple of transfers in there that are able to balance out and give some of those freshmen some time, and I think that really helps… We think it’s going to be a really good class over the course of the next couple of years.”
Sun Devils won’t attempt to replace Spencer Torkelson
Simply put, there is no replacing the No. 1 overall draft pick. Torkelson’s rise from undrafted out of high school to the prize of the 2020 MLB Draft is as strong of a case as the ASU coaching staff can make to future recruits about their ability to develop talent, but hitting coach Michael Earley isn’t expecting anyone to replace the elite production from ASU’s former first baseman. In team meetings post the departure of the second-leading home run hitter in Sun Devil history, Earley said he didn’t sugarcoat what the loss means for the team.
“I told the guys, ‘look, anyone here who is trying to be Torkelson, you’re kind of chasing a ghost,’” Earley commented, with many believing Davis’ arrival from Auburn signals the Sun Devils replacement at first base. “What he did well was be yourself, and that’s what I told Conor early on. What he’s done well is not try to be anything but himself.”
Development plans like Earley and the Sun Devils had with Torkelson allowed for great success, something he and Greenspan said could separate them from their Pac-12 peers and national opponents in their quest to return to Omaha.
“You can sit down with a recruit and say, ‘what are you making your decision off of?’ And literally every player we recruit says ‘I want to go somewhere I can develop,” Greenspan noted. “Obviously, when you have someone like Tork who goes from undrafted to the first overall pick, I don’t know how you show development better than that.”
“Our formula really is we like to create our drills and things we do in the cage off of our game stuff,” said Earley, who coached an offense that scored 10-plus runs in five of 17 games in 2020. “Every guy has an individual routine. I’ve heard stories of schools where you come in and make everyone be the same. That’s not what we do. We let everyone be their own individual hitter, own individual work within our system, and I think it’s really helped.
“When you pair guys together who are similar… it’s proven that it’s worked. Guys like Spencer, and Hunter [Bishop], and Alika [Williams] and Trevor [Hauver], all four of those guys were different guys, and we allowed them to be different in their day-to-day work and preparation within a team setting.
Less power, more speed could be on tap in 2021
In all likelihood, the power displays put on at Phoenix Municipal Stadium won’t happen nearly as often in 2021 as in recent years. Rather, Arizona State coaches are expecting to need to manufacture runs at times through the use of small-ball and speed.
As another transfer addition, Joe Lampe – a redshirt freshman by way of Santa Rose Junior College – could be one of the keys to that style of baseball for the Sun Devils.
“He’s very, very fast,” Smith said of Lampe, who hit .424 and stole 17 bases in 20 games during his only year of JUCO baseball. “We like his versatility. He’s a left-handed bat and he puts pressure on the defense every single time he puts the ball in play.”
“He’s one of the fastest players I’ve ever seen on a baseball field,” Earley commented, comparing him to the notoriously speedy Billy Hamilton in Major League Baseball. “We’ve never had speed like that here. It’s elite top-end speed, and it really puts pressure on the defense. I mean, routine ground balls to second base, the umpire is gonna have to be ready to make a quick call.
“I think how the game plays out each day will determine how we play. We’re going to be super, ultra-aggressive. But, if it’s one of those days where we are popping some, we might revert back to being a little more conservative on the bases and letting our guys hit. When we need to force the action, we’ll be able to.”
