Things’ good-luck charm in Strecker
Courtesy of Washington Wild Things
Zach Strecker has been a rock solid closer for the Wild Things this season.
Zach Strecker has been a rock solid closer for the Wild Things so far this season.
Zach Strecker has been a rock solid closer for the Wild Things so far this season.
Zach Strecker has been a rock solid closer for the Wild Things so far this season.
When a relief pitcher, especially a team’s closer, gets credited with a win, it’s often the result of the pitcher failing to protect a lead and his teammates bailing him out in the next half-inning by pushing across the game-winning run.
The Wild Things haven’t had to worry much about their closer, Zach Strecker, squandering late-innings leads. Strecker, a former pitcher at the University of Kentucky, has been rock solid so far this season, converting five of six save opportunities.
It is, however, surprising that Strecker shares the Frontier League lead in wins. That’s right, a closer is tied for the league lead with five wins. When was the last time you had a relief pitcher leading a league in wins five weeks into a season?
That’s five wins and five saves among the Wild Things’ first 17 victories for Strecker, who was signed by Washington in the offseason after pitching one year in the Minnesota Twins’ system.
“He’s our horseshoe,” Wild Things manager Gregg Langbehn said. “Put him in the game and good things happen. Put him in when the score is tied or we’re losing, then we’ll come back and win.
“He’s done a nice job. He has the expectation that he will put up a zero each time he goes out there. He’s very dependable and durable. He can pitch more than one inning at a time.”
Strecker is not the typical one-inning-and-done closer. He’s a throwback to the 1970s, when closers would routinely pitch multiple innings. Strecker pitched four innings to get a win in Washington’s 9-8 11-inning victory May 28 over West Division-leading Florence.
For the season, the 6-5, 230-pound Strecker has a 5-1 record and 1.47 ERA in 16 outings. Those are good numbers for a guy from Louisville, Ky., who was not recruited out of high school and told by his coach that he might be able to play at the junior college or the non-scholarship NCAA Division III level.
“That was a humbling moment,” Strecker recalled. “I led my high school team in hitting and pitching in both my junior and senior seasons, but I was always hurting. I had a couple of nagging injuries and baseball just wasn’t fun anymore, but I knew I wanted to give it a shot in college.”
Strecker was determined he was going to play wherever he attended college, and he planned to play in the powerful Southeastern Conference at Kentucky, even if the coaching staff of the Wildcats didn’t know who he was.
“I was a huge UK fan and some of my friends from high school were going there,” Strecker explained. “I called the baseball office at UK about a week before classes started and asked if they had a walk-on tryout. The coach told me the time, date and said to bring a physical form. He said we’ll see you there and hung up on me. Click.”
However, it took only about as long as that phone call lasted for Strecker to impress the coaches at Kentucky. He threw one bullpen session in the walk-on tryout and was told that he had a spot on the team. It wouldn’t be the last time Strecker proved people wrong when he was told he wasn’t good enough.
He didn’t play in a game his first year at Kentucky, taking a redshirt season so that he could add 40 pounds to his 170-pound frame.
Over the next four years, Strecker worked his way into more meaningful roles while pitching out of the Wildcats’ bullpen and against some of the best college baseball teams in the country. He pitched in 81 games for Kentucky, winning six and earning six saves. Strecker’s ERA during his senior season was an impressive 1.84 over 22 games.
Those numbers didn’t impress many scouts. Again, Strecker was told he wasn’t good enough when all 40 rounds of baseball’s first-year player draft passed last spring without Strecker’s name being called.
“I didn’t talk to a scout all year,” Strecker said.
That didn’t deter him, and less than 10 minutes after the final pick in the draft was made, Strecker received a text message from a Kentucky coach. He asked Strecker, “Do you want to play professional baseball?”
Strecker quickly replied that he did want to continue playing, and the Twins called him less than 30 minutes later offering a spot on their rookie league team in Florida. He logged 33 innings in the Gulf Coast League and walked only eight batters in 33 innings, something of a rarity in that league.
However, Strecker was told one more time that baseball might not be in his future. During spring training this year, Strecker was released by the Twins. Being an undrafted free agent had caught up with him as Minnesota had more money and draft picks invested in too many more-experienced players.
“I thought I had a good spring and did all the things that I was supposed to do,” Strecker said. “I didn’t see (getting released) coming, but that’s the business, I guess.
“I’ve always sold myself as the darkhorse. I always fly under the radar. I always feel like I have something to prove to somebody. I’m not flashy. I just go out there and play.”
He might consider himself a darkhorse with something to prove, but Strecker is one with a lucky horseshoe.