Northern Kentucky's Griffin Doersching hits 20 homers in finals to win College Home Run Derby
Griffin Doersching had competed in home run derbies before, but never won.
By News Channel NebraskaGriffin Doersching had competed in home run derbies before, but never won.
The Northern Kentucky slugger made sure his first victory was one he wouldn’t forget.
“This is the coolest thing I’ve ever done,” Doersching said after winning the College Home Run Derby at TD Ameritrade Park on Saturday night. “I was talking to (fellow competitor) T.J. Collett (of Kentucky) earlier. He said every college baseball team dreams of getting to Omaha and us six, we’re in Omaha. We’re here in the park. It’s something you hold high in your heart. It’s every kid’s dream.”
Doersching defeated Tyler Keenan of Mississippi 20-15 in the final round, thanks to a strong finishing kick.
Players had four minutes each round to hit as many homers as they could. They also had a 30-second timeout within those four minutes, and Doersching took his with 1:40 left. He went on a tear after his timeout, hitting 14 homers in the final 100 seconds.
“One of the guys told me to take my hat off to switch it up. Then I started rolling, so we could say it was the hat. But in reality, I realized I’d come so far and I had to get it done,” said Doersching, who led Northern Kentucky in homers and RBIs this spring.
The 6-foot-4, 250-pound Doersching was hitting prestigious shots to close out the win. He hit homers of 446, 461, 442, 437 and 442 after the timeout, some clearing the concourse in left field.
Doersching said he has hit a home run 465 feet during a game.
“If I swing hard and run into it, it will go a little ways,” he said with a smile.
Doersching also handled the heat and humidity all night as he led after each round. It was still in the low 90s when the derby ended after 9 p.m.
“I got off to a good start in my last round, but I just died after that,” said Keenan, who hit 11 of his 15 homers in the 2½ minutes. “Hats off to Griffin. That’s impressive.”
Doersching, who plays during the summer in Minnesota’s Northwoods League, made sure he stayed hydrated during his stay in Omaha.
“I just drank unbelievable amounts of water last night,” he said. “I mean, I went to bed full.”
Keenan reached the final by winning a second-round tiebreaker over Duke switch-hitter Mike Rothenberg. The tiebreaker was most homers hit in the second round — Keenan hit 13, Rothenberg 12.
But it was Doersching’s night, and he becomes the latest player from a non-Power Five conference to win the event. Before Doersching, the most recent four derby winners had been from Air Force, Morehead State, East Tennessee State and North Dakota.
Final round: Doersching (N. Kentucky) 20, Keenan (Mississippi) 15. Second round: Doersching 31, Keenan 25, Rothenberg (Duke) 25, Collett (Kentucky) 16. First round: Doersching 15, Rothenberg 13, Keenan 12, Collett 9, Selma (California) 8, Lanzilli (Wake Forest) 6.
Home Run Derby calls for strategy: Conserve energy during 'exhausting' four minutes of swinging
T.J. Collett is making up for lost time this summer.
The University of Kentucky slugger was supposed to play in the Cape Cod League last year, but hip surgery kept him sidelined. Now he’s playing in the prestigious wood-bat league and has hit a team-best three homers in 13 games for the Brewster Whitecaps.
“I honestly really enjoy swinging those wood bats,” Collett said. “Ever since I was 14, 15 years old, I really liked the sound of it and it feels better. Obviously metal (bats) hit it a lot further, but there’s something about wood bats that makes it sound more like baseball.”
But Collett will be leaving those bats in the rack this weekend.
“I’m using the exact opposite of wood bats on Saturday,” he said.
Collett is one of six players who will compete in the 10th annual College Home Run Derby, which begins at 7 p.m. Saturday at TD Ameritrade Park. It will be aired on ESPN2.
Collett, who has hit 10 home runs each of the last two seasons for Kentucky, is capable of hitting homers in bunches. He hit homers in back-to-back innings for Brewster, and last season for the Wildcats, he hit three homers in three games during a tournament played at Houston’s Minute Maid Park. One of those homers landed in the upper deck.
Collett, who coming out of high school was selected in the 40th round of the 2016 MLB draft, has competed in home run derbies twice before. One was at the Cincinnati Reds’ Great American Ball Park. For this event, though, he reached out for some advice.
“I asked my old teammate, Tristan Pompey, and he said the two things (you need to do) were to breathe and soak it all in, have fun,” said Collett of Pompey, who represented Kentucky in the 2017 derby. “He said I won’t have to swing my hardest to hit a home run, so if you can swing a little softer, you can conserve some energy.
“Four minutes of swinging over and over and over, it’s exhausting.”
Collett is going to have his father, John, as his pitcher for the event.
“I couldn’t pass up the opportunity,” Collett said. “He’s thrown batting practice to me my whole life.”
Also in the field will be Mississippi’s Tyler Keenan, Wake Forest’s Chris Lanzilli, Duke’s Michael Rothenberg, California’s Quentin Selma and Northern Kentucky’s Griffin Doersching.
A record 190 home runs were hit by the six competitors during last year’s derby as Air Force’s Nic Ready edged Clemson’s Logan Davidson 21-20 in the final round. All six of last year’s competitors were selected in this month’s MLB draft, including four in the first eight rounds. Davidson was the 29th overall pick by Oakland.
New Hall of Famers Eddie Bane, Huston Street are connected by more than CWS pitching performances
Three decades separate the major league pitching careers of Eddie Bane and Huston Street.
But they do have a connection with one of the biggest stars in the game today, Mike Trout.
Bane was scouting director for the Angels when the franchise signed the two-time MVP and eight-time All-Star. Street, a closer for the Angels as recently as 2016, said Trout is the best player he played with — and Street also was a teammate of players such as Frank Thomas, Albert Pujols and Todd Helton.
“My boss, Dave Dombrowski, introduced me once as the guy who signed Mike Trout,” said Bane, who has been special assistant for player personnel for the Red Sox since 2012. “I said, wait, I signed a lot of other guys, too. But I thought if that’s what I did, that’s pretty good.”
Bane and Street now have another link. They were the 2019 inductees into the Omaha College Baseball Hall of Fame. Bane and Street were honored during Saturday night’s College Home Run Derby.
They were dominant on the College World Series mound in different eras.
Bane pitched for Arizona State from 1971 to 1973, compiling a 40-4 record with a 1.64 ERA. When ASU made the CWS in 1972 and ’73, Bane made three starts and finished with two complete-game shutouts. His shutout in 1973 came against Dave Winfield’s Minnesota squad. Bane is one of three players in CWS history to throw multiple shutouts.
Bane said he had a great curveball in college, but he couldn’t control that in the majors. His pitching career in the majors was brief — he finished with a 7-13 record in 44 appearances — but he’s had a long career in baseball. He spent 11 years as a scout for the Dodgers before working for the Angels and Red Sox.
Street said he didn’t initially expect to compete in sports in college — he thought he’d go to Texas to become a lawyer. But he ended up on the Longhorns’ baseball team and, as a true freshman in 2002, became a dominant closer.
Street is the CWS career leader in saves with five, setting the single-series record with four when Texas won the 2002 national title. He was named the Most Outstanding Player of that series, and then he pitched at the CWS when the Longhorns returned in 2003 and 2004. Overall at the CWS, he had a 1.62 ERA.
“One of the coolest memories is my first appearance, warming up in the bullpen and the realization that you’re going to pitch in the College World Series,” Street said. “You grow up, you watch all these names and these faces and see those blue (outfield) walls. ... I was a huge college baseball fan.”
Street became a three-time All-American before enjoying a lengthy career in the majors. In 13 MLB seasons, he finished with 324 career saves while pitching for the A’s, Rockies, Padres and Angels. He had at least 33 saves in a season for each of his four teams.
He announced his retirement last March. Does he miss it?
“All the time,” Street said. “I don’t miss the lifestyle, I miss the games. I don’t miss the work, I don’t miss the pain.”