Doing A-UK

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, May 18, 2006

Ryan Strieby could always hit.

Even as a young boy, he had that indefinable “it” that the good hitters seem born with.

“From the time he was nine,” his father said, “you knew he could take baseball as far as he wanted.”

He has taken it through the youth leagues, he has taken it through high school, he has taken it through three years of college.

Now he would like to take it to the professional level, and if the pro scouts have been watching closely – and they have, rest assured – he will have that opportunity when the major league draft is held next month.

One American League scout said his organization has the big first baseman being taken between the 11th and 15th rounds. “His bat is his tool,” the scout said. “He’ll get drafted because of his bat.”

His college coach would like to hang onto him for another year but understands the lure of the pros.

“Tell you one thing,” said John Cohen, head man at the University of Kentucky, “if I was a scout, I’d do whatever I could to get him into my organization.”

All Cohen had to do to get Strieby, whose hometown is Brier, was come and watch him play a game for Edmonds Community College last year. Of course, he had to fly halfway across the country to do it, which certainly made an impression.

“That really sold me when he came out to see him,” said Ken Strieby, Ryan’s dad. “He wanted to come to the house and sell his pitch to Kentucky.”

He came, he sold and the Striebys bought.

Ryan liked the idea of playing for an up-and-coming program in what is arguably the best baseball conference in the land, the Southeastern Conference. “He’s facing guys on weekends who are going to pitch in the big leagues,” Cohen said in a telephone interview last week.

So how has Strieby handled the jump from community college baseball in the Northwest to NCAA Division I baseball in the South? Extremely well, thank you.

In a 7-2 victory over Belmont on Monday, he hit a grand slam home run – the fourth straight game in which he had homered. That gave him 74 runs batted in, breaking the single-season record for the Wildcats and putting him No. 1 in the SEC.

But if you think that’s impressive, get a load of what else he’s done in the SEC. He also was leading in four other offensive categories going into a game against Georgia on Thursday: doubles (20), slugging percentage (.729), on-base percentage (.476) and total bases (145). And he was tied for second in home runs (18). While his batting average wasn’t among the top 10, it was still a healthy .347.

All of which should make him a strong candidate for SEC Player of the Year. Not only that, he’s on the watch list for two national player of the year awards.

“It’s kind of a dream come true so far, what I’ve done and what the team has done,” Strieby said by phone last week. “It can’t get much better than what we’re doing.”

What the Wildcats have done is go from worst to first in the SEC, from 7-22 in league play a year ago to an Eastern Division title this season, with a shot at winning their first conference championship outright this week. Winners of nine straight games and 16 of 17 overall, the Wildcats vaulted from No. 7 to No. 4 in the national rankings this week.

And Strieby, the 20-year-old player out of Mountlake Terrace High School, has played a major role in the Wildcats’ success.

“The first time I saw him at Edmonds, I felt he was a special player,” Cohen said. “Thank goodness he showed up here. He’s been a difference maker.”

Everywhere he goes, it seems, they say that. Playing for the Kirkland Kodiaks in a collegiate league last summer, Strieby whacked 10 home runs in 30 games, convincing his coach that he was a game-changer.

“Without him in the lineup, it was a completely different situation,” said Levi Lacey, who is also the head coach at Everett Community College. “He could change the outcome with one swing.”

So how did Lacey’s EvCC team pitch the right-handed power hitter when he was at Edmonds CC? Very carefully.

“When we faced him, all we really could do was stay on the outside half of the plate,” Lacey said. “He did a good job of handling that but not with as much power. He hit doubles instead of bombs.”

What Strieby has accomplished this year hasn’t surprised his old community college coach one bit. “I thought he was the best right-handed hitter in the state last year,” said Tighe Dickinson, now the pitching coach for the University of Washington.

Strieby’s old high school coach, however, didn’t anticipate the kinds of numbers he’s produced.

“I wouldn’t have guessed (that he’d have this kind of year),” said Andrew Watters, “although I’ve known since he left high school that he had some special gifts.”

One such gift allowed Strieby to hit balls off a batting tee over the left-field fence in his home park. “I don’t know that I’ve ever had a kid with as much natural power as he had,” Watters said.

That power began to manifest itself when he learned to pull the ball in community college, where he hit seven home runs a year ago. His best power, Dickinson said, is still to center field.

For a young player with power, he has remarkable patience at the plate, with more walks (38) than strikeouts (34). Study the statistics of minor league players, and you’ll find that many of them don’t like to take pitches. They’ll flail away at anything close to the plate.

Sometimes, his dad said, Ryan has too much patience. Ken spent a month watching the Wildcats this spring and in one game couldn’t believe that his son didn’t swing on a 2-0 count. “What are you doing watching that?” he later asked him. “That’s a hitter’s pitch.”

It just wasn’t this hitter’s pitch.

Cohen, one of the most respected hitting coaches in college baseball, wants his players to “control the strike zone,” Strieby said. “He wants us to get good advantage counts so we can get good pitches.”

Strieby has taken more than a few bad pitches – in the ribs, in the hips, in the legs, in the arms. He leads the team in being hit by pitches (14). “I don’t know what it is,” he said. “I don’t stand close to the plate. Most of the time it’s an offspeed pitch and they just lose control of it.”

As successful as the Kentucky baseball team has been this spring, the most popular sport on campus is still men’s basketball. The Wildcat hoopsters sell out Rupp Arena every game whether they’re ranked or unranked, so that’s where the baseball players went to distribute flyers promoting their program last winter.

“Kentucky baseball has never had a lot of fan support,” Strieby said, “although our last three home series we averaged 2,000 fans a game.”

Multiply that number by four and you have the crowd he played in front of at Arkansas this spring. “The coolest atmosphere I’ve ever played in,” he said.

Cooler still, of course, would be someplace like Safeco Field. “That would definitely be cool,” he said, adding that he’s always been a Mariner fan and that Ken Griffey Jr. was his favorite player.

Besides his hitting, Strieby has also had an excellent season with his glove, committing just two errors.

“He’s a fundamentally sound defensive player,” Lacey said. “His stock does not drop at all on the defensive end.”

Projecting where a player will be drafted is always guesswork. One scout says one thing, another scout says another.

So Strieby will wait and see.

His coach, of course, would like to have him return next year. “He’s still figuring out this league,” Cohen said. “He could come back and have a monster year.”

What, pray tell, is the year he’s having?