Day 1 Regional Recap | Regionals Preview
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The NCAA Division-I Regional Tournament being hosted by the University of Illinois this weekend could accurately be identified as the “Regional of the Closer” with three of the nation’s best waiting to be trotted out onto Illinois Field in a game’s late innings.
There is Ohio University senior right-hander Logan Cozart who won Mid-American Conference Pitcher of the Year honors after going 7-1 with 13 saves and 1.36 ERA in 30 appearances, striking out 79 in 66 2/3 innings of work.
There is Wright State University senior right-hander Andrew Elliott who was honored with his second straight Horizon League Relief Pitcher of the Year award following a season in which he went 5-4 with 11 saves while compiling a 2.44 ERA and 52 strikeouts in 44 1/3 innings.
They are two seniors, two elite pitchers deemed to be the best at their craft in their respective leagues this season and who were instrumental in leading their teams to conference tournament championships and NCAA D-I Regional Tournament berths.
Despite those accolades, however, neither Cozart nor Elliott is the best of the best here this weekend. That distinction belongs to the top-seeded Illinois Fighting Illini’s closer Tyler Jay, a 6-foot-1, 185-pound fire-balling left-hander out of Lemont, Ill., who was named the Big Ten’s Pitcher of the Year after a dominant season in the backend of the No. 3-ranked Illini’s bullpen.
Illinois earned the NCAA D-I Tournament’s No. 6 national seed after compiling a 47-8-1 overall record and winning the Big Ten regular-season championship with a 21-1 record (the Illini went 2-2 at the Big Ten tournament). It is back in a regional for the second time in three years but is hosting the event for the first time in school history.
“My freshman year we went to (Vanderbilt), and it was really cool just being there for the regional,” Jay told Perfect Game. “I’m just taking it in stride right now because having it here at home is just awesome.”
The Illini are the No. 1-seed in the four-team field; No. 2 Notre Dame beat No. 3 Wright State 13-7 in a wind-blown tournament-opener Friday afternoon. Illinois then took advantage of a gale-force wind blowing straight-out to centerfield to score eight runs in the first three innings before a storm blew through and the wind died down, and cruised to a 10-3 win over No. 4 Ohio in Friday’s nightcap. Jay was not needed as the Illini improved to 48-8-1.
Jay has been terrific all season, coming into the regional with a 5-1 record and 13 saves, and a 0.64 ERA in 56 1/3 innings of work in 28 appearances; he struck out 65 and walked but six. He was 1-3 with no saves and a 3.10 ERA in 18 appearances and 20 1/3 innings as a freshman in 2013 and improved to 4-1 with 10 saves and a 1.94 ERA in 23 appearances and 41 2/3 innings as junior last season; he struck out 47 and walked 13 in 2014.
“Besides gaining some (velocity) a little bit, I’ve just gained kind of a feel on how to pitch to certain guys in certain situations and that’s something that I really didn’t understand in high school,” Jay said of the improvement he’s shown over three seasons. “Being here and pitching over the years, you learn what works and what doesn’t; I think that’s been the biggest thing.”
Drew Dickinson in his fourth season as the Illini’s pitching coach and the staff ERA has gone down steadily in each of his four seasons. It was 4.77 with inherited pitchers during his first season in Champaign in 2012, dropped to 3.76 in 2013, 3.25 in 2014 and all the way to 2.46 in this record-breaking season of 2015. That number was the best in the Big Ten and ranked fourth nationally behind other top-eight national seeds UCLA (2.16), Texas Christian (2.33) and UC Santa Barbara (2.39).
The top juniors on this year’s staff – Jay, left-handed ace Kevin Duchene (10-1, 1.30 ERA), right-handed reliever Nick Blackburn (3-0, 3 SVs, 2.38 ERA) and lefty reliever J.D. Nielsen (2-1, 2 SVs, 2.96 ERA) – were all part of Dickinson’s first Illinois recruiting class.
“It’s been steady and it’s not like we’re a flash-in-the-pan this year by any means,” Dickinson said of the staff’s improvement over the last three seasons. “That’s why I try to tell people that these guys have been good since their freshmen seasons on, and they just continue to get better. … They’ve put the work in and they just kept maturing to the point that they feel like they can carry this club to wherever they want to go.”
Dickinson revealed that the staff calls itself “Death Row” with a group mentality of “Hit us; we’re going to keep coming right back at you.” The Fighting Illini pitchers excel because of their ability to pound the strike zone and continually attack the hitters in a fearless fashion.
Duchene improved to 11-1 in the win over Ohio Friday night. He pitched a complete-game seven-hitter and two of the three runs he allowed were scored in the game’s first two wind-blown innings; he stuck out one and walked three. In postgame comments, Duchene said he didn’t feel like the wind was a “great equalizer” in the game’s early innings.
“You know, I always think advantage Illinois,” he said. “We have the best hitters in the nation. When we play defense, you see what we are able to do. The wind is just another factor that kind of comes in, and it goes both ways. …I think It was more the mentality of the team to come out and really get this regional started off on the right foot.”
Dickinson is a former Illini pitcher who earned third-team all-American honors in both 2001 and 2002. He holds the Big Ten record for innings pitched in a conference season with 63 in 2002 and was a 28th-round pick of the Oakland Athletics in the 2002 June Amateur Draft. He reached the Double-A level in the A’s farm system before retiring in 2008 and returning to Champaign.
“I was a winner in college with below-average stuff,” Dickinson said. “I try to recruit guys who I think have above-average stuff and instill in them how I went about a baseball game: How do you compete; how do you attack hitters; what do you see in a hitter that he’ll show you what weakness to attack. That’s all in their mindset and I try to take that and instill it in all of my guys.”
The Illini completed the non-conference portion of their 2015 schedule 18-5, a stretch that included winning streaks of six and five games and a two-game losing streak after back-to-back losses to Ball State and Kent State on Feb. 28 and March 1. They won at Michigan State on March 28 to begin the Big Ten slate and then lost to the Spartans by a 5-2 count on March 29. They bounced back nicely with a 13-9 win over MSU the next day.
The snowball had been pushed off the top of the mountain and was starting to roll and pick-up steam. Twenty-six straight wins followed, including 19 in the Big Ten’s regular season and a win over Nebraska to open play at the Big Ten Tournament in Minneapolis.
Jay made 14 appearances during the 27-game winning streak, working 27 2/3 innings including four against Purdue on April 13 and season-high six against Penn State on April 25. He allowed one earned run during the streak (0.33 ERA) on 15 hits with 34 strikeouts and just three walks.
“To have 27 wins in a row is something that is just absolutely incredible,” Jay said. “It put us in the situation that we’re in right now with the (No. 6) national seed and it’s just been awesome fun. We’ve got a bunch of loose guys and this has just been a great time.”
But was there any time Jay and his teammates began to feel pressure under the weight of a 27-game streak during which the Illini climbed to No. 2 in Perfect Game’s National Top 25 Rankings?
“No, no, not at all,” he insisted. “It’s just that we have the kind of mentality that we’re expecting to win games. … We really did expect to be a national-level contending team going into this kind of season.”
PG ranked Jay as a “high follow” national prospect coming out of Lemont (Ill.) High School in 2012 and he went undrafted that spring. Because of this season’s results – his 0.62 WHIP ranks No. 1 in the country; his 0.64 ERA No. 2 and his 10.83 strikeout-to-walk ratio No. 3 – he is now viewed as a certain top-10 selection and there has been talk the Arizona Diamondbacks might take him No. 1 overall.
“I really, honestly don’t think much about (the draft), especially when I’m out here,” Jay said. “Once I get out on the field all I can think about is getting my stuff done; when it comes to playing I’m fine. Off the field, I really don’t have any problem dealing with it. I keep myself pretty busy and I stick to the same stuff I’ve been doing that got me to this point.”
When asked what Jay brings to the table each time he’s called upon, Dickinson smiled before answering, “A future Hall-of-Famer in the backend of the bullpen? Really, he’s Tyler Jay, and what can you say about his stuff that you wouldn’t say about a frontline big-league starter or reliever.”
Dickinson describes a mid-90s fastball that comes out of an easy arm, and it’s a fastball Jay is able to locate up and down, in and out. That, to Dickinson’s way of thinking, is what sets Jay apart from your typical, hard-throwing college pitcher, and he is able to hit his spots with four pitches.
“He can do it all and that’s what makes him such a valuable commodity and what makes us tick,” Dickinson said. “It makes the other guys tick, too, because they have this comfortable feeling knowing that if I can get through this inning, my boy behind us is going to pick me up and get us to the end, and as a pitcher, it’s easy to pitch that way.”
Jay is a beast when it comes to working out in the weight room, according to his pitching coach, so there is never any question about him being physically up to the grind. He takes care of his body and is always eager to learn as much about the game as he can and is always trying to get better, a trifecta that can only spell trouble with a capital “T” for opposing batters.
Dickinson also describes a young man – Jay is 21 years old – who has matured “big-time” since he arrived in Champaign. Jay was once the moody freshman, the kid who after a bad outing would get into the dugout or the clubhouse and sit alone with his back to the wall not speaking to anyone. He has grown into the type of competitor with a short memory who when bad stuff happens – not that it has this season – can quickly put it behind him.
“The great thing about baseball is you get to play the next day and he’s done a great job of understanding that, and that one bad day is just part of the game and you have to be able to come back and do a little work.”
Everything Jay has experienced at Illinois has helped with that process, as did his experience with the USA Baseball Collegiate National Team last summer. While the Illini continue a journey they hope comes to an end in Omaha at June’s College World Series, Jay can rest-assured his future is bright while never forgetting the rewards of the past.
”This has been even more than I expected,” he said of his college years. “And it’s not only here, it’s the experiences of summer (collegiate) ball and playing with USA Baseball and things like that, was something that I really didn’t expect to ever be a part of. So it’s been really cool, and just getting a lot of baseball knowledge from a bunch of people has just been awesome.”