Casey Mize Scouting Report | Midseason College Honors | Players/Pitchers of the Week

It’s a dream that has been shared by hundreds of Alabama schoolboys through the years, ever since they were old enough to put bat to ball and welcome ball to glove. Better make that thousands of boys. OK, maybe even tens of thousands.

This is the stuff that boyhood dreams are made of, and Casey Mize is in the middle of living out those dreams to their fullest.

The 6-foot-3, 220-pound junior right-handed Friday night ace on the Auburn Tigers’ baseball team who calls Springville, Ala., home, Mize has reached his personal pinnacle. He’s considered the top pitcher in all of college baseball this season and Perfect Game ranks the smart, personable and humble Alabamian as the top overall (college, juco, high school) prospect in June’s MLB Amateur Draft.

Although Auburn has hit a bit of a rough patch since the start of Southeastern Conference (SEC) play in mid-March, Mize is a big reason the No. 21 Tigers sit 23-11 overall and hold on to a spot in the PG College Top 25 National Rankings.

He shot out of the terminal like a runaway locomotive this season, compiling a 6-0 record with a 2.11 ERA and 77 strikeouts (against three walks) in 47 innings over his first seven starts. He pitched a 13-strikeout no-hitter against Northeastern on March 9, followed that up with a 13-strikeout performance against Texas A&M a week later and one week after that struck-out 12 Kentucky batters – 38 Ks in three successive SEC starts.

Arkansas handed him his first loss of the season last Friday night, a 2-1 setback in which he gave up the two runs while scattering seven hits with seven strikeouts and one walk. Mize is 6-1 with a 2.17 ERA and 77 strikeouts (four walks) in 54 innings heading into his scheduled start against Mississippi State Friday night in Auburn.

He feels like he’s been in a really good place both physically and mentally throughout the first half of this season and he has no reason to believe that will change with six more SEC series to play. He credits what he calls his “support staff” – the coaches, including strength and conditioning coach Brett Price and trainers – for helping him come into the season well-prepared. He also credits his teammates.

“They’ve all rallied around me,” Mize told PG over the phone this week. “They knew this was a big year for me, so they’ve been really great supporting me. They’ve been doing a really good job playing well when I’m out there pitching; they kind of always have my back.

“They’ve been swinging the bats well for me and they’ve been playing really good defense, so I’ve felt really good and really confident every time I’m out there.”

Auburn started the season with 15 straight wins and was 17-1 heading into league play but is 7-9 since (4-8 SEC). The early identity of the team was its offensive production but after averaging over nine runs per game in non-conference play, the Tigers are averaging just over three in league play.

“For whatever reason, since we’ve entered conference there’s been a slowdown with our offense,” Auburn third-year head coach Butch Thompson told PG, while recognizing his team started facing much better pitching once it began SEC play. “I think our pitching has continued to develop … and we feel like we’ve been in our ballgames, for the most part.”

The Tigers opened conference play with a 2-1 series win over West Division rival Texas A&M but then lost a pair series, 2-1, to Kentucky and Missouri from the East. The bottom fell out last weekend when they traveled to Fayetteville, Ark., to face West leader Arkansas, where they were swept 3-0. Mize suffered that 2-1 loss on Friday and they lost 5-4 on a walk-off on Sunday.

“That’s just how the league is,” Mize said. “The wins and losses are all by such a close margin that you really have to execute, and whoever executes the best is who is going to come out on top in the league. But we’re good mentally. We know we have a good team … and we just have to keep playing our game and keep trusting our approaches, and it’s going to fall our way soon enough.”

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ONE OF THE MOST AMAZING STATISTICS IN THE HISTORY OF MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL is one recorded by Hall-of-Famer Greg Maddux, the 6-foot, 195-pound right-hander who won 355 games in his career and four straight Cy Young Awards (1992-95).

It’s been documented that Maddux faced 20,421 batters during his brilliant career and only 310 saw a 3-0 count from him; 177 of those 3-0 counts were the product of an intentional walk. Do the math: Only 133 of the more than 20,000 batters Maddux was trying to get out ever reached a 3-0 count.

No one is saying that Casey Mize is the next Greg Maddux but based simply on strikeout-to-walk ratio – he leads the nation this year at 19.25 – certain comparisons are inevitable. Mize’s numbers speak for themselves:

He has thrown 54 innings in his eight starts this season and has struck out 77 batters and walked but four (he’s allowed 13 earned runs on 32 hits). Over 2½ seasons when he’s gone 16-8 with a 2.57 ERA, he’s accumulated 206 2/3 innings and has struck out 245 while walking just 31 would-be hitters.

“The separator for Casey is his command,” Thompson said. “It’s his commitment to command the ball and that’s what gives him the chance to be successful every time he walks out there. … I think it’s just another tool. People will say, ‘Well, this guy throws 97,’ and I think command is another tool that someone can possess, and Casey’s got it. …

“He learned as a freshman that he’s got to trust his stuff in the zone, and if he doesn’t – if he can’t get out in front or ahead in the count – it’s going to hurt him.”

Mize attributes his uncanny command of four pitches – his innate ability to nibble at the corners and keep would-be hitters off balance and at bay – to the mental approach he takes to pitching. He referenced to something Coach Thompson told him early in his Auburn career, and the competitor in Mize made sure he would never forget it.

“He told me, ‘Somebody is going to win every pitch,’” Mize remembered. “It’s simple, but that really makes me want to go out there and win every pitch that I can. When you’re trying to win every pitch, strikes stem from that so you need to make quality pitches, even if they’re balls.

“So, by trying to win every pitch, it helps me to try to stay in the strike zone and not get into hitters’ counts and stay in counts where I can avoid the walk.”

Both Mize and Coach Thompson give a lot of credit for Mize’s development to former Auburn ace Keegan Thompson, a third-round pick of the Chicago Cubs in last year’s MLB June Amateur Draft.

Keegan Thompson was Mize’s throwing partner and confidant throughout the 2017 season and was the guy who light the way with his Friday night performance before Mize would go to work on Saturday.

He was one of those team leaders who led by example and not necessarily with words, the guy who went out there and set the tone for the whole weekend. The other pitchers grabbed a front row seat and watched with a classroom intensity at the way Thompson would first size-up and then attack the opposing team’s lineup.

“The way he just went about his daily business was pretty awesome to see; he just came in and got his work done,” Mize said. “He was the guy who just kept his head down and worked hard, and I learned a lot from him on how to attack hitters, how to approach games, how to go about my daily life.

“So, I think Keegan definitely was a big factor in the success that I had last season and the success that we had as a team last year.”

Mize was listed at 6-foot-3 and a slender 175-pounds when he graduated from Springville (Ala.) High School in the spring of 2015. He posted a 19-2 record during his high school career.

He was rostered at 15 PG WWBA tournaments from 2012-14, all with teams from the Team Georgia Baseball Academy (TGBA) organization and earned all-tournament recognition at both the 2014 16u PG WWBA National Championship and at the PG WWBA National Qualifier.

In late October of 2014, Mize found himself in Jupiter, Fla., playing with Nelson Baseball/Team GA at the PG WWBA World Championship, the most heavily scouted 18u/17u amateur tournament in the world. His fastball sat 87-91 mph at the prestigious event – he had hit 92 mph earlier that summer – and also showed an 86-mph curveball, 76 mph slider and 81 mph changeup.

Those experiences at PG WWBA events with TGBA were invaluable to Mize, and he points to TGBA president and pitching coordinator Chris McRaney as another person who has impacted his career in a big way.

“(McRaney) providing me and our team with the opportunity to play in Perfect Game events was definitely helpful in getting out there and playing against that great competition and playing in that tournament in Jupiter,” Mize said. “Being down in Florida was really a cool experience, playing against some of the best players in the country, and playing in front of all those scouts was really pretty neat.”

Mize remembered that his start in Jupiter was against the Orlando Scorpions/Mets Scout Team, who in the fall of 2014 featured shortstop Brendan Rodgers, the No. 1-ranked national prospect in the class of 2015.

Hundreds of scouts turned out for the game to see Rodgers, and Mize enjoyed being able to share a little bit of that rather large spotlight, as well. Even bigger stages would soon open up to him at various venues sprinkled all across the SEC.

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ALTHOUGH HE SAT IN THE TOP-350 IN PG’S CLASS OF 2015 NATIONAL PROSPECT RANKINGS, Mize went undrafted out of high school. So, he packed up his gear and headed about 135 miles southeast from his Springville home to his new home in Auburn.

His arrival in the fall of 2015 actually preceded the arrival of head coach Butch Thompson, who took over in October of 2015 after former coach Sunny Golloway was dismissed.

Thompson spent three seasons at Auburn as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator from 2006-08 and the next seven seasons as the associate head coach and pitching coach at Mississippi State; he was named the National Assistant Coach of the Year by two separate outlets in 2014.

The first-year head coach didn’t hesitate when it came to enlisting the help of his freshman right-hander in the spring of 2016. Mize made 16 appearances (7 starts) during his rookie campaign and finished 2-5 with a team-best 3.52 ERA and a team-high 59 strikeouts in 69 innings.

The next season was even better. With quality outings in nine of his 12 starts, Mize finished 8-2 with a 2.04 ERA and 109 strikeouts in 83 2/3 innings. Those sterling numbers led to him being named a PG Third Team All-American in 2017 and a PG Preseason First Team All-American in 2018.

“It always starts with makeup,” Thompson said when asked what it is that sets Mize apart. “The pitching is so good in this league and to be the number-one – the Friday night guy – on any of the pitching staffs, you’ve got to possess a lot of skill.

“He has grown so much – become so much more strong-willed, strong-minded – from the time he was a freshman to where he stands today; it’s amazing.”

By his own count, Thompson coached seven pitchers over the last nine years that have gone to make their major league debuts, and in his mind, Mize doesn’t have to take a backseat to any of them.

“I think those guys could just watch a couple of innings of him pitching and see that,” Thompson said with a chuckle. “He’s throwing four pitches for a strike: it’s a 96-mph fastball, it’s a 91-mph cutter, it’s an 85-mph slider, it’s an 87-mph split-change that may be the best in college baseball. There’s nothing fluky about what he’s doing.”

While the circumstances that brought Butch Thompson back to Auburn were far less than ideal, Mize now believes it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. He said Thompson is among a small handful of people – he includes his parents in that group – who have had the most profound impact on his baseball career.

He’ll always be thankful and grateful for Thompson’s efforts in making him a better ballplayer. But it goes beyond baseball for Mize – Thompson has impacted him in other ways, as well.

“The great man that he is speaks for more than the pitching coach that he is and the head coach that he is,” Mize said. “He’s a tremendous pitching guy and a tremendous head coach but I think he’s even a better man, and that goes way farther than anything that happens on the baseball field. He sets the tone that just being a good person is going to pay dividends for you down the road.”

It is mind-blowing to consider how much Casey Mize’s life course has changed in the three years he’s been at Auburn. While he was regarded as a solid collegiate prospect coming out of high school, no major league organization took a flier on him in that 2015 June Amateur Draft.

He acknowledges that he wasn’t anything special – not one of the “top dogs” in his words – in the spring of 2015, so he set out to become someone special. He put in hours and hours of hard work but, most importantly, he surrounded himself with great people who had his best interests at heart.

“I’ve come a long way with a lot of help from others. I definitely can’t just sit here and say I did it by myself because I obviously didn’t,” Mize said. “I’m very thankful for the people that have invested in me and put time into me to try to get to this point.”

Mize spent his first two seasons at Auburn as the student, learning as much as could from the Thompsons – Butch and Keegan – and from anyone else who offered advice. This year he has become the teacher, leading by example while showing the team’s younger players the right way to conduct themselves and excel in their roles on the Tigers’ baseball team.

“I believe that iron sharpens iron. They have to figure a lot of this stuff out on their own and I think they learn the most from each other,” Coach Thompson said. “It’s valuable to have somebody like Casey going the first game (of a weekend series),” he said before adding with a laugh, “but what’s not valuable is that he can’t throw more than one game a week.”

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BUTCH THOMPSON HAS BEEN COACHING IN THE SEC FOR 17 CONSECUTIVE SEASONS and believes the league this season is the strongest that it’s been during his tenure. PG’s College Top 25 rankings seem to support that notion, with No. 1 Florida, No. 4 Mississippi, No. 6 Arkansas, No. 9 Kentucky, No. 15 Vanderbilt, No. 18 Texas A&M, No. 21 Auburn, No. 22 Louisiana State, No. 24 Missouri and No. 25 Georgia all finding seats at the big-boy table.

He had a good feeling about his third Auburn team coming into the season with six position players back who were starters in 2017 and six pitchers returning who combined for 22 of the Tigers’ 37 wins a year ago. But he also pointed out that this year’s player roster includes 17 newcomers, and he also has three new assistant coaches on his staff: Karl Nonemaker, Gabe Gross and Steve Smith.

While sophomore infielder Will Holland and junior infielder Brendan Venter lead the team in hitting heading into this weekend, and the junior Mize is the indisputable centerpiece of the pitching staff, Thompson is also quick to point out the contributions of three “dynamic” freshmen.

Canadian outfielder Edouard Julien and catcher Steven Williams are hitting .307 and .302, respectively, and have combined for 13 home runs and 58 RBI. Sunday starter Tanner Burns, another freshman, is 2-4 but boasts a 2.29 ERA and 42 strikeouts in 39 1/3 innings.

“From where we started, coming in at the end of October (2015) and having to go right into a season … in some ways we’re ahead of schedule. These players and their families and our fans have been unbelievable,” Thompson said. “These kids have been through so much and I want them to have success. … Every team goes through this, but your championship teams get through it and it makes them better. That’s what I’m interested in.”

Mize called his Auburn experience “incredible” while noting that he grew up an Auburn fan and that it had always been his dream to one day put on the Tigers’ uniform. Once he got on campus he found that the environment was even better than he had expected, with everyone in the Auburn family welcoming him with open arms. Everything, he said, had fallen his way over the last three years.

The journey has taken him from an undrafted 18-year-old in June 2015 to a prospect who will celebrate his 21^st birthday on May 1 as the guy Perfect Game is projecting to be the No. 1 overall selection in June’s MLB Amateur Draft. It truly is the stuff that boyhood dreams are made of.

“Being a professional baseball player has been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember,” Mize said. “I’ve always wanted to get that opportunity to play in the big leagues and to know that could possibly be pretty close for me is pretty cool to think about.”

Yet, he does his best to not think about it. He wants to stay in the present and give everything he has of himself to the Auburn Tigers. It’s a proud SEC program with a lot of history, but those same history books note that the Tigers haven’t been to an NCAA Super Regional since 1999; they haven’t been to the College World Series since 1997.

“What we have going on right now at Auburn is guaranteed,” Mize said. “I know (the draft) is only a few months away, but none of that is guaranteed. I’m just trying to enjoy what we’re doing here right now and keep trucking along and keep getting wins.”