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College  | Story  | 3/2/2020

Shriners Classic: Day 3 Notebook

Brian Sakowski     
Photo: Dane Acker (Joe Buvid/for Oklahoma Athletics)

Shriners Classic: Day 1 Notes | Day 2 Notes | College Player Database | College Player Rankings

Players covered: Dane Acker (Oklahoma), AJ Labas (LSU), Devin Fontenot (LSU), Coy Cobb (Texas), Kamron Fields (Texas), Kole Ramage (Arkansas), Elijah Trest (Arkansas).



Dane Acker, RHP, Oklahoma
So as to not bury the lede, but Oklahoma junior righthander Dane Acker tossed a no-hitter against LSU on Sunday morning of Day 3 at the Shriners College Classic in Houston. He took 118 pitches to finish the job, but did so emphatically, striking out 11 and allowing just one walk and a couple hit batsmen. Acker is a junior college transfer from San Jacinto JC, slotting on Sundays in Oklahoma's loaded weekend rotation, and obviously turned in quite a performance on Sunday afternoon.

Acker is an athletically-built righthander with an excellent physique, strong with a good amount of potential physical projection remaining. It's a pretty athletic and linear delivery, doing a nice job of finishing downhill over his front side and generating very good extension. He's athletic and repeats the delivery well, throwing a good amount of strikes, though the overall command of the arsenal was a bit shy of solid-average.

The stuff was very good, working 90-93 mph with his fastball and still grabbing 92 mph whenever he wanted it late into the game, even after 100 pitches. He generates steep plane to the plate, leveraging the ball downhill well and doing a nice job of working down in the zone consistently. The fastball is really tough to square up given the plane he creates, and he does a nice job of elevating at times as well. His primary off-speed pitch on this day was the curveball, thrown in the 77-81 mph range with 11-to-5 shape and good bite, operating mostly in the solid average range on the scouting scale and proving to be adept at both landing it for strikes and burying it for whiffs. He had some trouble getting the changeup down in the zone early on but eventually figured it out and got some empty swings with his, mostly vs. lefthanded hitters. It plays as a fringe average pitch in the 84-86 mph range. He also brought out a shorter, cut-slider pitch in the 86-87 mph range that he only threw a couple times, but it's a useful pitch given how well he tunnels it off of his fastball release even with the shorter break.

Acker obviously pitched quite well, mixing and matching three (and occasionally four) pitches to great effect. He got a lot of weak contact in addition to obviously missing quite a few bats en route to 11 strikeouts. The command was looser in the zone, and his pitch count ran up even with the aforementioned success with several three-ball counts, though LSU seemed over-eager at times and definitely bailed him out of some situations with early weak swings at times. This is a draft profile to be sure, a mid-round type of arm who has upside as a starter but could also fit well in the bullpen in certain situations. He currently slots in somewhere in the 5-7 round range for this year's draft.


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