I went down to venerable Rosenblatt Stadium last night, about 5 minutes from my Omaha house, for a Friday night game Missouri Valley game between Creighton and Northern Iowa. I’d marked the contest on my calendar at the beginning of the season so I could watch the Northern Iowa team play during their final season.
Few people realize that Creighton is actually the “Host” school for the College World Series and that they have scheduled 12 games at Rosenblatt this year. Attendance on a beautiful Friday night, with Nebraska playing host to Texas 50 miles down I-80, was 936. Not quite a CWS crowd, or the 6,000+ in Lincoln, but its always special at Rosenblatt.
Little did I know that I would see something that I have never seen in a baseball game before.
This is a topic that comes up with some frequency with baseball people, the concept of “have you ever seen that before?” I can’t remember the exact play but it happened this summer up in the tower in Marietta and when someone like Jerry Ford says “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before,” then it doesn’t happen much on a baseball field.
I’ll set the scenario here. Bottom of the third inning. 0-0 ballgame. Bases loaded for Creighton, one out. LF Nick Becker is on 3rd base, CF Robbie Knight is on 2nd base, SS Elliot Soto is on 1st base. Knight and Soto are perhaps the Blue Jays two fastest players and hit first and second in the line up. Creighton 1B Darrin Ruf is at the plate, LHP Nick Kirk on the mound for Northern Iowa.
Ruf, a right handed hitter, drove a Kirk fastball on the outside half of the plate hard and deep up the right centerfield gap. From my angle it looked there was no chance that Northern Iowa CF Deric Manrique could catch up to the ball. It must have looked different to Knight on second base, as he held back by the bag to tag up. Soto, on first base, shared my immediate read on the ball and took off right away.
The ball one hopped off the RCF fence and Manrique fielded it cleanly and got a strong thrown off to the relay man, who made an equally strong throw to catcher Jeff Taliaferro, who slapped the tag on Knight as he slid into home plate. Taliaferro held up the ball, as players are taught to do on such plays, the umpire raised his arm with an emphatic out call………just as Soto, who was flying about 20 feet behind Knight, slid into pileup at the plate. SAFE!
Now, many may remember the play in the big leagues a few years ago (I think it was the Yankees) where two players were tagged out at home plate on one play. I’ve also seen the same thing in the Dominican Summer League, of all places. But I’ve never seen a play at the plate where the first runner is OUT and the second runner is SAFE.
Charles Peterson, the area scout for the Major League Scouting Bureau, was sitting next to me and we looked at each other with the same quizzical look. We both said it at the same time….”Have you ever seen that happen before?”
Neither of us had. Peterson played 1,094 games in the minor leagues and now scouts full-time, so you can say that he’s seen a few ball games in his day. I don’t see as many as I’d like, but the games add up after 21 years in the business.
The game itself was very enjoyable. Creighton ended up winning 3-2 in a well played, well pitched game. Creighton and Northern Iowa are taking different paths this year, as Creighton got off to a slow start but has been playing very well lately and are now over .500 and leading the MVC. Northern Iowa, not surprisingly, has struggled more and more amidst the controversial last minute closing of the school’s 103 year baseball program.
From a prospect standpoint, the two main features were seniors Ruf and Kirk.
Ruf, the 2007 Missouri Valley Player of the Year, is a 6-4, 215 lb right handed hitting first baseman with a strong, athletic build. He’s an outstanding defensive first baseman who can positively impact a game from that position. The complaint from scouts about Ruf is that he has never shown the type of power you need from a first baseman. He showed a strong, level swing with very good bat speed last night but like most Creighton hitters, has an exaggerated “stay inside the ball” approach at the plate that makes it hard to show pull type power on a consistent basis. Ruf is hitting .311-6-32 on the season and should be a very good senior type pick, perhaps in the 8-12 round range.
Kirk has been on the scout’s radar since early in his Panther career. He’s a 6-1, 200 lb southpaw with a solid build and sound pitching mechanics. He has touched 91-92 mph in the past but pitched consistently at 87-88 mph this outing with good lefty running life away from the Blue Jay right handed hitters. His 79-82 mph slider was crisp and sharp at times and his 80 mph change up had some fade and deception. He fits into about the same high senior sign type area as Ruf does.
The two top underclassman on the field, in my opinion, were Creighton 3B Jimmy Swift and Northern Iowa SS Cory Ege, both sophomores. Both are rangy, projectable athletes, with Swift listed at 6-2, 190 and Ege at 6-3, 185. Swift shows good bat speed and a loose, aggressive swing that projects power (he’s hitting .339-3-23 this year) and is agile in the field with 50 arm strength.
Ede has very high level shortstop tools, with excellent actions and a 55/60 arm that he showed off making a sliding stop in the hole and easily hosing a runner at first base. While he can play shortstop at a very high level, his bat will be a big question mark. He’s hitting .296-0-9 this year, so he’s making contact, but he only has one extra base hit and it’s easy to see with his lack of strength and bat speed why that’s the case.
Ede, along with the majority of his teammates, will of course be playing at a different school next year.