Dream Weaver Show Likely to Produce Sequel
by David Morse, USA Today
April 21, 2004 LONG BEACH, Calif. — Jered Weaver, Long Beach State's undefeated right-hander, perhaps the best amateur pitcher in the country and possibly the first pick in baseball's June draft, puts on quite a show before he even steps onto the mound.
Jered Weaver, pitching against Cal State-Northridge, has 118 strikeouts in 11 starts, all victories. His stats are similar to those of USC's Mark Prior in 2001.
Each inning, after he takes his warm-up throws, he steps behind the hill, touches his toes, stretches out his right leg, then his left, shakes out his long, slender right arm, making it look like a strand of cooked spaghetti, then bends over behind the rubber and carves the initials "EHH" into the dirt, in honor of his deceased grandparents.
Then he carves up the opposition, winning every game, striking out everybody.
Well, not everybody. But he did strike out the first 10 he faced against Southern California on Feb. 13.
"I've never seen that in all my days, and I'm not sure I will again," Long Beach State coach Mike Weathers said afterward.
Three weeks later, he did, as Weaver struck out the first 10 against Brigham Young.
"I don't care if you're playing high school, Little League or video games, that's incredible," 49ers pitching coach Troy Buckley says.
What did Weaver think of the accomplishment?
"Definitely cool," he says.
Jered Weaver's top 5 starts
The Weaver show is indeed cool and eminently watchable, especially for his parents, Dave and Gail Weaver, who make the dreaded two-hour commute from their Simi Valley home down the clogged 405 freeway to Long Beach for every 49ers home game.
They haven't attended every game together. April 2, Weaver's mom went by herself to watch her younger son pitch at Cal State-Fullerton. His dad, gratefully, made the shorter commute to Dodger Stadium to watch their older son, Jeff, who happened to be the starting pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers in an exhibition game against the Anaheim Angels.
The elder son got hit hard, taking a no-decision in a 6-4 loss.
The younger son, as usual, won.
Weaver, after baffling UC Irvine on Friday night in a four-hit, 12-strikeout, 3-0 shutout, has won all 11 of his starts this season and has a 1.00 ERA.
For that and other reasons, he is the odds-on favorite to become the No. 1 overall selection by the San Diego Padres in the June draft.
The Weavers, a sports-crazy suburban family accustomed to heading in different directions for various baseball, basketball and soccer games, have hit the jackpot — one major leaguer, another on the way.
"It's been very exciting," says Weaver's dad, a retired electrical contractor.
"It's a little unbelievable," says his mom, who works at a middle school cafeteria.
Her assessment certainly fits Weaver's junior and, presumably, last college season. It's a little unbelievable. More like a dream, which, not surprisingly, is Weaver's nickname.
Dream Weaver.
The lanky, athletic 21-year-old is 6-7, 205. His list of accomplishments in this season alone make him as can't-miss as a college pitcher can get.
His stats are astounding, similar to what another big right-hander, Mark Prior, did at Southern California in his junior season in 2001, when he was 15-1 with a 1.69 ERA. That June, Prior was picked No. 2 overall by the Chicago Cubs; last year, he was 18-6 for the Cubs and finished third in the National League Cy Young Award voting.
• Weaver, heading into his next start Friday against Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, has struck out 118 hitters and walked just 11 in 80 2/3 innings, a 10.7-to-1 strikeouts-to-walks ratio. Prior's was 11.2-to-1.
• Weaver's opponents are batting .146 against him. Prior's opponents hit .201.
• Weaver has won Collegiate Baseball national pitcher of the week honors five times, a record two more times than Prior won the award in 2001.
Weaver hasn't thrown a no-hitter, but a lot of his starts have strayed toward perfection. After a six-inning, two-hit outing against Wichita State in which Weaver recorded 16 of his 18 outs by strikeout, Wichita State coach Gene Stephenson said Weaver was the most dominant pitcher his teams had faced in 27 years.
Awesome in every sense
The Padres, holding the top pick, are on record as basically loving everything about Weaver, who is expected to be represented in contract negotiations by high-powered baseball agent Scott Boras.
That the Padres just opened a cavernous ballpark — pitcher-friendly Petco Park — certainly won't hurt Weaver's chances of being the top pick. Nor will it that Padres general manager Kevin Towers saw him strike out 15 UCLA batters in an eight-inning, one-hit effort during a tournament hosted by San Diego State at Petco in March.
Jered Weaver says he and brother Jeff, a starting pitcher with the Los Angeles Dodgers, "talk almost every day on the phone."
Weaver is eager to play pro ball, having gotten a taste of The Show the past two summers in extended visits to his brother in Detroit and New York. Jeff, 27, a former first-round pick out of Fresno State, split the 2002 season between Detroit and New York, then pitched all of 2003 for the Yankees.
"It was awesome, getting to hang out in the clubhouse and stuff like that," Weaver says of the major league visits.
"Watching batting practice, just hanging out. It's just unbelievable there in New York.
"It's awesome hanging out with a big leaguer, getting to see that lifestyle."
The past couple of years, and especially since the elder Weaver was traded to the Dodgers, the brothers have become much closer. Each tries to attend the other's games as much as possible.
"Now that we're both baseball players and that's what we really want to do, it's been awesome," Weaver says. "We talk almost every day on the phone."
Their mom says her sons give each other pointers, and Jeff certainly isn't against taking advice from his younger brother, whose best pitch is a fastball thrown between 89 and 94 mph. Jeff concedes what everybody else says, that Jered is much further along at this stage than Jeff was in terms of his repertoire of pitches and his mental approach.
"I don't know what can stop him," Jeff says. "The sky's the limit."
But Weaver is clinging to his final months in the college game, trying — successfully, he says — to put thoughts of the draft and pro ball on hold.
"I'm here to do a job and that's to pitch for Long Beach State," he says. "Whatever happens down the road, happens. Right now, I'm just trying to do a job here."
He has done that, becoming a leading candidate for the Roger Clemens Award honoring the nation's best college pitcher and for Baseball America's College Player of the Year.
His teammates are no slouches, either. The 49ers are 26-9, ranked No. 5 in the Sports Weekly/ESPN poll and have the kind of pitching and hitting depth and tight defense that could land them in the College World Series in Omaha in June.
Living the California dream
Weaver, in some ways, is a fairly typical Southern California guy. He grew up playing sports and getting rides to the beach to go boogie boarding. He wears his blond hair long and shaggy, like his brother, and speaks fluent Californian, beginning sentences with "It's awesome.. ." and ending them with "stuff like that."
Which seems fitting, for a pitcher with awesome stuff.
He displayed it most recently Friday before a spirited, near-capacity crowd of 2,706 at Long Beach's tidy little Blair Field, against another Top-10 team, UC Irvine, and another undefeated pitcher, right-hander Brett Smith, also a pro prospect.
With his parents, Boras and Padres scouting director Bill "Chief" Gayton watching, Weaver threw a shutout, his first complete game of the season, facing just three batters over the minimum, needing just 107 pitches, 77 for strikes. He retired 15 batters in a row, striking out seven of 11 in that stretch.
Then he stood at the top of the dugout for interview after interview, maybe 20 or 30 "awesomes" thrown in altogether.
"Let's go, Dream," Weathers, the coach, called. "Let's not stay out here all night."
Later still, Weaver signed autograph after autograph for the Long Beach faithful.
Watching from a distance, Weathers' impatience melted and the coach smiled.
"Look at that guy," he said. "He's unbelievable." |
