STARKVILLE — Ron Pilkington and his wife Mitzi had taken Konnor — their brand new baby boy, their first child — from his birthplace in Pascagoula to Seattle, where Konnor would spend the first year plus of his life. Konnor was still in the first year of his life in a Seattle town home when Ron casually rolled a baseball across the floor.
“He took off after it. And he was real little, months old,” Ron Pilkington said. “It was weird.”
Konnor Pilkington’s life since then has been further evidence of a baseball natural.
Mississippi State has been the most recent benefactor of Pilkington’s excellence, an era that may come to an end soon. Whether MSU’s (31-25) season ends in this weekend’s Tallahassee Regional or later, Major League Baseball franchises with high opinions of him could select him high enough to send him immediately to the minor leagues, an outcome that seems more likely than not. Pilkington is likely to start MSU’s first game of the regional, 11 a.m. Friday (ESPNU) against Oklahoma (36-23).
Pilkington’s path to being one of the Southeastern Conference’s best was a simple one, fitting for a simple person.
“Get him talking about hunting and fishing and it’s on,” Ron Pilkington told The Dispatch.
From as early as Ron Pilkington can remember, Konnor’s interests have been simple: baseball, hunting and fishing. Ron remembered when the family moved back to Mississippi in 2005 — after a stint in Sacramento, where both of Konnor’s sisters were born — a neighbor having a pond nearby. All Konnor wanted to do was take a pole next door and fish, all summer. Hunting trips with his uncles, Ron’s brothers, facilitated Konnor’s love of that activity around the same time.
Nothing outside of that has captured Konnor’s interest, not even the millennial tendency of posting on social media about his interests. He is not particularly active on Twitter and his Instagram account follows similar patters, the latter branded with a fitting bio: “Mississippi State Baseball. USA Baseball. Avid Hunter.”
“I’ve always been a more laid-back guy, social media doesn’t matter to me. I’ve always not cared so much about my phone; if I could go back I’d have a flip phone,” Konnor Pilkington told The Dispatch. “I’ve got acres here, my girlfriend has acres there. I like to be out in the hills, pastures, woods, all that stuff.
“I just play baseball, I love baseball.”
That was evident from the beginning.
Barring the one chase of a rolling baseball in Seattle, Konnor Pilkington was too young to show signs of what was to come there: his family moved to the Sacramento, California, area before Konnor was old enough to play baseball. Konnor’s first Little League days came in California, where the consensus on Konnor was: “This kid’s special.”
Ron Pilkington told The Dispatch of a strategy that had come to be a popular in one in that league: hit everything down the third base line, given the kids of that age were mostly unable to throw hard and accurately enough to cross the diamond in time to record an out. That didn’t work with Konnor at third base.
It wasn’t long after that, when the family moved back to south Mississippi, that Ron was in Australia for a couple of months while Konnor had baseball tryouts. Mitzi called Ron after tryouts to tell him everyone in the league was fighting over getting Konnor on their team.
“He was throwing a no-hitter one time when he was 10 and I felt so terrible for the other kids I pulled him,” Ron Pilkington said.
Konnor’s dominance may not have stayed as exaggerated as he has climbed the ranks of baseball, but it has not disappeared. He enters the Tallahassee Regional with a 3.34 career earned run average over 239 2/3 innings with a walks and hits allowed per innings (WHIP) of 1.201 — and that comes with a junior season that has been a struggle, relative to his standard. His final two starts of April and first two starts of May saw Pilkington’s ERA for the season rise from 2.57 to 4.31 as MSU interim coach Gary Henderson saw a player struggling with rhythm.
Pilkington saw a different culprit and is confident he has found a fix. His last two outings could be the proof, as he allowed five earned runs over 11 innings, both starts coming on short rest against NCAA tournament teams.
“In the beginning, it was more like a mechanical issue, but I started to find things out in my bullpens and in my everyday catch,” Konnor Pilkington said. “The last couple of outings have really proved to myself that I can do it.
“I wasn’t using my lower half as much. I’ve really incorporated that over the last couple of weeks and went from there.”
In that respect, once again, Konnor Pilkington is the natural prospect with untapped potential there for the taking. Whether Pilkington goes forward as a Bulldog or as a minor league player, Henderson sees great things ahead for his ace.
“He’s not a dominant secondary pitch guy in this part of his life or development. Those pitches are going to continue to get better into his mid- and late-20s,” Henderson said, “there’s no doubt about that.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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