Cam Schuelke has heard it all before.
He’s heard throwing from different arm slots wouldn’t be effective against top level college competition. He’s heard that throwing sidearm will lead to him blowing out his elbow. He’s certainly heard that he doesn’t throw hard enough to succeed in the strongest conference in college baseball.
It all serves as fuel for Schuelke, who is at his fourth school in as many years but is now a big part of Mississippi State’s bullpen. Opposing batters seldom know whether Schuelke’s next pitch will be thrown overhand, sidearm or submarine.
“The way I see it is, if you do it the right way with your technique, you’re not really putting more stress on your arm,” Schuelke said. “I can pitch pretty much every day. As long as you’re doing it right, it’s not bad for your arm. … Everybody that saw it was like, ‘Oh, it’s a gimmick, it’ll never work at the next level.’ College coaches said that. It always just pissed me off and gave me some pretty good motivation.”
A long and winding road
Schuelke has always been a natural sidearm pitcher, ever since he started playing in his hometown of Dorr, Mich., a short drive south from Grand Rapids. His father, Mike Schuelke, also threw sidearm in high school and encouraged Cam to become comfortable both sidearm and overhand.
He played shortstop in addition to pitching at Byron Center High School and had his heart set on remaining a two-way player in college, but most NCAA Division I schools wanted him to specialize. So Schuelke ended up taking a preferred walk-on offer at Florida Gulf Coast — the alma mater of Chris Sale, a 13-year Major League Baseball veteran who also throws from an unusually low arm slot.
Florida Gulf Coast proved to be a poor fit for Schuelke, though, and he decided to redshirt his freshman year before the season started and look for opportunities elsewhere. He returned to his home state that summer and turned in 53 excellent innings for the Traverse City Pit Spitters of the Northwoods League, pitching to a 0.68 ERA and a WHIP of 0.925 as both a starter and reliever and winning the league’s pitcher of the year award.
The Northwoods League is generally regarded as one of the top three college summer baseball leagues in the country and attracts plenty of scouts, so Schuelke’s performance there did not go unnoticed. His offers began pouring in, but he had already committed to Division II Northwood University in Midland, Mich. for his sophomore year.
“When that year got done, he was getting offers from Tennessee and other schools,” Mike Schuelke said. “And he realized, ‘I can’t do it. I already signed with Northwood.’ (His story) is really about grit, it’s about persistence, it’s about competitiveness.”
Schuelke’s year at Northwood was a mixed bag — he put up a 4.98 ERA in just under 60 innings, and quickly realized he was not meant to play in the cold weather he’d grown up with in Michigan. In order to avoid being forced to sit out a year for transferring a second time to another four-year school, Schuelke opted to go the junior college route for his third year, winding up at the College of Central Florida.
The summer before his year in Ocala, though, proved to be a big break for Schuelke. After spending 10 days with the Hyannis Harbor Hawks of the prestigious Cape Cod Baseball League without entering a game, Schuelke got a chance to return to the Cape at the end of the summer and pitch for the Cotuit Kettleers, and in just 11 appearances for Cotuit, he won the Cape League’s Russ Ford Outstanding Relief Pitcher Award.
Cotuit was the perfect landing spot because the Kettleers were managed by Mike Roberts, who has coached submarine pitchers for several decades. Seeing potential in Schuelke to add a third arm slot to his repertoire, Roberts worked with him on dropping all the way down and throwing below sidearm. In that partial summer in the Cape League, Schuelke was 5-0 with an ERA of 0.81.
“He’s probably the best natural athlete I’ve ever had pitch for me in all the years,” Roberts said. “He holds runners on better than any ‘subby’ I’ve ever had. He fields his position better than any ‘subby’ I’ve ever had. One of the wonderful things about Cam is he gives you the complete athlete on the mound, to be able to take care of all areas of the game and take care of it really well.”
That run of outstanding work continued at the College of Central Florida under head coach Marty Smith, where Schuelke compiled a 9-1 record and a 0.83 WHIP while holding opposing hitters to a .161 batting average. He also recorded eight saves as the Patriots won the NJCAA Division I national championship.
“Everything he did was for the team to win, not for himself,” Smith said. “He’s won a bunch of championships as a youth player, and that’s all he wants to do. It’s what he’s good at helping the team do.”
‘There’s no bigger stage’
Central Florida was the ideal springboard for Schuelke to return to the Division I ranks, and his recruitment blew up again when a video of him throwing from all three arm slots was reposted on Twitter by Stephen Schoch, a former University of Virginia pitcher who has accumulated a large social media following in the college baseball world. Schuelke visited MSU during a series against Arizona State last February and knew almost immediately that he had found his new home.
Schuelke and his father are big Michigan football fans, and he compared the Bulldogs fans’ passion for baseball to the way Wolverines fans care about football. Even with a bit of uncertainty at the time as to whether MSU would retain head coach Chris Lemonis after the 2023 season, Schuelke was sold on Starkville and the chance to pitch in front of the home fans at Dudy Noble Field.
“He goes, ‘Dad, you know how we and everybody feels about Michigan football? These people are that way about Mississippi State baseball,’” Mike Schuelke said. “If you can get it done here and be a star here, there’s no bigger stage.”
The Bulldogs did bring back Lemonis — which ensured Schuelke would honor his commitment — but did not retain pitching coach Scott Foxhall, who was let go late last season. Lemonis tapped South Carolina pitching coach Justin Parker to replace Foxhall, and while all of MSU’s pitchers had to adjust to Parker’s coaching methods, Parker also had to learn how to coach someone with as unique a pitching style as Schuelke.
While at Wright State University, Parker played with Joe Smith, who threw from an arm slot in between sidearm and submarine and went on to a 15-year MLB career. Coaching sidearm and submarine pitchers was relatively new to Parker, but Schuelke’s mix of arm slots allows the Bulldogs to use him more often than most of their other relievers, and Parker is certainly grateful for the flexibility that gives him.
“He’s been a guy that’s (pitched multiple days in a row) pretty much his whole career,” Parker said. “He comes to me every day and says, ‘I want the ball. I’m ready to go.’ It gives us a lot of flexibility where we can pick out spots in the order, whether it’s one guy or three or four guys, where we can highlight and say, ‘In this situation today, I know I’ve got Cam here.’”
The bright lights and multi-tiered stadium did not faze Schuelke in the slightest in his MSU debut, when he retired all six batters he faced over the final two innings of the Bulldogs’ Opening Day win over Air Force. But four days later, Schuelke closed out the eighth against Austin Peay before running into big trouble in the ninth, allowing four runs on four hits as MSU coughed up a late lead.
Since then, Schuelke has had more good outings than bad ones, which has led to him being a busy man since the Bulldogs started Southeastern Conference play. He pitched in all three games against LSU and made two appearances last weekend at Texas A&M, then was at his best in 3 ⅔ innings of scoreless relief on Tuesday to help MSU come from behind to beat Samford in extras.
“We’re at a high level now where you make one mistake and guys punish you for it,” Schuelke said. “The other day I threw a fastball down the middle to (LSU star) Tommy White and he took me deep. You can’t make mistakes like that. So the biggest thing for me is just limiting those mistakes, trying to get in counts that are ahead, put pressure on hitters and make the best pitches I can in certain scenarios.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 45 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
