STARKVILLE — Troy Buckley has had players like Konnor Pilkington before, and he knows exactly what to do with them.
Buckley has spent 15 years with the prestigious Long Beach State baseball program, briefly interrupted by two years as the Pittsburgh Pirates’ minor league pitching coordinator, and the last seven years as Long Beach State’s head coach. He served as the pitching coach for the USA Baseball Collegiate Team over the summer, where his and Pilkington’s paths crossed.
If Buckley’s exposure to top pitching prospects has taught him anything, it’s that a quality changeup can be a game-changer; Pilkington reported to Buckley and USA Baseball wanting to develop his changeup. The two were a perfect match.
Now that Pilkington is back with the Mississippi State baseball team for his junior season and second as the team’s top starting pitcher, he returns with a new weapon that could change his pitch sequencing entirely. MSU begins preseason practice Friday with its regular season debut and Pilkington’s first start coming at Southern Mississippi on Feb. 16.
“I will throw (the changeup) more. I throw it all the time, I throw it against hitters now,” Pilkington told The Dispatch. “I needed the confidence to throw it more. I really put forth the effort to throw it more, get more depth out of it, get more life out of it. Throwing it more is really going to help me.”
Pilkington had the changeup in his arsenal last season, but he didn’t use it very much because, as Buckley noticed, he didn’t need to. Pilkington’s fastball and curveball were good enough to get him through 108 innings with a 3.08 earned run average and a .199 batting average allowed; he ranked sixth, 14th and fifth in the Southeastern Conference, respectively.
As the changeup grew over the summer with Buckley and USA Baseball, Pilkington made four starts and five appearances to the tune of a .183 batting average allowed and one walk every 3.4 innings compared to one walk every 2.3 innings for MSU as a sophomore.
The newfound changeup will work particularly well in Pilkington’s arsenal given how he’s thrown in the past.
“He really likes to pitch with his fastball, which is fantastic. It’s the bread-and-butter quality of any good starter,” Buckley told The Dispatch. “An average changeup or a tick below average changeup, when you’re constantly throwing your fastball, is going to play above what you grade the pitch as.”
Especially when one dedicates as much to the changeup as Pilkington did over the summer.
“Konnor has a growth mind about him. He’s not afraid to listen and try something without completely being a skeptic; he was a great pupil,” Buckley said. “(He needed) the ability to trust (the changeup), have confidence in it, and that’s where his makeup and mind-set were so great. If he threw 10 of them and three of them got hit hard, it wasn’t like he was coming in saying, ‘We’re not going to throw that anymore.’
“His one goal was probably to use the changeup a little bit more. I think that is the one thing we did a lot because I think it was necessary for us to win and it was good for him long-term.”
By the end of the summer, Pilkington said he was able to throw his changeup on 2-1, 3-1 and 3-2 counts, situations where he was very likely to offer a fastball last year. Buckley told him increased changeup usage would change his game, and he can see how.
“At times it will, but it opens up a door,” Pilkington said. “At certain times, you won’t have your best stuff. It gives me a third opinion on how I can get people out.
“If I can get a fastball, curveball and changeup, it’s dominant.”
Pilkington called his summer with USA Baseball an, “exhilarating experience.” MSU coach Andy Cannizaro is equally excited to see the results.
As pleased as he must be that his two-pitch Friday night starter came back as a three-pitch guy, Cannizaro is excited to see how Pilkington’s summer changes his demeanor whenever he isn’t on the mound.
“I think the biggest thing that happens when guys go play for the USA Collegiate team is they surround themselves with the best players in the country every single day. It’s 20-plus guys that are serious about their careers, it’s 20-plus guys that are serious about winning every single day,” Cannizaro told The Dispatch.
“It’s not just an ability thing that happens — yes, you get better by pitching against Cuba and pitching against Japan in really big games — but it’s being around other great players that have those same goals as you. You have to figure out how hard you have to push yourself to be what you want to be.”
All it does is affirm Pilkington’s status as one of the top MLB Draft prospects for 2018.
Pilkington has already received three preseason All-America honors and many have placed him as one of the better prospects in the 2018 draft if he chose to enter it after his junior season; MLB.com’s Jim Callis once ranked him as a top 10 prospect.
After working with him for a summer, Buckley can see how he was ranked there.
“As far as the commitment to it and the gene, DNA aspect, he passes that by far,” Buckley told The Dispatch. “Makeup wise, I think he’s off the chart. His work ethic is solid.
“All of those external things and subjective things, if you will, are additives. Whatever the curveball grade may be from an organization, or the control grade or the fastball grade or whatever it may be, you add everything else about him to it and I think he’s definitely a first-round draft pick, no doubt.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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