Aspen Wesley had a big problem with her changeup — one that could prove quite costly if it persisted into her fifth and final season at Mississippi State.
Other teams could pick up on it easily and knew when it was coming. In other words, Wesley was tipping the pitch, a potentially fatal flaw for someone who has been a big part of the Bulldogs’ pitching staff ever since she arrived in Starkville.
So after she decided to return for her extra year of eligibility granted to all student-athletes affected by COVID-19, Wesley approached MSU’s newly-hired pitching coach, Taryne Mowatt-McKinney. A two-time NCAA champion at Arizona who also played six years of professional softball, Mowatt-McKinney always had an excellent changeup, and she had just the solution for Wesley.
Mowatt-McKinney suggested that Wesley make a slight change in the way she gripped her changeup, and Wesley noticed the difference immediately.
“It just totally fixed everything,” Wesley said. “I even went back home, I watched videos of (Mowatt-McKinney) and how she threw her changeup. She threw it so gracefully and with everything she had to make it look like it was a hard pitch instead of a slow pitch. Watching her and seeing how she did it, I tried to kind of mimic her.”
It wasn’t a major change regarding the ball positioning in Wesley’s hand, but she now throws her changeup with a more similar grip to her other pitches. Wesley said Madisyn Kennedy, who has been the Bulldogs’ best hitter this year, would always hit her changeup in practice. But Kennedy missed much of the fall while recovering from surgery and would watch practice from behind home plate, and said she could no longer pick out Wesley’s new changeup.
Wesley’s work with Mowatt-McKinney has paid off. The right-hander’s ERA hovered around 4 the last three years, but it sits at 2.96 through 47 ⅓ innings this season entering Friday. Her crowning achievement so far was a no-hitter on Mar. 9 against rival Ole Miss, one of three no-no’s MSU has thrown this season. Sophomore Josey Marron and fifth-year Matalasi Faapito each no-hit IUPUI in five innings during the opening weekend in Starkville.
“They’ve been pretty fearless when they go out there,” Mowatt-McKinney said. “No matter who we’re playing, they’re attacking the zone, they’re mixing speeds and they’re competing. That’s the biggest thing. Even if they don’t have their best stuff that day, they’re competing for the team to get outs. They’re finding a way.”
Dominant on the biggest stage
Mowatt-McKinney grew up in Southern California, home to perhaps the greatest collection of youth softball talent in the United States, and joined the perennial powerhouse Arizona program in 2004 under longtime head coach Mike Candrea.
After teaming with Alicia Holowell to form one of the best pitching staffs in the country for the 2006 national champion Wildcats, Mowatt-McKinney pitched 370 innings as a junior in 2007 and threw three no-hitters. She followed that up by throwing four shutouts at that year’s Women’s College World Series and was named Most Outstanding Player of the tournament as Arizona won it all again.
“They’re some of my core memories,” Mowatt-McKinney said. “I loved my college career, I loved my time with my teammates and my friends, and being able to win two national championships and also going all four years to the World Series was a great experience and one that I’ll never forget.”
Mowatt-McKinney may not have been as tall or imposing as some of the other top pitchers of her era, like Cat Osterman and Monica Abbott, but she relied on her pitch mix and excellent command to reach the top of her sport. She was taken sixth overall in the 2008 National Pro Fastpitch draft by the Washington Glory and played for five teams over a six-year pro career.
Because opportunities to play professional softball are limited even for the very best players, Mowatt-McKinney chose the broadcasting route, interning at a news station in Tucson to supplement her income. But her younger sister had committed to play at California Baptist, a Division II program at the time, and came to her with an intriguing offer.
“Do you want to be my college coach?”
“Absolutely not. That sounds terrible,” Mowatt-McKinney responded.
“Can you just go in for an interview?” her sister asked.
Mowatt-McKinney had an open schedule at the time, so she agreed to interview for an assistant coaching job and quickly found a passion for coaching pitchers.
“The head coach at the time, he said the word ‘salary,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, what’s that?’” Mowatt-McKinney said. “My first year, there were two pitchers and they were both seniors. Talking through pitching and teaching them just a couple different things, their eyes opened wide. They were like, ‘I hadn’t heard that before,’ and they were in their last season. That really ignited the fire in me, and I’ve loved it ever since.”
Back to the summit
Following three seasons at Cal Baptist, Mowatt-McKinney spent three more years as the pitching coach at Ole Miss, so she was familiar with both the Southeastern Conference and the state of Mississippi before taking the job with the Bulldogs. In between, she returned to her alma mater for a six-year stint as Arizona’s pitching coach, helping the Wildcats reach the WCWS in 2019, 2021 and 2022.
Arizona booked the last of those World Series trips at Nusz Park, beating MSU in a two-game Super Regional series behind strong pitching from Devyn Netz and Hannah Bowen. It was the Wildcats’ first season after Candrea’s retirement from coaching, with Mowatt-McKinney’s former teammate Caitlin Lowe now leading the program.
“That was really special, being a part of Coach Candrea’s last years coaching and helping get him back to the World Series where he deserved to be,” Mowatt-McKinney said. “Really happy that he saw me as a grown-up and mature enough to come back and lead the pitchers, because as a player, I probably wasn’t as mature and he knew me as a player.”
As happy as Mowatt-McKinney was at Arizona, she lived a little bit farther from campus than she would have liked. She also had her first child during the season and found it difficult to find babysitters, contributing to her decision to leave the Wildcats’ staff after Arizona missed the NCAA Tournament in 2023 for the first time since Candrea’s first season in 1986.
When MSU head coach Samantha Ricketts found out Mowatt-McKinney was available, she knew she only had one call to make after Josh Johnson left to become the pitching coach at Virginia Tech.
“She brings a little bit of an edge that’s great for our pitching staff,” Ricketts said before the start of the season. “She’s played and coached at the World Series, and that’s the goal and that’s what we’re working for. It’s been really fun to watch particularly our upperclassmen like Aspen Wesley learn from her.”
A quick transformation
The Bulldogs were coming off a disappointing 2023 season in which they missed the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2016 and had to watch all 12 other SEC programs compete in the postseason. That didn’t stop Wesley and Marron, who were part of the interview process for Mowatt-McKinney, from expressing their confidence that MSU could make a run at the WCWS the very next year.
“From the get-go, we could tell she had that competitive spirit and was going to push us to places that we hadn’t been pushed yet to get the most out of us,” Marron said.
Pitcher defense was an emphasis in the fall — the Bulldogs’ pitchers were used to throwing only to first base during PFP drills, but Mowatt-McKinney kept them on the field until they had practiced throwing to all four bases.
Mowatt-McKinney said MSU’s position players have also approached her regarding the pitchers’ perspective on things like pitch selection and sequencing during a plate appearance. Whether that understanding has helped or not, the Bulldogs entered Friday second in the SEC as a team in on-base percentage and runs scored and third in batting average.
Marron led MSU with a 2.38 ERA as a freshman last year and has equaled that mark through 53 innings this season.
“She’s good about making sure we use our body efficiently when we’re pitching and get the most out of every pitch while also putting the least amount of strain on our body,” Marron said. “She didn’t come in trying to change and start from scratch. She was really good about finding our strengths and recognizing our strengths and making sure we recognized our strengths, and building off of that and working from there.”
With a deep staff that also includes three newcomers — UCLA transfer Lexi Sosa and freshmen Delainey Everett and Hosanna Lindblade — Mowatt-McKinney has six arms to keep track of, and she has emphasized mental skills as much as anything else. Sosa did not pitch last season with the Bruins and threw just 5 ⅔ innings in 2022, but has a sparkling 1.27 ERA through 27 ⅔ frames this year after the change of scenery.
“Yes, these are your set of tools, but how do you apply your tools to get hitters out?” Mowatt-McKinney said. “Because the name of the game is getting hitters out. We’ve done a really good job in the bullpen of working with each other and teaching each other what that looks like.”
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