College Sports

Ben Tootle already is a household name in Ohio Valley Conference baseball circles. Now, he's a buzzword in New England.

A scout or agent doesn't talk with front-office personnel for the Falmouth Commodores of the Cape Cod Baseball League these days without injecting Tootle, the Jacksonville State and former Oxford pitcher, early into the conversation.

But that's to be expected when you're throwing in the high 90s and threatening 100 as regularly as Tootle has this summer, in one of the premier collegiate summer leagues in the country.

"He's one of the buzzwords in the Cape right now," Falmouth field manager Jeff Trundy said. "When scouts talk to me, he's the first words out of their mouth."

Super agent Scott Boras supposedly is sending a vice president from his group to talk with the right-hander, who right now is projected to go in the first three rounds of 2009 MLB draft as a junior.

"He's the talk of the Cape so far," Commodores general manager Dan Dunn said. "All the other agents want him, all the scouts want to know when he's pitching. For the most part, he's throwing strikes, throwing 96-97, what more do you need?"

Tootle says all this outside attention is a new experience for him. While it could make a player's head swim, Tootle says he tries to keep himself grounded by following a simple philosophy: "I basically try to ignore it all and play baseball."

The Gamecocks' ace never had a big arm when he pitched in high school, but he regularly hit the gun last spring in the low 90s and has hit even higher than that in his role as the Commodores' late-inning reliever/closer. It's a role he found difficult adjusting to at first, but has embraced it to the point now of saying he doesn't know which he enjoys more, starting or relieving.

When he hit 96 for the first time as a freshman, he couldn't believe his eyes. "I thought the gun was messing up," he said. Now he's around it all the time. He credits the sudden increase in velocity to the long-toss and conditioning program coach Jim Case has him on at JSU.

"He's not living at 96-97 — he's touched 96-97 — more around 94," Trundy said. "He did touch 97 more than once; 100 could easily be in there. Part of the reason for the boost in his velocity is we're using him at the end when I think he can cut it loose a little bit, not to say he held it back in the spring."

Quite the contrary; Tootle gave OVC hitters fits this spring. He was 10-2 with a 3.67 ERA for the Gamecocks, winning his last eight decisions, and is 16-5 in two seasons at the school.

Through his first seven appearances on the Cape, basically pitching an inning every other day, he was 1-1 with one save and an 0.77 ERA; he got his first win Wednesday night. He has struck out 15 in 11 2/3 innings and given up only two hits.

"The thing that's impressive," Trundy said, "is when he touches 97 or whatever it might be, it's pretty easy. It's not a max effort. He's got the high leg kick, which adds to his being tough to hit, but at the same time the arm works really easy."

Which means 100 might not be that far away.

"I definitely want to do it; that would be awesome," Tootle sad. "A goal of mine is to be able to hit 100. Last year I wouldn't have even thought it. If someone said in two years I'd hit 100, I would've told them they're crazy if I hit 96.

"It's definitely a goal of mine to get it up that high, but at the same time I don't want to throw it and not know where it's going. If I can throw 100, great; if I can throw 100 and be able to locate it, that's 10 times better."

The Gamecocks have had players involved in summer ball for years — they have three on the roster of the East Alabama Big Train of the Great South League and Freshman All-American Todd Cunningham is hitting .320 in the Texas Collegiate League — but Tootle is the first JSU player the Commodores ever had.

He was brought to their attention by a couple of former pitching coaches turned scouts, one of whom is friends with JSU assistant Travis Janssen.

He's turned out to be quite a find.

"I don't think Ben was off the radar, because if he was, nobody would've told me about him," Trundy said. "Every summer there's a couple guys who come up here who are on the radar but not high profile ... I don't think he was a kid who was as high a profile as some who first came to this league. As he goes about his business like he did his first couple outings, certainly he's going to be a kid who leaves the Cape as a high-profile kid."

As for what happens next, for the time being Tootle will leave that for someone else consider.

"The way I'm going right now, I don't want any distractions, really," he said. "I might sit down at the end of the summer, but I'm not thinking about that right now. I'll worry about that later if it comes hopefully."