Bazzana Comes From a Land Down Under. You Better Run, You Better Take Cover

Travis Bazzana, the no. 2 draft prospect on The Board in the intervening time, had an enormous day Sunday towards Oklahoma State. In 4 at-bats, the Oregon State second baseman hit 4 balls 108 mph or more durable, coming away with a double and two dwelling runs for his hassle. The primary of these dwelling runs was crushed so exhausting that the outfielders didn’t trouble chasing it — certainly one of baseball’s nice refined aesthetic signifiers. Greater than that, the DJ at Globe Life Subject was in a position to spin up the theme from The Pure earlier than the ball even landed:

And now Travis Bazzana will get in on the motion!https://t.co/a1pkN1nG65#GoBeavs pic.twitter.com/SOlYsavVyZ

— Oregon State Baseball (@BeaverBaseball) February 25, 2024

That’s how you recognize it’s gone.

Having watched a ton of Chase Utley as a younger man, I’ve a silly optimism over school second basemen with fast, compact hitting actions. After all, Utley is an inconceivable comp to drop on any prospect; along with being an MVP-level hitter, he was one of the best defensive second baseman of his technology and the most effective baserunners at any place in any technology. The latter two qualities Bazzana doesn’t possess.

However he can rake. In eight video games, six of them towards energy convention competitors, Bazzana is 14-for-32 with 5 dwelling runs and 5 walks. He’s scored in all eight video games. It’s fairly a begin, particularly as a result of the opposite school infielder at the moment within the combine for the highest decide within the draft, West Virginia’s JJ Wetherholt, is nursing a hamstring harm.

We’ve obtained a protracted option to go from now till the draft, and even longer till the 21-year-old Bazzana settles in as a serious league common, if that occurs in any respect. However I wished to take this chance to dive a little bit deeper into one thing I solely touched on in my school preview two weeks in the past. Bazzana is Australian, and he’s already the most effective place gamers his nation has ever produced.

As a lot as main school baseball is an efficient ol’ boys’ community, there may be the occasional interloper from abroad. For some time, I obtained Edouard Julien — then of Auburn, now of the Minnesota Twins—combined up with one other left-handed-hitting French-Canadian second baseman from the SEC, Kentucky’s Émilien Pitre. The Australian George Callil performed about 100 video games for South Carolina earlier this decade. Probably the most well-known Australian school participant might be Craig Shipley, who starred at Alabama within the Eighties and went on to play elements of 11 seasons within the majors as a utility infielder, largely with the San Diego Padres.

This shouldn’t be too shocking. Australia isn’t within the very high echelon of baseball nations with the U.S., Japan, the Dominican Republic, and so forth, but it surely’s very a lot a second-tier energy within the sport. Australia has figured in each World Baseball Basic; in 2023, the Aussies beat South Korea en path to their first-ever berth within the knockout levels of the match. Australia additionally gained the silver medal in baseball on the 2004 Olympics.

Sadly, baseball doesn’t precisely comply with the multi-sport custom of giving every Australian nationwide staff an cute, normally marsupial-based nickname. On Wikipedia’s record of 88 such nicknames, the nationwide baseball staff is listed because the Southern Thunder. Exterior corroboration for this moniker is (places on thick Australian accent) sparse. Furthermore, Southern Thunder is merely a much less evocative model of the Thunder From Down Beneath, a nickname at the moment occupied by an all-male cabaret dance troupe. Given a pair extra years, Nike and Fanatics may carry baseball to that time finally, however we aren’t there but.

However again to the unique level: There’s no scarcity of Australian gamers within the majors. Or a minimum of that’s what you’d assume. Grant Balfour was a extremely good reliever. So was Graeme Lloyd. Damian Moss had one actually good yr again within the day. Between Peter Moylan, Ryan Rowland-Smith, and the one time Liam Hendriks spent a complete inning swearing right into a sizzling mic, there’s a proud historical past of Australian pitchers changing into high quality broadcasters as effectively.

However these are all pitchers. And imagine it or not, in keeping with Baseball Reference, there have solely been 34 Australian-born main leaguers ever, relationship again to Nineteenth-century infielder Joe Quinn. From Quinn’s debut in 1884, he was the one Australian to play within the majors till Shipley got here alongside 102 years later.

The SABR bio for Quinn tells fairly a narrative. His dad and mom had been Irish refugees who each traveled to New South Wales, the place they met, within the mid-1850s. They married, had their first baby in 1857, had been displaced by a flood and moved 600 miles to Queensland in 1860. Child Joe was born in 1862, and when work dried up, the household moved again all the way down to Sydney and finally to Dubuque, Iowa, in 1873. So within the span of about 20 years, these two got here means nearer to circumnavigating the globe than Magellan ever did.

Quinn discovered to play baseball as an adolescent in Iowa, and finally performed on each one of the best and worst groups in main league historical past in his 17-year profession. However he didn’t hit a lot. Nor did Shipley. Of the six Australian place gamers since Shipley to register a minimum of 80 profession plate appearances, a 3rd of them have hit price a rattling, and a 3rd of them have been named Trent. There is no such thing as a overlap between the 2 classes:

The jury continues to be out on Mead, who’s 23, held his personal in his first (albeit extraordinarily restricted) confrontation towards main league pitching, and simply obtained ranked at no. 31 on the worldwide High 100 Prospects record.

However with simply 24 main league video games on his CV, Mead has a methods to go earlier than he catches Nilsson for the title of greatest Australian place participant ever. Nilsson had a strong eight-year profession behind the plate, in addition to at first base and within the outfield corners, for the Brewers within the Nineties. Nilsson’s last season was amongst his greatest: He made the All-Star staff and hit .309/.400/.554 in 115 video games. Even within the Nineties, that was a 137 wRC+, and he made 91 begins at catcher that yr.

If something, Nilsson’s profession is extra spectacular than it seems, as a result of he was finished within the majors after that exceptional 1999 marketing campaign. Nilsson is Mr. Australia Baseball — on the finish of his taking part in profession, he spent tens of millions of {dollars} of his personal cash making an attempt to construct up the Australian Baseball League right into a sustainable skilled group. After retirement, he managed in Australia, and is at the moment the supervisor of the (coughs into hand) Southern Thunder.

Nilsson wished badly to compete within the 2000 Summer season Olympics, which had been held in Sydney, a lot in order that he left the Brewers for a quick and unsuccessful spell in NPB. MLB sat out the Olympics and despatched solely minor leaguers, however the Chunichi Dragons promised to launch Nilsson at some point of the match. Australia completed seventh of their dwelling Olympics, and whereas Nilsson was nonetheless round for the silver medal marketing campaign in Athens 4 years later, he by no means made it again to the majors.

There’s one thing extremely romantic and endearing about placing one’s skilled profession on maintain so as to chase nationwide staff glory — I stored ready for star hockey gamers to bail on the NHL for a yr when the league wasn’t sending its gamers to the Olympics, but it surely by no means occurred. However whereas Nilsson in all probability misplaced a couple of WAR off his profession complete by chasing an Olympic medal, he’s nonetheless by far one of the best Australian place participant ever.

A top-five draft place would set Bazzana as much as a minimum of problem Nilsson for that distinction. And it invitations the query: Why are many of the greatest Australian ballplayers not simply pitchers, however aid pitchers?

The identical cause many of the world’s marsupial species reside in Australia and I’m in all probability by no means going to see Ball Park Music reside: Australia’s actually distant.

I’m not going to behave prefer it’s straightforward to be a aid pitcher, but it surely’s not as advanced an artwork as taking part in a area place, and even beginning. It’s actually not as developmentally reliant on getting taking part in time towards equally expert opponents — you possibly can arrange a radar gun and cameras in a warehouse and get many of the option to skilled competency as a one-inning fastball/slider man. That’s as true in Wollongong as it’s in Washington State.

Till just lately, if an Australian place participant wished to face off towards high-level novice or minor league competitors from a top-tier baseball energy, that meant a 5,000-mile flight to Korea or Japan, or a 7,500-mile flight (if no more) to the continental U.S. And American scouts and school coaches don’t have the sources to scour the Antipodes for the following large factor.

However because the revitalization of the ABL as a winter league that mixes Australian gamers with gamers from the North American minors, the cultural trade between the U.S. and Australia has grown stronger. Mead was a semi-regular within the ABL at 17. Bazzana really performed within the ABL beginning at age 16, on a Sydney Blue Sox staff that featured three former or future main leaguers. That’s the way you get examined towards high-level competitors, develop to the purpose the place you’re able to beginning on a nationwide championship contender as a freshman, and get seen by the appropriate folks.

As streaming media and pitch monitoring expertise put extra data in additional palms than ever, I’d anticipate the baseball world to proceed to shrink. And whereas Australia is so distant we nonetheless gained’t get to see Gang of Youths tour North America each summer time, I’d wager that we gained’t wait as lengthy for the following Bazzana as we did for the following Nilsson.