McClanahan Wins 3 Wiffy Awards
Written by Josh Smith
Drew McClanahan. It's a name we heard all throughout the 2014 season. The Breaking Balls poured the foundation for their team in the Fall of 2013 but were only a good team, not quite a great team yet. During the following winter the quietly adjusted their roster and added a pitcher. That was all we knew. No one else knew that the pitcher they added had pitched at Concord University for 4 years. The team practiced weekly indoors at the Nitro High School gymnasium. During which time he learned to master the wiffle ball as a pitcher, something baseball players generally have difficulty in doing. But when spring training came around Drew was nowhere to be found but Ryan Pritt and Jeff Rider assured me that we'd be in for a treat once he attended. Finally the season began and Pritt shared the mound with McClanahan in the first game sharing a no-hitter. Then it was all McClanahan in the next game to which he threw a no-hitter on his own. It was there the chatter started that he would be unhittable and teams would have their hands full with the Breaking Balls throughout the season.
But I had yet to be convinced that this pitcher would rule the league. We had some great pitchers last year. Nick Kappra was nearly unhittable in the previous fall. Steven Adkins was a guy you could hardly get a bat around quick enough on. Josh Berletich had a strange combination of pitches but was always accurate enough to keep you guessing. Jeremy Ray was proving to be something special early on. So what made this Drew guy any different? As it turns out, a lot.
McClanahan pitched 96 innings and went 18-0 with a 0.26 ERA and 0.36 WHIP. Those numbers are crazy in any league, not just ours. Never has a pitcher dominated the league with such sheer force from the mound. He was a surging strikeout artist all season long but Steven Adkins looked to be the favorite for the 2014 Strikeout King for much of the season until he struggled with accuracy late in the season. Drew would eclipse Adkins late in the season and finish with 149 K's to Adkins' 132. McClanahan threw 3 no-hitters and 5 perfect games on the season. He only gave up 5 runs all season and walked only 20 batters.
As great as a pitcher McClanahan has been, a lesser discussed area of his success is the defense that backed him up. He didn't throw no-hitters all the time so having Rob Stewart and Ryan Pritt in the outfield making great plays certainly helped, especially when players were on base. The team also hit well and got on base considerably more than other teams. The team hit 30 home runs (Matt Gordon hit a third of those alone) and brought in the most RBIs (87) and walks (94 - Jeff Rider has 25 of them himself). The team as a whole played well on both sides of the ball and that enabled McClanahan to become a living legend in 2014. His name was known prior to our team entering the field in Columbus and everyone wanted to see HIM pitch. Unfortunately the weather and pitching distance change were barriers that McClanahan struggled with so the NWLA did not get to see the same McClanahan we all had come to know. It is for this reason that I think he did not win the National Pitcher of the Year award. That, and Stephen Farkas (WSEM) had a phenomenal year as well and led his team to a national championship. Farkas was the only pitcher in the NWLA that got more fanfare than McClanahan and all stats aside, Farkas is an amazing talent. One thing that Drew and Stepehen both share is that 2014 was their rookie season and they both changed their leagues forever.
Drew did not go unrecognized by the Wiffy Awards this year. He won National Rookie of the Year, South Rookie of the Year, and South Pitcher of the Year. He Ties James Clagg for most individual Wiffys received by an HWL player but I think we can all agree that we are all in McClanahan's shadow much more than we ever were in Clagg's. I also think it's worth mentioning that Brian Ball won the South Fielder of the Year Award and it's the first time we've ever had a player win in that category.
The bar is set pretty high for pitching going into the 2015 season. Let's hope McClanahan can take us to new heights next season and that some of us can put the bat on the ball a little more to make things more interesting.
