From Denver to punch

 

DENVER – Most in Colorado will remember WBC World Champion Stevie Johnston, who rode a southpaw hook to a decorated career in boxing. But a new punch-out artist from Denver with a left-handed hook of his own is taking the sporting world by storm. David Peterson, ace of the Oregon Ducks, is college baseball’s premier strikeout southpaw, and his rise to the top has been quicker than his 94 mph fastball.

The 6-6, 235-pound Golden Spikes Award semifinalist, given annually to baseball’s top amateur player, has used that hook, a jabbing changeup, crossing slider and the uppercut fastball to ‘punch-out the world.’

His most notable outing was a 20-strikeout game—a team record for the Ducks in a single contest let alone for an individual—against Arizona State, which was the apex of the ascension that made this Regis Jesuit alum a potential first round pick in the 2017 MLB Draft.

Peterson popped onto the radar of those tracking the draft around that performance in April because of stellar command, boasting a 140-15 strikeout to walk ratio this season.

But his climb into the first round should come as no surprise to anyone.

Foal

While Peterson’s arsenal of weapons compare to a boxer’s, his body type has been likened to a dragster. Yet it’s horse racing where Baseball America’s 2016 West Coast League top prospect has found a second family.

David was born to parents Doug and Shannon, and grew up in Southern California for the first decade of his life. His dad, Doug, was a fabled figure in horse racing circles, most notably for training Seattle Slew the year after the horse’s legendary 1977 Triple Crown victory.

In 2004, at just 53-years-old, Doug passed away in a hotel next to the Hollywood Park Track in what was determined to be an accidental overdose.

The news was not only about the ending of his father’s life but it took away Peterson’s easiest connection to the horse racing world, one he still keeps in touch with a decade later.

That community has always supported David and his father who bought and wore matching suits to big races, but it’s on the mound where he’s always been most at home.

Upon finding out his father had passed, the kid still put on his baseball duds and headed to the park because he was pitching that evening.

He threw a no-hitter.

“The father-son thing you can’t really get with anyone else,” Peterson said on the phone. “The loss of my dad was definitely huge on me and it kind of fuels me because I know he’s looking down and watching me every day.”

Obviously, he was looking down on David that day.

“Along with making the rest of my family proud, I kind of feel like it’s my duty to live my life the right way and make him proud. If he were here, for him to be as proud as he could of me.”

“My dad dying kind of turned my world upside down and it kind of crushed me — not kind of, it did crush me,” he said sadly.

He hopes to achieve his lifelong dream of playing in the big leagues in order to live up to the vast promise his dad will never get to see him fulfill.

Pony

The more you talk to Peterson and the people around him, the more you catch that’s he’s connected to the royalty of baseball in Colorado. At Regis alone he rubbed arms with Ty Blach, Chris O’Dowd, Cole Norton, Connor McKay, Peter Bayer, Andrew Schmidt, Max George, Brent Schwarz, Matthew Schmidt, Quin Cotton and Brody and Bo Weiss, all of whom have drafted by big league clubs.

Those last two names should ring a bell; they’re former Rockies shortstop and manager Walt Weiss’ sons.

Weiss, who famously went from managing a high school team to managing the Colorado Rockies, managed Peterson’s freshman year squad with all those big names on it. Under Weiss’ tutelage, Peterson would earn the first of three All-City first-team honors courtesy of the Aurora Sentinel.

During his junior year, Peterson went 6-3 with a 3.26 ERA and helped the Raiders to the semifinals of the Class 5A state baseball championship series, which put him on the map as one of MLB’s top 100 prospects heading into his senior year and the 2014 MLB Draft.

As a senior, he compiled 40 strikeouts in 44 innings pitched. Peterson was captain of the team and finished the season 3-0 on the mound with a 1.15 ERA, holding opponents to a ridiculous .180 batting average.

The dominance he displayed over his first three years at Regis earned him high marks but his senior year caused him to take a dramatic tumble on draft day.

Peterson fell to the Boston Red Sox in round No. 28 (854 overall.)

So what happened that Peterson’s numbers improved his senior year but he fell astronomically in the draft?

“It was funny, it’s something we don’t talk about,” Peterson’s trainer Nick Vinson at Elite Speed in Denver said. “I had asked him, ‘Dave you’re a preseason All-American and you could be the best pitcher in the state of Colorado. Please do not play basketball. Just for this season. You’re going into an MLB Draft year, do not play basketball. Please just don’t.’ And I remember getting the text from him one night and it said, ‘dude you’re going to be upset. I broke my leg playing basketball.'”

The high school All-American broke his right fibula trying for an uncontested layup in a pickup hoops contest. He underwent surgery and missed most of his senior season.

“I was upset but we moved on and he got better. It helped him refocus on the things he needed to do to get better,” Vinson said.

“It was really tough, it kind of turned my world upside down too,” Peterson said. “It was something I had to go through and just be patient with while trying to get myself back on the mound as quickly as I could.”

The broken leg plummeted his draft stock from high pick to afterthought. He ended up going to college instead of signing with Boston.

Colt

It’s very likely the only reason Oregon got Peterson was because his accident with his landing leg. George Horton, in his ninth season as Oregon’s head coach and the man who led the resurrection of a program that went 27 seasons without a varsity team has had an impact on Peterson for longer than just his collegiate seasons.

“I had some other offers but I went there for a visit and kind of had that feeling that was the place I needed to be,” he said. “When I grew up in L.A., the dream for me was to go to Cal-State Fullerton and play for coach Horton. It ended up working out for me to play for him at Oregon. It was something I had always wanted to do.”

Horton coached the Titans to a 490–212–1 over his 11 seasons in Fullerton, including a National Title and six College World Series appearances.

“David Peterson came out when I was in school on his recruiting trip,” current Colorado Rockies starter and then-Oregon Duck Tyler Anderson said. “My roommate and I kinda hosted him and showed him around and convinced him that Oregon was the place to go. I’m sure glad and I’m sure the Ducks are glad that it worked out that way because man that guy is phenomenal.”

Peterson’s 20 strikeouts broke Anderson’s Oregon record of 17 for an individual in a game. He’s also taken down some of the other marks Anderson established in Eugene.

“I talked to him (Anderson) my freshman year at the alumni game,” Peterson said. “As another lefty pitcher, he kind of introduced himself. I obviously have a connection with the Rockies for being back there, being on the scout team and whatnot. He and I kind of talk whenever he is up here. Like if I see him do really well, I send him a message or something and say good job. So we kind of talk here and there but nothing super close.”

The lefty pitching for the Rockies has a slick 4.34 ERA in 30 big league starts and it’s easy for Peterson to measure himself to the bar Anderson set at Oregon.

But at Oregon Peterson has struggled at times.

In his first two seasons he walked 61 batters in 27 starts, the complete opposite of what he’s known for now.

“He’d carve people up for four innings and in the fifth he’d blow up,” Horton told OregonLive.com in May. “Younger David would try to throw harder or to snap that breaking ball harder and it would open up the floodgates.”

“It was a definitely a huge thing for me,” Peterson said. “I think that’s the area that I needed to get better at most and I think when you limit free bases and you don’t give teams anything, it’s harder for them to get runs and obviously make them get hits off of you. That’s when you kind of get to be able to use your stuff.”

Even with some command issues Peterson, along with Matt Krook and Cole Irvin—each drafted in the top 140 selections in 2016—led Oregon to a 38–25 record and a fourth straight NCAA Regional in 2016.

With Krook and Irvin gone, Peterson was relied upon to lead the Ducks in 2017. They had their worst Pac-12 finish since 2011, but it most certainly wasn’t the fault of Oregon’s ace.

Stud

“It’s a lot of everything coming together at the right time,” Vinson said. “I like to say some of my athletes are like a house of cards. You put one card on top of another and eventually you get to this point where it’s like there, there it is, that’s what I want it to look like. It’s surprisingly strong and can hold a lot of weight, I see Dave right now as my house of cards. He’s in a great spot, he’s strong, healthy and he knows what to do.”

Peterson had a ridiculous year.

He finished the season with an 11-4 record coupled with a 2.51 ERA and a school-record 140 strikeouts in 100.1 innings pitched while walking just 15. He was the only pitcher in the nation to be in the top seven in four statistical categories, finishing the regular season second in the nation in both strikeouts and wins, while ranking fourth in strikeout-to-walk ratio (9.33) and seventh in strikeouts per nine innings (12.56.)

In March, he was named the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association National Pitcher of the Month, going 5-0 record and a 0.50 ERA. He allowed just four runs, two earned, on 28 hits in 36.1 innings pitched while striking out 57 and walking just two.

“He’s punching everyone out,” Anderson said laughing in the Colorado clubhouse after a Rockies win.

“I haven’t seen a lot, I know he’s punching out the world and he’s not walking anyone so he has an out pitch. And he has really good command. If you have that you can succeed at college or at any level when you have command like that, not walking anyone then staying in the strikezone and having a pitch for swing and misses like that which nobody is getting to. I just hope he keeps this up.”

He had three of his season’s six double-digit strikeout games in March and would go on to claim Pac-12 Conference Pitcher of the Week honors three times.

“With him being such a powerful guy it’s kinda like working with a dragster,” Vinson said. “Dragsters are so powerful and so strong that they’re a lot more prone to break unless they’re taken care of and maintained in the right way. He’s a hard-working kid and one of the best I know.”

“I look at the best of the best and see what they do on and off the field and kind of take pieces from what they do because obviously they are the best at what they do and that’s where I want to be someday,” Peterson said over the phone the night before his final college start. “I see if I can pick anything up and learn some things from the best guys in the game.”

One guy who has definitely been an influence on Peterson is new Oregon pitching coach Jason Dietrich, a decision that can be credited with Peterson blossoming the way he has, even more so than Peterson’s inclusion on the national team.

“Coach Dietrich has been awesome for us,” he said. “This summer with Team USA definitely helped a lot and I think just the past couple years have all come together finally.”

Playing for USA Baseball Collegiate National Team Peterson posted a 1-1 record with a 2.57 ERA in relief appearances that spanned 14 innings. The team, coached by Horton, finished 12-7.

The 44-year-old Dietrich has been joked about as ‘the pitch whisperer’ as he helped Cal State Fullerton to some of their best pitching seasons in school history. He left the Golden State for the Beaver State and stresses the importance of playing catch.

With Dietrich in charge of pitchers, Peterson has retooled his changeup and made it into an out pitch. He also helped him develop a four-seamer to go with his normal two-seam fastball. Along with mechanical changes that Dietrich advised, Peterson turned into one of the best pitchers in college ball.

“Work on my direction toward the plate and not leaking my front side as much,” Peterson said of his new mechanics. “Definitely just the focus and the consistency of my delivery all the way from catch to the game has been the biggest thing.”

“Maintaining balance, with a guy like Dave he’s so strong and explosive naturally it’s so important,” Vinson said.

It’s through Vinson that Peterson has another one of his connections to the cream of the crop in Colorado Baseball.

“The very first day that I had him in, he worked out with Kyle Freeland,” Vinson remembered. “Kyle looked at me and he’s like, ‘good lord that is a giant human being.’ I was like ‘he throws pretty well.’ He was like, ‘I bet he does.’ Kyle was amazed at his size and strength. Dave is just like Kyle; they lift weight pretty well and they’re smart guys.”

Freeland—a Thomas Jefferson alum and 2014 first round pick of the Rockies—has a 7-3 record and 3.34 ERA in his first 12 big league starts.

“He came over after he got drafted,” Peterson said. “He came and started working out over at Elite Speed so I got to know him through that. And then obviously, him being a hometown kid we got to connect that way. It’s been great to see what he does and talk to him when I’m home. Obviously, I hear about how he’s doing from social media and the trainers back home and stuff like that.”

“It definitely helps to be able to talk to those guys and kind of see what their experiences have been and learn from them and have a firsthand account at how everything goes up in that level,” Peterson said.

“I hope he (David) keeps his head down and keeps going because he’s good enough to dominate,” the other Rockies lefty Anderson said.

Derby

Then came his start on April 28, one that would be etched in Oregon history as Peterson did something that has only been done four times in Major League Baseball: he struck out 20. He used his big league cache to cash in.

Peterson pushed the tone right away against the Sun Devils striking out the side in the top of the first. He did it again in the fifth inning, and finished the game by striking out three more straight in the ninth.

“I felt like I could control every pitch and throw any pitch for a strike,” he said six weeks later.

He was downright dominant. He used his low-90s fastball that moves everywhere but towards a hitter’s barrel, coupled with a side-to-side slider and a hammer curve in the game. He did not throw a single changeup during the course of his 123-pitch, record-setting game.

“That’s what it looks like when Kershaw or Bumgarner pitch—when he’s not hurt—that’s what it looks like. That’s big league stuff,” Horton told Baseball America after the game. “I’ve been a part of a couple of no-hitters in my time—actually, one of the pitchers won 29-0 in a no-hitter. But I’ve never seen a more special performance than that. That was unbelievable.”

“It’s definitely an honor (to draw the comparison) because those are two of the guys that I watch and see what they do,” Peterson said. “It’s an honor to be mentioned in the same sentence as those guys and obviously that’s where I want to be someday. It felt really good to have a performance like that and it’s good to get some recognition with those guys in the same sentence.”

Peterson laughed and confirmed that it was indeed his best pitching performance of his life thus far.

 Workhorse

Deeply rooted in baseball royalty, Peterson learned how to operate like a big leaguer while in high school from the Weiss family.

“He’s very mentally strong,” Vinson said. “He’s a bounce back kid. It takes a lot to get to Dave, he’s a very mild-mannered guy. He’s very even-keel and he takes things one day at time and he tries to enjoy himself every step of the way.”

His biggest bounce back has come from dealing with his father’s death.

“My family comes first, no matter what, before baseball or anything else,” he said. “Family is the most important thing to me. To see all of the things that my Mom has gone through and the rest of my family has gone through, it’s huge for me to be in a situation like this. To make them proud everyday is an honor for me. No matter what I’m doing, I want to live a good life and make them proud of who I am as a person and also as a baseball player.”

He’s enjoying the process from high school star to knocking on the door of the pros.

But it won’t be the pro baseball world that Peterson looks back on in his journey from amateur to pro mounds.

“The horse racing community was huge in my life,” he thought. “I saw a lot of people come out and reach out to my family about the passing of my dad. It was a huge part of my life when I was younger and I obviously still keep up with it. I watch the Triple Crown races and kind of check in when I can.

“Santa Anita was one of the biggest places I was affiliated with. It was huge for me because I would go with my dad everyday and be at the barn with him. I had my own horse to ride around wherever I wanted to kind of. When I was younger he would buy a new suit and he would buy me the same suit in my size. When he had a big race we would wear the same suit that day. Everyone kind of knew that I was always around so there was a lot of support when he passed.”

Doug will be looking on from somewhere on Monday while his son’s name is called during the MLB Draft. The only question is: will David Peterson be Doug’s champion thoroughbred?