Shorebird of the Week – May 23, 2013

It’s rare that a player spends a full year with Delmarva without being named a Shorebird of the Week, but back in 2010 Matt Hobgood managed that dubious distinction. Quite frankly, his numbers (3-7, 4.40 ERA in 94 innings covering 21 starts) were quite pedestrian and nothing you would expect from a guy picked 5th overall in the 2009 draft out of Norco High School in California. As we saw a couple years later with uber-prospect Dylan Bundy, we were expecting dominating performances and getting nothing of the sort.

The story got even worse in 2011 as Hobgood had some serious setbacks, including a nightmarish 8-game stint at Aberdeen where Matt went 0-6 with a ghastly 10.46 ERA and WHIP of 2.4. Something was definitely wrong, and Hobgood finally went under the knife in April of last year, missing the entire 2012 season due to rotator cuff surgery. In a March Baltimore Sun piece, Hobgood described himself as pitching pain-free for the first time in four years this spring. In essence, 2013 is the first season we’re seeing the “real” Matt Hobgood.

And what a year he’s having with Delmarva! On Tuesday Matt pitched a season-high five innings, shutting down Lakewood on just one hit, striking out seven and lowering his ERA to 1.17 in the process. Granted, Matt was soaking up innings in a one-sided blowout we lost 9-2, but by one report he was touching 98 on the stadium radar gun. In the outing where I took these photos last Thursday Matt blew away the last hitter of the night with 95-96 MPH heat. (That outing was actually one of his worse ones, where he allowed two runs in three innings.) Overall, Matt leads the team with four victories – all in relief – and has allowed just 17 hits and 12 walks in 30 2/3 innings, giving him a WHIP of 0.95 to go with 24 strikeouts.

Obviously the length of Hobgood’s outings is suggesting he may return to a starting role, but for now Matt is in the bullpen pitching long relief. If you consider that, had he gone to college, he would be at an appropriate level for a 22-year-old midlevel prospect (as opposed to a Kevin Gausman) it seems like the school of hard knocks has taught Matt about the lessons of pitching – and of life without baseball – as much as the grind of pitching for a Division I program would have.