Turning Up an Ace : With Pitching Staff Depleted, Fresno State Discovers Weaver

How’s the air up there? Folks in these baseball-crazed flatlands look up to Jeff Weaver, and not only because at a reedy 6 feet 5 he forms a perfect right angle to the fertile ground of the San Joaquin Valley.

Weaver, 19, a walk-on from Simi Valley High, came to Fresno State for its physical therapy program and has blossomed into one of the nation’s best collegiate pitchers.

He’s provided physical therapy all right, coming to the rescue of a pitching staff that lost every projected starting pitcher to injury or academic problems. His rise has been so unexpected the local newspaper has dubbed him “Dream Weaver.”

“He has filled a huge void. We’d really be struggling without Jeff,” said Coach Bob Bennett, whose team is 27-22 and 14-10 in the Western Athletic Conference, two games behind first-place Cal State Northridge.

Dream Weaver indeed. Weaver was the only freshman included on Baseball America’s recent “Dream college lineup based on 1996 performance and pro potential.”

Quite a rise for a pitcher who threw fewer than 30 innings in high school and was ignored by four-year colleges upon graduating in 1994.

“I was a nobody, so all this attention is definitely weird,” Weaver said. “I got an opportunity, so I’m making the best of it.”

When the Bulldogs seek a victory over an opponent’s ace, they leave it to Weaver. He has defeated Stanford’s Kyle Peterson, the 1995 national freshman of the year, and Hawaii’s Mark Johnson and California’s Ryan Drese, both preseason All-Americans.

Weaver, a right-hander with a low three-quarter delivery, has two primary pitches that complement each other: a fastball that runs in on right-handed batters and a hard-breaking pitch that bites the corners.

Among WAC pitchers, only Erasmo Ramirez (10-1, 2.85 earned-run average) of Northridge has comparable numbers.

Weaver (9-5) has allowed 87 hits in 115 2/3 innings, striking out 113 and walking only 25. His ERA is 2.49 and opponents are batting .206 against him.

He is one of only two Bulldog pitchers with an ERA under 5.00, and Bennett is reluctant to remove him from games because of Fresno State’s thin bullpen.

Weaver leads the WAC with 10 complete games and the workload has taken a toll.

He allowed 13 earned runs in losing his last two starts and his fastball was clocked about five mph slower last weekend against Northridge than when he faced the Matadors on March 1, dropping from 89 mph to 84.

“Anyone who throws 100-plus innings won’t have the same stuff as he did at the beginning of the season,” Weaver said. “But you have to find a way to win and compete.”

Bennett believes Weaver’s inexperience is beginning to show. Until he pitched 80 innings last summer in a Midwestern college league, he had never thrown more than 30 innings in a season.

“He’s never gone through this before so he’s got some doubts about his arm right now and he’s not sure what to think,” Bennett said.

In addition to listening to Bennett, Weaver recalls advice he heard at Simi Valley from Scott Radinsky, a Dodger reliever who was helping out his alma mater while recovering from Hodgkin’s disease in 1994.

“He is a very cool guy who helped me develop perspective,” Weaver said. “Once I gave up a game-winning home run and I was just sitting on the bench with my head down. He sat with me and told me that tomorrow I’d be in the same situation and I would win the battle. I still think about that a lot.”

Weaver’s ascent began at Simi Valley, when after not even trying out for the team his junior year he sprouted from 5-11 to 6-5 the following summer. He made the cut as a senior, but he waited in the bullpen while Bill Scheffels, Nate Celusta and Kary Kozlowski logged most of the innings.

Weaver’s baseball plans were vague until he stepped onto Beiden Field at Fresno State, one of the nation’s best college ballparks.

“I knew I had to try out for the team when I saw this place,” he said.

Weaver pitched four innings last season before asking for redshirt status. This year he was penciled in as a closer and wasn’t given a start until pitching 6 2/3 no-hit innings in his first relief appearance.

Turns out he is a closer. He has finished more games than any Bulldog pitcher.