Baseball team needs to take advantage of Rez’s last year
When Anna Kendrick sang the lyrics, “you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone,” I’m pretty sure she was referring to senior pitcher Brian Resnik of the Waynesburg baseball team.
Check that.
I know she was.
And when Obi-Wan Kenobi yelled “you were the chosen one,” I’m almost certain he was yelling at Resnik. Not Anakin Skywalker.
Or when Hagrid said “you’re a wizard Harry,” I think he misspoke. I think he meant to say, “you’re a wizard Brian.”
I could continue for days with puns on movie quotes and song lyrics referring to the impact Resnik has on the Waynesburg baseball team. But I can also give you numbers. Numbers that should make your mouth drop and gaze in amazement and question the reality. You may even find yourself putting two fingers together and applying pressure to your skin to wake from a dream. I think they call that pinching.
But on a more serious note, Tuesday’s performance along with the recent string of performances the Burgettstown, Pennsylvania native has put together have been nothing short of stellar.
Let’s go back a few weeks.
It was a windy day in McCandless, Pennsylvania. Resnik got the nod for Waynesburg, who had lost 13 straight.
The outing started like most Brian Resnik outings do, with a one-two-three first inning.
However, in the second inning, Resnik got hit with a comebacker in the wrist. The ball deflected to first base and Resnik grabbed at both his wrist and his forehead and all of Waynesburg held a collective breath. Resnik got checked out and was fine, in fact so fine he finished the game, which also isn’t all that uncommon for him, pitching well enough to be on the right side of an 11-1 victory. He tossed a complete game and gave up just one unearned run and five hits while striking out five.
His next outing, against Bethany, he got another win, his second of the year, as he pitched a complete game and allowed six hits and one run over his seven innings and struck out six batters.
Then Tuesday, the capper, Resnik tossed a nine-inning complete game, two-hit shutout against Bethany in the 1-0 Waynesburg win. But wait there’s more. He struck out 10 Bison in the outing.
Punch those lines into a calculator and you get this three-outing total: 23 innings pitched, 13 hits, 21 strikeouts and one earned run for a perfect 3-0 record. His ERA was 6.12 before the La Roche start. Now it’s 3.38.
His last three outings against Bethany may be even more impressive. These numbers show pure dominance of a team. The reigning Presidents’ Athletic Conference Co-Pitcher of the Year is 3-0 in his last three starts against the Bison and has pitched 23 innings and yielded just one earned run on 12 hits while striking out 28 batters. Ridiculous. Phenomenal.
The scary thing is he may not be done. And by scary I mean for any team that has to play Waynesburg when he’s on the mound.
I spent the summer this past year scoring Frontier League baseball for the Wildthings. Lower Divison I players, and some that will likely make it to Double-A or maybe higher if they’re good enough, play in that league.
Resnik, when he’s on, and I’m not saying this because I know Resnik or have watched him pitch so much, is on par with some of those guys in the pure filth of his pitches.
His curveball is probably the best college pitch I’ve ever seen in a player when he has it going. Throw that in with a great slider, exceptional location of his fastball and more and you get dominance.
The weird thing is, Resnik will tell you after good days that he just goes out there and throws the ball as hard as he can and snaps the ball as hard as he can for the breaking stuff. He just goes out there and throws. That’s incredible for a baseball-oriented mind to wrap around.
In his career so far, he’s pitched over 20 complete games and struck out an astronomical number of batters. His 14 strikeouts in a loss this season against Gordon College in Florida, was one fewer than junior Jacob Meyer struck out in 60-innings last season.
Now that’s comparing apples to cucumbers but who’s concerned with that?
Bottom-line is: Resnik is on a streak like no-other right now.
And as head coach Mike Humiston says and, quite frankly, I tend to agree wholeheartedly with going down the stretch, “Waynesburg is going to dance with the guy we took to the prom.”
Resnik will be missed, but not before he helps Waynesburg make a run at a PAC title and if he keeps pitching like this, another Pitcher of the Year award may be coming his way.