Former Blackhawk High School baseball player Brendan McKay is probably one of the most dominant athletes I’ve covered in my brief career so far. He’s a freshman at Louisville this year, and I had a chance to catch up with him last week.
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Brendan McKay is no ordinary baseball player. He proved that during his time at Blackhawk, when as a pitcher he had the second-longest scoreless streak in U.S. high school baseball history at 72 1/3 innings, going 30-2 on the mound during his career with the Cougars.
So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that now, as a freshman first baseman and pitcher at Louisville, McKay has continued to thrive.
McKay has started 19 games at first base and is third on the team in batting with a .292 average for the Cardinals, who sit in first place in the ACC’s Atlantic division with a 20-7 overall record and a 10-1 record in conference play. As a pitcher, McKay is 4-0 with four saves and 49 strikeouts in 10 appearances, including seven strikeouts in an 8-3 win over Georgia Tech on Saturday.
“He’s been very consistent,” Lousiville coach Dan McDonnell said. “Some freshman handle it better than others. He’s very even-keel, and he’s handled everything we’ve thrown at him.”
McKay began the year as a middle reliever, before being moved to the closer role. He pitched so well in both roles that he’s now become a weekend starter for the Cardinals behind junior Kyle Funkhouser, a first team ABCA All-American in 2014.
That’s not to say there haven’t been some big adjustments for McKay since arriving at Louisville. Along with the increased workload off the field that comes with being a student-athlete, McKay has had to change his approach on the mound as well.
In high school McKay could overpower most hitters with the fastball. He’s had to use his full arsenal of pitches this year.
“I’ve been using my change-up a little more this season,” McKay said. “When I was in high school I could kind of keep it to the same stuff throughout the game, but here when you get into the late innings and you start facing guys two or three times, you really have to change it up.”
Perhaps McKay’s coming-out party in college came in the third game of a weekend series against Miami (Fla.) on March 8. With the game tied 4-4 in the bottom of ninth and one out, two men on, Miami walked Louisville’s Corey Ray to load the bases for McKay. It was then that McDonnell got a taste of just how calm McKay can be in pressure situations.
“I knew they were going to walk (Ray) to pitch to him, so I walked up to him and just told him to trust his swing and have a good at-bat,” McDonnell said. “He just look at me with no panic, and said ‘OK, Coach.’ He treated it like it was a scrimmage in the fall.”
McKay singled into center field to score the winning run for Louisville. The next weekend, in his first start on the mound against Boston College, he pitched seven innings and struck out nine in a 13-0 Louisville win. He followed that up by striking out 12 batters in his second start against Notre Dame. In his three starts, McKay has struck out 28 batters in 21 innings.
Through it all, McKay’s stellar play and versatility has led some scouts to compare him to some former major leaguers.
“I was talking to a cross-checker, and he said, ‘Man, he reminds me of John Olerud,’” McDonnell said. “The bigger the game, the better he performs. He has the opportunity to be a weekend starter and hit fifth for us, so he’s deep in the fire right now, but he’s playing really well for us.”
McKay doesn’t dwell too much on the success. Instead, he focuses more on how he can improve, specifically his hitting, along with trying to help the Cardinals make it to Omaha and the College World Series.
“I just want to keep getting better,” McKay said. “I haven’t been hitting as well lately, so I’d like to get better at that. As a team we want to make to Omaha and win it. We want to be the ones in the dogpile celebrating at the end of the season.”
Kris Lancaster 