Player Name: John Rooney
School: Hofstra ’19
Position: LHP
John is a 6’4″ 225 lb southpaw that attends Hofstra University. He had a decorated high school career at Hoosic Valley HS, which included an unblemished 36-0 record. In his senior season, he was named Class C Player of the Year for his 11-0 mark with a 0.51 ERA and 106 strikeouts.
He has an extremely smooth and repeatable delivery, reminiscent of former Major Leaguer Jeff Francis. He begins his windup with his hands held high covering his face. He takes a big step back as he enters his delivery. At his balance point, he has his leg high and tight, back leg firm, his foot parallel to the ground and his eyes locked on the target. He has a very long stride, which allows him to compensate for the fact that he doesn’t drive much off his back side. He lands slightly closed which makes him deathly on left-handed hitters and forces righties to get on top of the plate to neutralize his natural tail. Additionally, he has a very long arm circle similar to Madison Bumgarner. This adds even more deception, hitters would much rather prefer a traditional look from the pitcher.
This was his first college appearance, so we will evaluate this on a curve, focusing more on the measurables. He worked in the 89-91 MPH range. Like many left-handed pitchers, he has a good two-seam with arm side tail. Unbelievably, he never threw a change up in his high school due to the level of competition. Considering that, it’s amazing he was able to throw one for a strike on his first pitch of the outing in front of 6,805 fans. He had very good control of his, but he definitely slowed down the arm speed a bit. It was in the 78-80 MPH range. He did allow a very well-struck triple to the batter following the change up. He came around to score when the next batter hit a sacrifice fly. The next batter had a long turn at bat. The sequence went K (89 MPH fastball up), E9 (in foul territory, extends AB), ball one (78 MPH slider down-and-in), foul (78 MPH change up down-and-in), Foul (88 MPH fastball inside corner), ball two (fastball up), foul (slider up), foul (slider down-and-in) pop out to second base. That plate appearance showed his ability to focus and throw strikes even when any pitcher would be frustrated with a long at bat. It showed me he has some toughness.
He walked the first batter of the next inning on four pitches and clearly lost the zone for one batter. He then balked the runner to second. This was extenuating circumstances, because a fan sitting directly behind the dugout yelled “RUNNER”, which generally means the runner is stealing. Assuming it was a coach, he flinched his glove and looked up but the runner wasn’t going so he stopped his movement–which is an easy call. The next batter bounced a 0-1 pitch up the middle for an RBI single. He got out of it by retiring the next three batters.
My main takeaway from the outing was that Rooney will be a terrific pitcher for the Pride. Not many freshman will come into a hostile environment at Texas A&M and be undaunted enough to retire the side easy. Clearly, he was a bit nervous and now every outing after this will pale in comparison in terms of competition and atmosphere. He has a very deceptive delivery, plenty of life on his fastball, with very good command and a developing change up.
UPDATE: March 11- After watching his latest outing–three shutout innings at Army–my suspicion was confirmed. Rooney looked much more relaxed and poised on the hill. The hitters had off-balance swings and he dominated. His fastball had late life, he spotted all quadrants of the zone and pulled the string with his change up. Very good outing.
His pickoff move is good in terms of deception and similarities to his delivery home, but it was very slow. It’s hard to get pickoffs unless the runner guesses run when you don’t throw it with fervor to the base.
