For most of this season, West Virginia's rotation has been consistent on Friday and Saturday, with a big question mark surrounding who will be their Sunday starter.
Jack Kartsonas likely answered that question as he's finally healthy and showed his potential this past weekend against Houston.
West Virginia head coach Steve Sabins wanted to put Carson Estridge back into the bullpen and knew in doing so, he would have to replace Estridge's spot in the rotation.
His choice, Jack Kartsonas, a transfer from Kent State. In his first start, Kartsonas made Sabins look like a genius, tossing 7.0 innings of shutout baseball, helping the Mountaineers sweep the Cougars.
Kartsonas' look while on the mound gives looks to some like a prototypical baseball player. A thick mustache while wearing a wonky No. 67 on his jersey, he looks like a pitcher. However, his journey to actually pitching for the Mountaineers this year was not an easy one.
"He's a transfer from Kent State that had surgery this summer, that we committed a guy that is gonna have to have multiple procedures on his arm. So pretty big risk. Not usually the formula of signing great players, people that are gonna have their arms operated on. And so for him to do what he did and throw seven innings in the longest outing of anybody all year was pretty remarkable," Sabins said.
Most of the offseason for guys is spent trying to get stronger and fine-tune their crafts. Kartsonas' offseason was him having surgery and rehabbing, slowing down his start to the season.
"Kartsonas, multiple surgeries in the summer, rehabbed all fall, started throwing in probably like October, November, getting touches, like just throwing, not even pitching, and then progressed to the mound and then got like some sim games and started going a little bit in the early spring," Sabins said.
That slow progression was reflected in his outings this season, as through his first nine outings, he threw more than 40 pitches twice, and threw fewer than 15 pitches four times.
The biggest hurdle to climb for Kartsonas was arm health, according to Sabins. Recently Kartsonas had started to be stretched out during his outings, throwing over two innings against BYU and over three against Utah. That inclined Sabins to give him the ball on Sunday.
"And so arm health was as big as anything for Jack, and he would come out throwing 95 one outing and then 91 another outing. It still looked like his arm was getting healthy, and he was kind of bouncing back. And then two weeks ago at BYU, he went 2.1 innings of quality relief work. I was like, that was cool, two innings, but he completely ran out of gas, [velocity] dropped, demeanor, arm speed lessened.
And then last week against Utah, he went 3.1 innings. I'm sitting there just going like, this guy's going a little bit, he got his pitch count up to 60 pitches, he held his velocity for 3.1 innings. He ran out of gas, but it spiked a little bit late there, but I was like, this guy's hungry, he's team oriented, stud kid. He's like 32 years old and is not afraid of anything," Sabins said.
While Sabins was exaggerating with Kartsonas being 32 years old, he's certainly been around college baseball for a long time. Kartsonas started his college career in 2020 at John Carroll before spending 2021-2024 at Kent State.
"After going to 3.1 innings (against Utah), and he looked great, I was like, hey, maybe he's ready, right? He went one inning, one inning here, there, 2.1, 3.1, let's give him the ball and see if he's ready. He went 60 pitches, maybe go 70, and he ended up going, I think, 98 pitches through seven innings, zero runs, throwing a lot of sinkers, getting ground balls, quick contact," Sabins said.
Sabins said changing his Sunday starter to Kartsonas speaks on the bigger issue of how he attacks gameplanning for opponents. Sabins said sometimes you have to make decisions that might look odd on the outside, but it's what he feels is best for his group.
"You have to play to win, coach to win. I guess that's what I meant by that, is just when things are going great, it's very easy to be like, 'you're changing your Sunday starter — like you've won every game with the Sunday starter.' Well, we watch baseball for a living and there's certain things that you just know maybe quite aren't right long-term, and so you try to make changes," Sabins said.
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