Eugene starting pitcher Hunter Dryden had a lot of folks out to the game last week at Avista Stadium for his Spokane homecoming. They cheered so loudly when he struck out one of the hometown Indians batters that it drew looks from others in the crowd.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t get an official tally,\u201d the Deer Park High School and Whitworth University alum said. \u201cBut I think it ended up being just over 60 people, which is incredible that everybody came in and did that. That was , like , insane for them to all do that, and I\u2019m very appreciative.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the game, in which Dryden tossed six innings of one-run ball in an eventual 13-1 win for the Emeralds, all his visitors came down onto the field to share the moment with the 24-year-old right-hander.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got to give them all hugs and talked to them for a while,\u201d he said. \u201cMy little cousins wanted autographs. And then there\u2019s a few people who had left before the game ended, so I got some texts from them and talked to them and, you know, thanked them for coming.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dryden is in the midst of his second season of professional baseball in the San Francisco Giants organization. The Giants drafted him in the 17th round of the 2024 MLB draft after his four-year career at Whitworth.<\/p>\n
He was happy and appreciative to see everyone last Tuesday but still had a job to do and tried not to put too much pressure on himself to have a good game.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy wife asked me (about the pressure), and I mean, maybe there was a little, you know,\u201d Dryden said. \u201cYou obviously don\u2019t want to play bad in front of a bunch of people. But at the same time, I just had to treat it as if they weren\u2019t here, you know, as if everything was the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dryden apologized to some of his family who were trying to wave at him and get his attention during the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tried to treat it like a regular game, but it was hard to when they were cheering as hard as (they) were,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The self-proclaimed \u201cSpokane kid\u201d had Tuesday\u2019s date circled on his calendar since he was assigned to Eugene at the start of the season. He knew he\u2019d get a chance to pitch professionally in a stadium where he spent so much time as a kid and high schooler.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s crazy that it got all the way to August before we came here. That\u2019s just how the scheduling worked out this year,\u201d he said. \u201cBut basically, since I found out I was coming (to Eugene), I was like, \u2018When are we going to Spokane?\u2019 I told my buddies, \u2018I can\u2019t wait for us all to go to Spokane.\u2019 So yeah, I tried to treat it like a normal one, but it definitely was a different one in that regard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dryden recounted attending Indians games as a kid, usually sitting out in the bleachers \u2013 or running around in the \u201cKids Zone\u201d or at the speed pitch. He even played here with Deer Park in a district playoff game his junior year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWalking out here, the first thing I did when we got here on Monday after traveling, I walked out on the field, and it was just surreal,\u201d he said. \u201cJust to be in the dugout of the field that I\u2019ve grown up coming to and watching games at all the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s kind of unexplainable. Like during the game, after the game, all of it. When I went out to stretch before the game, you know, I\u2019m out there stretching, and I\u2019m like, \u2018Am I really stretching at this field right now?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Dryden\u2019s path to the pros hasn\u2019t always been a straight line. A member of the class of 2020, he missed his senior baseball season due to the pandemic. He spent that time playing games in Idaho where the rules were less restrictive, and was fortunate that Whitworth honored its offer to him based upon his junior season.<\/p>\n
\u201cLuckily, I was committed to Whitworth prior to everything shutting down. Who knows what would have happened if that weren\u2019t the case?\u201d Dryden said. \u201cI played on a Spokane travel team and ended up talking to some of my first colleges during that summer and had a couple opportunities but ended up going with Whitworth, and I was so happy that I did. I really, really enjoyed my time at Whitworth.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said it\u2019s \u201chard to say\u201d how much the COVID year set back his development as a player, but relished being able to play both ways at Whitworth \u2013 and stay close to home for his college experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tried doing as much as I could throughout that time,\u201d he said. \u201cI feel like it really affected everybody who couldn\u2019t play in games, and that\u2019s really what helps you out the most. Coming out of COVID, that first year at Whitworth, getting at-bats was incredibly important to kind of just get back in the flow of baseball games, like as crazy as that sounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
During his senior year, Dryden \u2013 who is listed at 5-foot-9, 183 pounds \u2013 switched to pitching full time in an effort to get drafted.<\/p>\n
There wasn\u2019t a big conversation about it, but he went from playing shortstop in the first two games of a series and pitching in the third, to pitching the series opener only.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the coaching staff was looking out for me and thought, you know, maybe, \u2018Take him out of the lineup on the hitting side and make sure that he\u2019s ready to go on the pitching side every week,\u2019 \u201d he said. \u201cBeing able to go to that Game 1 start really helped to improve my pitching and my readiness for the weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a shorter pitcher, Dryden must take advantage of technique more than overpowering batters.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing smaller, if I wanted to throw hard I had to make everything work to its fullest of capability,\u201d he said. \u201cI kind of had to figure out how to make my body do that. As I got taller a little bit, as I got stronger, then the velocity ended up coming along with it, and my mechanics were in a spot where I allowed that to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dryden went 5-3 his senior year at Whitworth with a 2.10 ERA and 71 strikeouts over 12 starts and 682\/3 innings. That led to a call from the Giants on draft day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI found out when everybody else did, just when my name came across the screen,\u201d he said. \u201cI talked with the Giants after I saw that, and I was surrounded by family, and was just an unbelievable feeling. It\u2019s something you dream about \u2013 every little kid\u2019s dream.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dryden started 21 games for Low-A Fresno last year, going 5-3 with a 2.90 ERA, and so far this year he\u2019s pitched in 20 games with 16 starts for High-A Eugene with a 4.98 ERA.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs you climb, you\u2019re gonna see better competition,\u201d he said. \u201cSo you have to figure out a way to not only beat talent but beat a better approach, and it\u2019s definitely a part of the game that takes time to learn. It\u2019s been really fun to experience that the last couple of years. There\u2019s a solid difference between Low-A baseball and High-A baseball and it takes some adjustments.\u201d<\/p>\n
Part of that adjustment is \u201clearning to be a pro\u201d and the day-to-day grind of professional baseball. But Dryden still doesn\u2019t see it as \u201ca job.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if I could call it a job. It doesn\u2019t feel like a job still. So I mean, I guess that\u2019s a win. If you don\u2019t feel like you\u2019re working, then that\u2019s a perfect job, I guess. But no, I mean, having baseball as my job is the most fun I could ever have.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even if that means facing big leaguer Cal Raleigh while he was on a rehab assignment for the Everett AquaSox.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was kind of a crazy experience,\u201d Dryden said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMe growing up in Washington, being a Mariners fan all my life growing up, watching them all the time, and then him being all of my buddies\u2019 favorite player? You know, it was crazy to see that I was going to be facing him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raleigh went 1-for-3 against Dryden, with an infield single and a strikeout.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kind of kept it level-headed (after the strikeout) \u2013 until I got in the dugout, of course. Then all my buddies were poking fun at me for it and everything like that. I mean, that\u2019s what buddies are and teammates are for. But then I had to crack a smile after that for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eugene starting pitcher Hunter Dryden had a lot of folks out to the game last week at Avista…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-429519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}