The Oregon Ducks baseball team has featured many great pitchers who have rolled through the program, some having success at the next level. The headline of this list is Tyler Anderson, two-time MLB all-star and the all-time leader in strikeouts in Ducks history.
The list of all-time strikeout leaders in Oregon history has been locked down by Anderson since 2011. Some have contested it, like David Peterson in 2017, and fellow MLB player to Anderson. Peterson came up just short, though, finishing with 282, three short of Anderson’s 285 mark.
One thing sticks out on this list. All the players on the list are inactive from the Ducks team, except for junior starting pitcher Grayson Grinsell. Grinsell currently sits at No. 8 on the list at 192 — 93 short of Anderson’s mark.
That is still a substantial deficit, but with the rest of this season and possibly his senior season, it’s more than manageable.
With a senior season, this record is inevitably locked up for Grinsell. The one problem is, Grinsell is racking up numbers this season, and might be drafted in the upcoming 2025 MLB Draft.
It is still an interesting thought if Grinsell can do this. For it to be done this season, he would need spectacular numbers for the rest of the year. He currently sits at 33 off of five starts, good for 6.6 strikeouts a game. He has solidified himself as the Friday starter for the Ducks, so this gives him at least nine more projected regular season starts to do this. If he keeps up his current strikeout pace for those nine starts, that would give him around 59 more, and combined with the 33 he's already tallied, that would be 92. That would put him one short of Anderson’s record.
That is also not considering postseason play. The Big Ten Tournament and possible regional, super-regional and College World Series appearances could get Grinsell anywhere between one to eight more starts, which would almost surely put him over the hump.
An impressive side note — Anderson achieved this record with only one postseason appearance.
This feat still could happen in the regular season, however. Grinsell has surpassed that 6.6 strikeouts in four of his starts. On Feb. 14 against Toledo, he racked up seven. On Feb. 28 against Columbia, he also tallied seven. He notched a season-high on Mar. 7 against USC, where he had eight. Once again, on Mar. 14 against Minnesota, he nabbed seven.
Another impressive look for Grinsell’s high strikeout total is that he has done all this without making it to the sixth inning. He has gone five innings in three of his starts while going 5 ⅓ in the other two.
There is a reason for the early pulls from Oregon head coach Mark Wasikowski. In Grinsell’s first start, he only threw 74 pitches, but since it was the first start of the year, it is typical to let a pitcher’s arms ease into the season. In his second start, he only threw 81 pitches but got hit around as he gave up four runs against Rhode Island. In his third start, he was hit around even more, giving up six runs to Columbia. Despite this, he threw 107 pitches, giving Wasikowski more than enough reasoning to give him the hook. His fourth and fifth starts give arguments for a longer appearance though, as he only threw 93 pitches in his fourth while giving up two runs and 88 in his fifth while giving up no runs. If Grinsell can keep the runs simmered and get a longer leash from Wasikowski, the strikeouts will be even more of an abundance as he will be rewarded with more innings.
After his third start, Wasikowski gave his thoughts on Grinsell.
“He’s built up good,” Wasikowski said. “He really wanted that next hitter, but he didn’t get him. As a Friday guy, he’s built up, he’s strong and he can handle that. He had some low-stress pitches and low-stress innings before that. He felt really good. He earned that as a Friday guy, he just lost that battle. I’m excited to see his development.”
Grinsell racks up strikeouts, but doesn’t light up the radar gun, so how does he do it?
Deception. In the modern world of baseball, speed is key. According to the baseball stat-keeping website, Baseball Savant, fastballs thrown above 95 mph have more than doubled in the last 17 years, going from 12.2 percent to 28.6 percent. Grinsell completely ignores this by keeping his fastball between 86-91 mph. Because of this, he controls the game by slowing batters down and making them uncomfortable. Not to mention batters have to adjust for his offspeed, which drops down almost 10 mph on his changeup, leading to batters whiffing before the ball even crosses the plate. He compliments those two pitches with a curveball that spins in the dirt as the batter flails helplessly. His slider features similar results but instead makes batters reach for pitches inches outside the strike zone. While not fully incorporated yet, Grinsell even threw some cutters in his last start, a pitch that keeps the speed of the fastball, but makes a jolted movement to fool batters.
In his first start against Toledo, Grinsell found that curveball and ran with it.
“Whatever Hawk calls, I’m going to have confidence in that pitch and I’m going to attack the zone with it,” Grinsell said.
Grinsell has work to do until he can make his leap into the history books. While the numbers and projections are there, circumstances out of anyone’s control could always come up as they do in sports. But with these numbers and a lot of season to play and grow, Grinsell could very well be the Oregon Duck strikeout king by the time his career comes to an end.
“Just keep building on what’s been going on in the season,” Grinsell said about his own performance. “Go in ready to go, give us a good start on Friday and keep it going throughout the weekend.”
Grinsell and the Ducks look to keep the strikeouts and the wins coming as they take on the Rutgers Scarlet Knights on Friday, Mar. 21 at 3:05 p.m.