The Raiders, Class 5A runner-up to Cherry Creek the past two seasons, beat top-seeded Arvada West in Saturday’s semifinal at All-Star Park to return to the championship for a third straight year.

Regis Jesuit won 14-8 in a high-octane, see-saw game where both teams had to dig deep into their pitching staffs after using their aces to win twice on Friday. Arvada West head coach Danny Vais was ejected in a pivotal fifth inning where the Raiders took control for good.

“(The vibe) feels pretty excited, but our business is not done,” Regis Jesuit head coach Matt Darr said. “Today, we executed some little things, and it turned into a big inning (in the fifth). We’ve been preaching bunting and getting guys over and just adding on runs, and then the next thing you know, it breaks open. And that’s what this game was, because I knew it was going to be a higher-scoring game as the third game of the weekend.”

The drama started to build in the bottom of the fourth, when Regis Jesuit led 5-4. After a leadoff walk, Arvada West’s Brayden Davies was picked off by Raiders southpaw Finn Judge. The Wildcats were incensed about the play, arguing that Judge crossed the 45-degree mark on the pickoff, and thus the play should’ve been ruled a balk.

Brayden Reiner tripled later in the inning, which would’ve scored Davies and tied the game 5-5, further compounding the Wildcats’ frustration.

That frustration boiled over in the fifth. After Regis Jesuit opened the top of the frame by drawing consecutive walks, it got a bunt single by Carter Rathbun to load the bases, Jack Manthey drilled a bases-clearing double down the right-field line to make it 8-4. Vais then pulled pitcher Jake Richards, and while senior Beau Friesen was warming up, Vais was ejected after having words with first-base umpire John McFarland.

Vais, who said he has never been ejected during a CHSAA game as Arvada West’ boys basketball and baseball coach, was incensed about what he said was an unwarranted ejection by McFarland. Vais said he wanted an explanation on the non-balk call in the fourth inning, and McFarland refused to give him one.

“I said (to McFarland), ‘This is the biggest game of the year, and I can’t even have a conversation with you?'” Vais said. “He warned me when I said that… and then he restricted me to the dugout. I was walking away, and I said (again), ‘This is the biggest game of the year,’ and that’s when he launched me. I didn’t cuss.

“… That ejection was probably more off of my reputation than off of what was said. (CHSAA baseball commissioner John) Sullivan said the same thing to me when we talked (after the ejection): ‘I’ve heard good things and I’ve heard bad things about you… That you’re intense.’ But what are we supposed to be? We’re playing in the friggin’ Final Four, man. Are you supposed to just be soft, and it’s everybody gets cupcakes, and it’s all rainbows out here?”

By CHSAA bylaw, Vais has to serve a two-game suspension due to the ejection. That means he would only be eligible to return in the if-necessary championship next Saturday should the Wildcats beat the winner of Legend/Pine Creek and then beat Regis Jesuit in the first of two possible title games.

Sullivan said there is no appeal process for coach ejections, but that CHSAA would review the umpire game report to get a full understanding of McFarland’s decision. Vais vowed to fight the suspension.

After Vais’ ejection, Regis Jesuit scored another run in the fifth via an infield single, then tacked on two more runs in the sixth with a sacrifice fly and an RBI single to push the score to 11-4. Arvada West got a run back in the bottom of the sixth, then Friesen had a chance to get the Wildcats back in the game when he came up with the bases loaded. But Lucas Stavenger struck out Friesen, who leads Arvada West with nine homers this year.

a Vanderbilt commit, then put the game on ice in the seventh with a towering three-run homer off Liam West that landed in the parking lot beyond left field to increase the Raiders’ lead to 14-5.

“Our approach today was to just compete every at-bat and consistently find ways to get on-base, and we did that,” Alpert said. “We had a lot of hits (with 16), a lot of baserunners, and good at-bats leading up to that homer.”

The Raiders grabbed the momentum in the top of the first, using Brady Wright’s two-out, two-RBI single off Luke Alonso to take an early lead. Arvada West got one back in the bottom of the frame via a wild pitch by Ryan Neumann, cutting the score to 2-1, but stranded a couple of runners.

A leadoff triple in the second by the Raiders’ Greyson Glasheen led to Chase Massey’s sacrifice fly to make it 3-1. But Arvada West tied the game in the bottom of the frame using Reiner’s RBI single and Cooper Vais’ sacrifice fly.

Arvada West took its first lead in the third, when Levi Lueck blasted a homer to right field off Judge. That made it 4-3, but the scoreboard swung back to Regis Jesuit in the fourth, when Jacob Olson’s two-RBI double off Arvada West’s Cole Eisenreich made it 5-4.

Regis Jesuit didn’t relinquish the lead from there.

“Regis is a really good, mature offensive team,” Danny Vais said. “They can beat you in a ton of different ways… We’ve got to go back to the drawing board next weekend. Cooper and Braiden have to win us two games on the mound, then we need somebody to step up and make some pitches (in the if-necessary championship game).”

The Wildcats’ loss snapped a 22-game win streak and was their first defeat in Colorado this season. While the road to their second state title and first since 1994 just got steeper, Regis Jesuit is in prime position to win its fourth title and first since 2019. The Raiders will undoubtedly start Alpert, who returned earlier this season from offseason elbow surgery, in that first championship shot next Saturday.

The right-hander threw four-plus innings of two-run ball in the opening-round win over Mountain Vista on Friday, with 68 pitches. Alpert said he is ready to run his pitch count up to approximately 80 pitches next Saturday, which would be a season high, as the Raiders attempt to clinch the title on their first try in

“His pitch count has slowly gone up where he can throw a little bit more, a little bit more, and his value on the mound is huge but it’s bigger than that for this team,” Darr said. “Here’s a kid who’s committed to Vanderbilt and who could have just very easily said, ‘I’m not going pitch,’ because he’s got a huge future ahead of him.

“There’s a lot of kids that would do that, but he wants a ring. That’s motivating for the rest of our players, because he’s our leader. They know how much he wants to win after coming up just short the last couple years.”

The No. 1-seeded Wildcats cruised through the first two games of the on Friday at All-Star Park, beating Chatfield 7-1 in the opening round and then topping Pine Creek 9-2 in the second round.

The victories pushed Arvada West into Saturday afternoon’s semifinal, as the Wildcats continue to play with parallels to the program’s lone state title team, the 1994 squad featuring National Baseball Hall of Famer Roy Halladay. While Halladay was the headliner then, pitcher/shortstop Cooper Vais — a Texas commit who is the top-ranked junior in Colorado — is the Wildcats’ headliner now.

But the Wildcats of ’94 and ’26 are both much more than their respective superstars.

“People forget that Halladay was the starting pitcher in the state semifinal game against Greeley Central, who had (Rockies pitcher) Shawn Chacón,” Arvada West head coach Danny Vais said. “And then they were able to run out (Zach Keiter) to start the state championship game.

“… There’s lots of similarities between the depth that team had behind Halladay, and the depth this year’s team has, because you can’t win a title off one really good player alone.”

While the ’94 team had the likes of shortstop Brad Madden (now the head coach at Ralston Valley), catcher Chad Sigg, second baseman Eric McMaster and center fielder , the current Wildcats are also loaded. Hence their , no losses in state, a 22-game win streak and 9.75-run average margin of victory.

Beyond Vais, Arvada West is led by senior catcher/right-hander Brayden Reiner (Newman University commit), senior left-hander Cole Eisenreich (Colorado Christian), senior right fielder/right-hander Beau Friesen and junior left fielder Jeramiah Gonzales. That quintet is part of a seven-player contingent that has played together since their Little League days. Danny Vais started coaching his team, Elite Baseball, when Cooper was 7 and this year’s current seniors were 8.

That longevity to keep kids on the same team, under the same coach, is rare in the current climate of competitive youth baseball, where travel teams constantly re-jigger their rosters from year to year. It’s also a similar thread to the ’94 title team, which then made it back to the championship game in ’95 before losing to a Cherry Creek squad that featured multiple future big leaguers.

The entire starting lineup for those ’94 Wildcats had played together since elementary school on a team known as the Arvada A’s. The chemistry developed over a decade of playing together — during which Sigg says the group lost less than 10 total games from the age of 8 through their senior season — was critical in the ’94 title game, when Arvada West rallied for three runs in the bottom of the seventh to beat Smoky Hill 6-5.

“The relationships we had with each other were critical, and everyone knew their role on the team and played it really, really well,” Sigg said. “I know it’s been special for this current team, with how much they’ve played together and for Danny, and it’s going to be a big factor for them over these next couple weekends like it was for us.”

On Friday, sophomore Holden Goodrich led the way with two homers against Chatfield, while Eisenreich (1 1/3 innings) and Reiner (5 2/3) combined to limit the Chargers to one run on five hits.

In the second game, Pine Creek took a 2-0 lead in the top of the first, but the Wildcats responded with three runs in the bottom of the frame and then didn’t look back from there as Cooper Vais settled in on the mound. Reiner had a double and a triple with two RBIs, while Vais threw a complete game with 11 strikeouts.

On the other side of the 5A bracket, Legend beat Broomfield 6-3 and Regis Jesuit beat Mountain Vista 3-2 in the opening round. Regis Jesuit then topped Legend 8-3 in the second round, setting up a showdown against Arvada West in Saturday’s 2:30 p.m. semifinal at All-Star Park. The winner of that game will be in the driver’s seat heading into next weekend, with two chances to win one game and clinch the title.

A star southpaw who graduated last year and was committed to UNLV, Harvey died in November after a battle with sarcoma. His death left a void with this spring’s Titans but also provided an accelerant.

So in the quiet moment at regionals last weekend, when Meuli — wearing Harvey’s No. 13 on his left jersey sleeve, and with his teammate’s initials and number tattooed on his left forearm — had a word with Harvey, the senior made his prayer count.

“The tattoo I have is a reminder to me every day that I play through him, play with him. We all do,” Meuli said. “In that talk last weekend, right before the first pitch of the first game, I just told him I would play with my cleats on fire and just have fun, because that’s truly what he did every game. No fear, and enjoy every moment — that’s how he’s inspired us to play.”

Legend, the No. 26 seed in the 32-team Class 5A playoffs, upset six-time state champion Rocky Mountain on the Lobos’ home field in the regional opener. Then the Titans dispatched 10-time champion and two-time defending champion Cherry Creek in the regional title game.

It marked the first time in the MaxPreps era (since 2008), and is believed to be the first time in Colorado baseball history, that those two juggernauts — CHSAA’s most successful big-school programs — were beaten by the same team in the same regional.

The Titans blanked Rocky Mountain 6-0 on a combined no-hitter by Colten Smith and Parker Klenovich, then topped Cherry Creek 7-3 after jumping out to an early lead and never looking back. In a season defined by No. 13, the Titans’ 13 combined runs over those two victories fit their incentive.

Message sent. Message received. And now Legend is on to state for the first time since 2017.

“This is bigger than baseball, it’s bigger than ourselves as individuals, it’s bigger than us as a team,” explained Harvey’s longtime catcher, senior Colton Brush. “Tyler’s memory just lets us play with a drive that makes us keep going and keep pushing for him, regardless of us being the underdogs.”

Improbable road to state

Legend’s uneven play this season underscores just how unlikely it is that the Titans are one of the eight teams left standing in the state. begins Friday at All-Star Park in Lakewood and All-City Stadium in Denver, where Legend takes on Broomfield in the opening round.

At one point, it appeared the Titans (14-11, 5-5 Continental League) might miss the playoffs for a second straight season. They lost six of eight league games during an off-kilter stretch in April that included four consecutive defeats. But head coach Scott Boyd said Legend started to find its identity during that period, before the Titans arrived at their volta on May 8.

That day, Legend beat rival Chaparral 8-4 in the league finale in a game where the Titans honored Harvey. All the players wore specialty alternate uniforms with Harvey’s name and number on the back. They laid his jersey on the mound in a pregame ceremony, and Harvey’s brother, Austen Harvey — a Legend assistant coach — threw out the first pitch.

Meuli homered in the win, and fought back tears as he was mobbed in the dugout by his teammates and embraced Boyd for a hug. The scoreboard told the rest of the story — it was lit up in 1s and 3s, the only two numbers that either team put up in their respective scoring innings. It was the omen before the omen of Legend’s 13-run total at regionals.

“There were moments earlier in the year where it seemed like our players were trying to do too much,” Austen Harvey said. “I don’t know if it was because they were trying too hard to play for Tyler or if certain individuals felt like they had to carry the team. But as the season has gone on, the guys have learned how to share that (emotional and performance) load together.

“That was solidified in that Chap game. And that’s a huge part of why we are where we’re at right now.”

As the Titans were riding what Meuli described as “a rollercoaster of emotions” throughout the spring, the Harvey family was consistently in the stands. While Austen was on the Titans’ bench, Tyler’s parents, Dru and Mike, made a habit of coming to the games.

Sometimes it was therapeutic. Sometimes it was hard, especially for Dru, whose grieving process has included lots of tears. But the Titans made it clear to her that they needed her at their games. Having the Harvey family watch them play was a certain kind of therapy for them, too. The family will be at the state tournament on Saturday.

“I had been going to the games and then I kind of stopped because I didn’t want to hurt the boys, especially Tyler’s friends, but then (Meuli) reached out and said, ‘But you don’t understand, Mrs. Harvey. When I look at the stands and see you, I see Tyler, so please come back,'” Dru Harvey said. “Since then, my husband and I try to go to as many games as we can to support the boys.”

Pitching with a tumor

Harvey was initially diagnosed at the end of his junior year, when doctors discovered a tumor on his thigh. At first, they thought it was benign, but further testing showed the pitcher had a rare type of cancer called

He started taking a pill that shrank his tumors. That worked for a few months before his sarcoma mutated. Harvey then went on a different pill that had the same type of success, but last spring, that also stopped working after another mutation.

That was early in Harvey’s senior season, but before he stepped away from the Titans to do radiation and chemotherapy, he wanted to end his high school career on his own terms. His final outing was a scene straight out of a movie: Pitching on painkillers while battling the effects of a tumor in his abdomen, Harvey dazzled, throwing four innings of one-run ball with seven strikeouts in an 11-1 win over Eaglecrest

The performance came after Harvey had to miss the Titans’ trip to Arizona, where he was scheduled to pitch in front of MLB scouts.

“Between his pitches, he would step back up on the mound, and you could see him pushing against his abdomen, and pushing (the tumor) to the side so that he could deliver the next pitch,” Austen Harvey said. “It was a great moment because, despite everything he was going through, we were all getting to see him doing what he loved to do.

“When he came off the field, I gave him a big-ole hug, and told him how proud I was of him … and there was obviously hope that he was going to keep being able to pitch.”

Harvey played his final game the next day, when Boyd slotted him into the lineup as a DH. He had an RBI. Afterward, he told his teammates he wouldn’t be playing the rest of the season.

The ensuing months were tough. The cancer spread, and new tumors kept popping up. But Harvey refused to stop fighting. He streamed all of the Titans’ games from the hospital. He didn’t yield hope that he would still go to UNLV. And as his condition worsened, he kept others in the forefront of his mind and started making plans to ensure his impact could continue, no matter what.

That’s where the idea for his foundation came — one with a unique acronym that reflected the pitcher’s resilient spirit.

“When Tyler would come home from the hospital after chemo or radiation or whatever treatment or tests he was going through that day, Austen would say to him, ‘Hey, how are we doing?’ And Tyler would look at him and say, ‘F— it, we ball,'” Dru Harvey said. “And so we came up with

An echoing legacy

By last October, the cancer had spread to Harvey’s brain, and he knew his time was short. He died on Nov. 1.

One of the pitcher’s final directives to his family, and one of the first orders of business for the FIWB 13 Foundation, was to take care of his teammates by gifting the varsity hitters with custom bats and the varsity pitchers with custom gloves.

The FIWB 13 Foundation held a casino night , and that — along with many individual donations — raised money for the gloves and bats. It also funded a scholarship established in Harvey’s honor, which awarded $1,300 this year to two Legend students who embodied Harvey’s spirit. One of the recipients was Meuli. The foundation is also using its funds for other baseball-related purposes, such as buying balls for Children’s Hospital so that the NICU could ink babies’ hands on the balls for Father’s Day. And the Harveys hope to increase the scholarships to three in 2027.

As Dru Harvey explained, the outpouring of support for the foundation — and the anecdotes she’s heard in the months since her son’s death — were affirmation that, as Boyd describes, Tyler was “the kind of player who changes your life not just as a coach and for his teammates, but for his peers as well.”

“We were at the memorial game (against Chaparral) and the mom of a special-needs student came up to us and said that her son was being bullied at a different school so they moved to Legend. Tyler walked up to him and was like, ‘Hey, come on with us. You’re one of our friends now,'” Dru Harvey said.

“… As a mom, what you don’t want is your child to be forgotten. Hearing stories like that, it really shows me that he won’t be forgotten, and it can soothe your soul a little bit.”

On the mound, the 6-foot-4 Harvey was an intimidating lefty with a low-90s fastball with run, a hard slider and an effective changeup. He was as competitive as ballplayers come. Off the diamond, he was equal parts funny, thoughtful and compassionate.

His impact has echoed like the sound of his heater popping the mitt, across Parker’s high school and club programs and beyond to college baseball, too. This spring, one of his former teammates, Eastern Illinois pitcher , took the coin off the bracelet from and put it in his glove. Another, Bethany Lutheran College infielder , wrote Harvey’s name on the back of his cleats.

And when it comes to this weekend’s state tournament, the Titans — who have never won a state title — believe anything is possible with No. 13 on their sleeves and Harvey’s determination in their hearts.

“We are playing with house money,” Meuli said. “State really just comes down to who gets hot at the right time.  And coming off two big regional wins, I truly believe that it’s something that we can do — string together a few good games and then go win it all, which would be the ultimate goal. But no matter what happens, I think we’ve already made Tyler proud.”

Grandview’s ace, then a sophomore with control issues, walked/hit more batters than he struck out that year. His ERA was an unimpressive 5.60, and when the Wolves called upon the right-hander in relief in the Class 5A semifinal against Cherry Creek, Wachsmann walked two batters on eight pitches and was promptly pulled.

That failure, however, was the end of the window for the state to get to , a Wake Forest commit with a triple-digit fastball who has been almost untouchable in the two years since.

“After the game, he was super frustrated with how he pitched, but then it was like a switch flipped where he was like, ‘OK, I’m never going to let that happen to me again,'” recalled Dillon Moritz, Wachsmann’s pitching coach at Grandview and in club. “We all knew he was extremely talented, but he knew he needed to get better and he didn’t need to worry about anything else but putting in work.

“So he hit the weight room hard. He bought a (fitness band) and measured his sleep. He bought an app to track his calories. He truly went all in more than any high school kid I’ve ever coached as far as just being like, ‘This is my process, and I’m going to stop worrying about all the other things.'”

That process turned Wachsmann into one of the best pitchers in Colorado, and a bonafide prospect going into July’s MLB draft. Along the way, the 17-year-old’s significant gains in size, velocity and pitch design accelerated his development from a JV pitcher as a freshman.

As a 5-foot-10, 160-pound freshman, he sat around 80 mph, which was solid considering Wachsmann only started playing competitive baseball in middle school. By the time he was a sophomore trying to figure out how to harness his stuff on varsity, he had grown to 6-2, 180, and was hitting 89 mph. As a junior, he jumped to 97 mph and was 6-4, 220. He went 8-1 with a 1.77 ERA, 80 strikeouts and a no-hitter while helping lead the Wolves back to the Class 5A Final Four.

The upwards trajectory continued this season, as Wachsmann currently stands at 6-5, 225. His fastball sits in the upper 90s and he’s hit as high as 102 in the bullpen. He complements that heat with a mid-80s cutter and changeup, as well as a curveball that’s in the mid-70s. He also threw his second career no-no, and hoards of MLB scouts have attended his every outing.

“He’s realized how much better he is than most high school players,” Grandview head coach Scott Henry said. “And over the last two years, he’s been attacking hitters with a ton of confidence in himself.”

Failure leads to more success

Ahead of this dominant senior season, failure, once again, proved to be a powerful motivator. Wachsmann went to the prestigious Area Code Games last August in southern California and got hit around, a reality check that caused him to work even harder in the winter.

“I definitely thought that I was a lot better than I was (on the national scene),” Wachsmann said. “I was facing Colorado competition (and mowing them down) as a junior, and then I went to California and faced a bunch of big recruits all committed to top Division I schools. It was a good lesson for me and reminded me that my work in the weight room, in the bullpen and in pitch development wasn’t done.”

While Henry describes Wachsmann’s no-hitter last season against Cherokee Trail as the pitcher’s breakthrough high school moment, Henry says the no-no this season on April 18 at Mullen was the more impressive outing. Wachsmann got some help from his defense in that game — specifically by his third baseman on a bunt play and on a gapper that the center fielder ran down — but was otherwise unhittable.

Wachsmann walked three and struck out eight in the game, while hitting 98 mph in the opening inning and 97 mph in the seventh.

“He was locating pitches wherever he wanted to,” Henry said. “He was super efficient, he was getting ahead a lot and getting hitters out early. And he didn’t lose any steam on his fastball the whole game.”

Going into this weekend, Wachsmann is 5-1 with a 0.84 ERA and 48 strikeouts to just six walks. He’ll have a decision to make this summer, where he projects as one of two draftable Colorado arms along with Eaton right-hander Gunnar Garrison, an Arizona State commit. Wachsmann is ranked No. 81 in MLB Pipeline’s .

For Wachsmann to forgo his scholarship to a premier Division I program and sign out of the draft, recent history says the price tag would need to be at least around $2 million. That is about the slot value , although he could be drafted lower and sign for over-slot, like Coronado right-hander Trey Gregory-Alford did with the Angels in 2024. Gregory-Alford passed on his commitment to Virginia when he was drafted in the 11th round but Los Angeles a record for an 11th-round pick and money that was equivalent to a high second-round pick.

The influence of big bro

Whatever ends up happening, Wachsmann says he wouldn’t even be in position to make the decision of a lifetime without the influence of his older brother, Isaac Wachsmann. Isaac, a former Regis Jesuit star, is a redshirt junior outfielder

“At the beginning of my career he basically made me,” Ethan Wachsmann said. “(As a seventh and eighth grader) I wasn’t big. I wasn’t talented. But I just followed him around in everything that he did. I lifted like he did. I ate when he ate. And I practiced with him almost every single day during the offseasons. I just did everything he did, because he got good results, and then I carried those habits with me (after Isaac left for college).”

Isaac doled out tough love and unwavering support in equal doses.

That included a phone call where he reminded Ethan that the poor performance at the Area Code Games would be good for him, as well as showing up to a start last season and shouting “first pitch attack” repeatedly from the stands. That game enabled the younger brother to mentally shift from a pitcher prone to walks to a pitcher who now consistently pounds the zone.

And, there were the weight room sessions together over the years, including many where Ethan tagged along with Isaac and a handful of Isaac’s friends who are now playing at Division I programs.

“Coming in his freshman year, I used to give him (crap) like, ‘Dude, you don’t know how to lift, but you better figure it out,'” Isaac Wachsmann said. “But he really grew from watching all of us, and seeing how my friends and I grind. He took all of that and he’s honestly one-upped us with his preparation. His warm-up (for a game) is now probably an hour long. He takes such good care of his body. He’s doing mobility work every night. He just is obsessed with trying to find every edge he can.

“It’s come a long way since me giving him (crap) one time at the rec center when he was about 13. He’s was benching 30-pound dumbbells, and he told me he was going for 15 reps. I just laughed and told him, ‘Dude, grab some weight, and start moving some weight.’ It’s that kind of brotherly love.”

With Wachsmann as the headliner, Grandview (ranked 15th in the latest ) has a chance to make noise in the playoffs. Wachsmann is also the Wolves’ best hitter, batting .588 with a .650 on-base percentage. Grandview features two other college commits in senior catcher Kayden Bohmeyer (Chandler-Gilbert Community College) and junior shortstop Jackson Bernosky (Gonzaga).

As Wachsmann attempts to pitch Grandview back to the Class 5A state tournament, Henry forecasts big-league success in the pitcher’s future, regardless of whether he’s drafted this summer or not. Grandview’s produced two big-leaguers, first baseman Greg Bird and right-hander , the latter of which is in his 14th season in the majors and is a two-time all-star.

“The scouts always ask me, ‘Hey, what’s going to get (Wachsmann) off track?'” Henry said. “The only thing would be bad luck. Otherwise, I think he’s going to be a major league pitcher probably sooner than we think.”

It was the final year of playing in 2013, when he pitched briefly for the independent Amarillo Sox in the American Association. After several shoulder injuries, the right-hander’s arm wasn’t what it once was, and his passion for the preparation the game required was waning.

At that point, Hirsh had recently gone through a spell of being angry with the game, and with himself. But when his younger teammates asked for his advice, a new light flipped.

“Some of my teammates in Amarillo were fresh out of college or had only played a year or two of indy ball, and they’d be like, ‘Hey, can you come watch a bullpen and help me out?'” Hirsh recalled. “So we’d go down there together and I’d be like, ‘Oh, I see this or I see that.’

“And they would fix those things I was seeing. They’d go out in the game, they’d have success. And from that, I started to get that same sense of joy and fulfillment that I used to have as a player. And so that’s when my mindset really started to switch and I thought, ‘Maybe I should put on a different hat here.'”

So that’s what Hirsh did.

From player to coach

Out of the highs and lows of his professional career, Hirsh’s next phase in the game came as a coach. He started the Jason Hirsh Pitching Academy in 2013 by renting a tunnel in a hitting facility in Aurora. Over the last 13 years, his business expanded significantly, and he’s worked with hundreds of high school baseball pitchers across the state. The growth led to his own player development facility, in Lakewood.

And this year, Hirsh took over as the head coach at Mullen after four years as an assistant. The totality of his coaching endeavors marks a full-circle moment from the advice he offered to other pitchers in American Association bullpens while hanging on to the final remnants of his own career.

“Very few people get to leave the game the way they want,” said , Hirsh’s Rockies teammate in 2007 and ’08 who also coached with him at Mullen. “Because of that, a lot of guys can develop that animosity towards it. But for a guy like Jason, his passion was the game, not necessarily playing the game.

“Coaching (at FAST Performance) and at Mullen, I think this is Chapter 2 in a seven- to 10-chapter book. I don’t think he will stop at coaching at the high school level. There will be opportunities for him to coach at the professional level or the collegiate level if he wants it because Jason’s very driven when it comes to the changes in the modern game (via analytics).”

At his facility, Hirsh has made a name for himself in the spheres of arm care and pitching mechanics. One of the pitchers he worked with throughout high school, Columbine graduate is now up to 98 mph with his fastball at Nevada after coming back from elbow surgery earlier in his college career.

Hirsh was there for Brainard before and after his surgery, and never made chasing velocity a sole focus.

“The first time we went to his facility, I asked, ‘What do you think we should be doing to maybe get noticed a little bit more by college scouts?'” recalled Aidan’s father, Jeff Brainard. “And his response was, ‘Eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in-between every meal, and eat another peanut butter and jelly sandwich during the meal you’re having.’ Basically just telling Aidan that the most important thing he can do right now is gain weight and sleep.

“There’s a lot of people who are willing to blow smoke, especially when you’re hoping your kid gets noticed by colleges. But Jason has always been incredibly authentic, and he was a great sounding board for Aidan during his recovery from surgery.”

The 6-foot-8 Hirsh started his career as an under-recruited pitching prospect in his native Southern California. He emerged as a star at California Lutheran University, where he became one of the highest-drafted Division III players ever when the Astros selected him in the second round in 2003.

He zoomed through the minors, earning Texas League Pitcher of the Year and then Pacific Coast League Pitcher of the Year He debuted that August in a stacked Houston rotation that featured Roy Oswalt, Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens.

But Hirsh’s excitement about being part of that cast in his first full big-league season the next summer was dampened when he was traded to the Rockies in December 2006. The deal sent Rockies ace Jason Jennings and pitcher Miguel Asencio to Houston in exchange for Hirsh, pitcher Taylor Buchholz and outfielder Willy Taveras.

“That was a huge gut punch,” Hirsh said. “I was like, ‘Really? The Rockies?'”

Hirsh’s professional high

Little did Hirsh know that he would be a key piece of the most memorable Colorado roster ever assembled, as the played in the first and still only World Series in franchise history. Hirsh turned in his signature season, with a 4.81 ERA in 19 starts, before it got derailed when he broke his leg after being hit by a line drive in August.

Hirsh broke his right fibula off a comebacker from the second batter of that game, but kept pitching, turning in a quality start with six innings and two earned runs in a win over Milwaukee. After that, his leg didn’t heal in time to rejoin Colorado for its torrid stretch run that culminated in being swept by the Red Sox in the World Series.

“I had just missed a month with a rolled ankle, and I was determined that they were not going to take me out of that game,” Hirsh said. “… After (realizing it was broken), I tried to just become the best teammate I could. I’d do the bucket. I’d go shag in the outfield, break down opponents with our other pitchers, and contribute in any way that I could.”

A shoulder injury cost Hirsh most of the ’08 season, and by midway through ’09, the Rockies traded Hirsh to the Yankees. Hirsh briefly rediscovered his mojo for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre following the trade, but never made it back to the majors. He concluded his career with a stint in the Australian Baseball League and then in the American Association.

Now, as a coach, Hirsh says he “enjoys the game more than I ever did as a player.” And while he won’t be at the Rockies’ home opener on Friday at Coors Field, with the club’s front office under new direction, Hirsh is again willing to come out to watch his former big-league team that he became disinterested in over the past three 100-loss seasons.

“I look back on my playing career and I wish I took it in a little bit more,” Hirsh said. “I felt like I was always trying to prove myself, trying to work towards something. And I never really fully grasped or appreciated the process that it took me to get to there.”

The next Hirsh to watch

That’s why Hirsh is preaching process over outcome with his and especially his son, sophomore first baseman/pitcher Brady Hirsh.

The 6-foot-4, 230-pounder has a sweet, power-laden left-handed swing that is replicated from the swing of the Yankees’ Cody Bellinger. And on the mound, he’s already showing promise, with a mid-80s fastball plus a curveball and changeup.

Brady Hirsh has been one of Mullen’s best players so far this spring in his debut season on varsity. He’s batting a team-best .484 with a .526 on-base percentage and three homers through 10 games, plus a 2.00 ERA on the mound.

The younger Hirsh said he’s relishing the dad-son coaching dynamic, even as his dad was visibly nervous ahead of Brady’s first varsity pitching start on March 14. Brady threw three scoreless innings of one-hit ball in

“We were looking at the game charts afterward and in the first inning, his handwriting was so messy and so scribbly,” Brady Hirsh said with a laugh. “He said his heart rate was so high and his hands were shaking, because he was so nervous for me in my first start. As the innings went on, (the handwriting got better). That’s got to be my favorite moment so far this year.”

While the Mustangs are looking to rebound from a 9-16 record in 2025 — the program’s first losing season in seven years — Hirsh, ever the hammerer of proper technique, wants to see his club play fundamental baseball. That will be even more critical when Mullen’s tough Centennial League slate begins next week.

“I told our guys that I want boring baseball,” Jason Hirsh said. “I don’t need flash. I don’t need flare. I don’t need fancy footwork, fancy glove work, flips from a running position. I need them to catch the ball with two hands. I need good approaches in the box. I need them to field ground balls properly and make nice throws over to first. When we stick to our process, we are really good.”

No matter what happens, Hirsh, 44, is also focused on enjoying every moment in a game he’s learned to never take for granted.

“I’m doing what I do now with the same level of tenacity that I once had as a player,” Hirsh said. “But now, I love watching other people go out there and do it and have that same success, and chase their dreams the same way I chased mine.”

Here are the top 10 local high school players to watch this spring:

, Sr. RHP, Grandview (Wake Forest) — The 6-foot-5, 220-pound Wolves ace has added velocity since last spring, flirting with 100 mph in conjunction with plus offspeed via a changeup and a slider.

, Jr. RHP/SS/CF, Arvada West (Texas) — The 6-foot-1, 185-pound specimen is Prep Baseball Report’s top-rated junior in the state, and for good reason. He can dominate with an arsenal featuring a low-90s heater.

, Sr. RHP, Eaton (Arizona State) — The latest product of the ongoing Reds juggernaut, the 6-foot-5, 235-pounder features a mid-90s fastball, a deadly slider and a low-80s splitter to round out his arsenal.

, Sr. RHP/INF, Regis Jesuit (Vanderbilt) — After undergoing offseason elbow surgery, the 6-foot-2, 200-pounder is a centerpiece of the Raiders’ title hopes and is tentatively scheduled to return to the mound in April.

, Sr. C/MIF, Discovery Canyon (Missouri State) — At 6-foot-1, 190 pounds, Teltschik is versatile defensively and can hit for average and power. In 2025, he batted .516 with a .622 OBP along with nine homers.

, Sr. INF/OF, Fossil Ridge (Columbia) — The left-handed hitter has power to all fields with a short, simple swing. Last season, he hit .538 with a 1.470 OPS, and is primed to terrorize pitchers again this spring.

, Sr. RHP/INF, Mountain Vista (Xavier) — The savvy right-hander can get his fastball up to 90 mph, and keeps hitters off-balance with a changeup, slider, and curveball. Also, one of Mountain Vista’s best hitters.

, Jr. SS, Ralston Valley (Washington) — One of the most athletic shortstops in the state, the speedy Baldwin runs a 6.9 60-yard dash. Last year, he hit a Mustangs-best .397, and is set for a breakout junior season.

, Sr. RHP/UTL, Erie (BYU) — With a fastball that can get up to the mid-90s, few hitters will be able to touch the Erie ace this spring. He complements a dominant fastball with a curveball, slider and changeup.

, Sr. LHP, Cherry Creek (Boston College) — As the lone returning pitcher with experience from last year’s Class 5A title team, the Bruins will lean heavily on the southpaw’s low-90s fastball, curveball and changeup.

10 more players to watch: Jackson Bernosky, Jr. C/INF, Grandview (Gonzaga); Aaron Jaquez, Sr. RHP, Falcon (McLennan Community College); Chase Massey, Sr. SS/OF, Regis Jesuit (Boston College); Jake Watts, Jr. RHP, Ralston Valley (Evansville); Jacob Olson, Sr. OF/1B, Regis Jesuit (Oregon); Jackson Crawford, Jr. OF/1B, Mountain Vista (Southern California); Colten Smith, Jr. RHP/OF, Legend (BYU); Mikey Kroll, Jr. RHP, Regis Jesuit (uncommitted); Isaac Lockwood, Jr. RHP, Mead (Santa Clara); Cory Dean Carver, Sr. SS, Montezuma-Cortez (Navy).

This winter Goldberg, a Cherry Creek senior left-hander, was working with the Bruins’ new tech, Trackman and Ravik balls.

, used widely in college and the pros, is a radar-based tracking system that analyzes pitch movement and can also be used for hitting data. The is a weighted baseball used for pitch development. Two-time defending champion Cherry Creek is using both in tandem this season.

So when Goldberg employed the dual technology over the course of a couple weeks in February, the result was a rapidly engineered curveball that played better off his low-90s fastball than his existing slider. Trackman told the southpaw that his heater was more like a cutter than he previously realized, so developing a 12-to-6 curveball to play off the cut fastball made sense.

“The Ravik ball is all about defining a pitch grip and defining how something moves, then we use the Trackman to see the difference between an eye-test pitch and to see if the pitch actually works like you think it does,” said Goldberg, a Boston College commit. “With those technologies, I was able to develop the pitch in like a week, whereas before it would take me at least a few weeks to find a grip, find a feel, and usually longer to gain the confidence in a new pitch.

“During that span in the winter, I was throwing the curveball in live at-bats, and I quickly realized, ‘This is a damn effective pitch.’ When I was landing it, kids were not hitting it at all and looking a little silly swinging at it because it was tunneled off my fastball. That was kind of my eureka with this, where I was like, ‘OK, maybe this (technology) is the real deal.'”

Helping players accelerate development

While various club teams around the state are using Trackman and (a cheaper version of the former), Cherry Creek is believed to be the first Colorado high school program to adopt Trackman. Bruins pitching coordinator Zach Sundine calls it “a new era in Colorado high school baseball that’s changing how guys pitch in our program in a crazy way.”

Of course, there are few programs that can afford the technology. The Bruins used fundraising money to purchase the portable version of Trackman, which cost about $25,000. Sundine, who took over following the retirement of longtime Bruins pitching coach and ex-big leaguer Dave Veres, is hoping to develop pitchers with arsenals capable of “triangles” and “trapezoids.”

“If you have three pitches, you should be able to make a really good triangle out of those pitches (on the Trackman), and if you have four, you should make a really good trapezoid,” Sundine said. “The goal is that we are designing pitches based off individual strengths program-wide. This is not just for the varsity level, it’s for all the way down to our freshmen, too, that I’m working with.”

Cherry Creek second-year head coach Joe Smith says the Bruins elected to spend a fat stack of cash on Trackman (the Ravik balls, by comparison, are ) because the consensus among program stakeholders was that fundraised money should go to something tangible to help the players immediately succeed.

“We’re , and we’re not completely sure what the future holds (for the field’s current location),” Smith said. “So we didn’t want to do necessarily anything with the field. We wanted to focus on something that was transportable, and that could stay with us no matter what happens.”

The technology is even more important for hurlers who don’t throw gas, like Gavin Crino. The senior right-hander, who like Goldberg used Rapsodo through their club program Slammers, says that using advanced pitching tech helped him get committed to Chandler-Gilbert Community College.

Crino has a mid-80s fastball along with a slider and a changeup that he developed this winter using the Trackman and Ravik balls.

“Max can blow guys away with his fastball, but I rely a lot more on run and making the ball move and dive a little bit more,” Crino said. “So having those metrics (like spin rate and horizontal/vertical movement) for my recruiting and showing college coaches what my pitches really do in-game and what they really do out of my hand was huge.”

While Cherry Creek’s new technology is already paying dividends for Goldberg and Crino, the Bruins are hoping it also helps accelerate their overall pitching staff’s development in a season where they lack experience.

Cherry Creek returns just three starters in the field in outfielders Tyce Smith and Ari Rothman, plus second baseman Walker Rudden. On the mound, only Goldberg pitched on varsity last season.

The Bruins were ranked No. 3 in the , but Smith acknowledged the Bruins have a curve to climb to get on the same level as No. 1 Arvada West (which features Texas commit Cooper Vais) and No. 2 Regis Jesuit (which has been state runner-up to Cherry Creek the last two seasons).

“It’s hard to bet against A-West and Regis. They both have a lot of returning experience coming back, and A-West put it to us good (in a 12-2 mercy-rule game on Feb. 9),” Smith said. “We’re clearly not at that level just yet. But hopefully come May, we’re at that level and we’re competing against those teams.”

This past June, the former Rockies closer happened to run into Colorado CEO Dick Monfort during a Roy Halladay Award function.

“If anything opens up with the club,” Veres, the first man to ever record a 30-save season for the Rox, told Monfort. “I’d love to put my name in the hat for a coaching job.”

“I’ll pass it along,” Monfort assured him.

It’s late November, and Veres, who’s been a pitching coach at Cherry Creek High School for the last seven years or so, hasn’t heard anything from the club yet.

Still, he told me Monday night, the offer still stands. Especially with Paul DePodesta taking over baseball operations and with the “interim” tag now officially removed from manager Warren Schaeffer’s job title.

“Even if it’s just an interview, hear me out,” the 59-year-old coach continued. “I know they might say, ‘Oh, you’re just coaching high school.’ I mean, I pitched at Coors Field.”

And pitched pretty darn well, Over 136 games as a Rockies reliever in 1998 and 1999, the righty posted a 3.99 ERA and a 4.27 FIP, or Fielding-Independent pitching ERA. Veres got the teaching bug in 2018 and hasn’t looked back, helping Creek win state crowns in ’24 and ’25.

“We didn’t win state because we had the hardest throwers,” he said. “We won state because we made the best pitchers.”

Veres has been teaching his kids what got him through 10 seasons in The Show and more than two decades as a pro: Downward movement, change of speed, location, location, location.

In his salad days, Veres was more of a split-finger and sinker type. As a sensei, he still is. Especially in this climate. As a pitcher, you’ll never entirely beat Mother Nature or elevation. But you can sure as heck mitigate the pair of them. How? With a fastball that dives. With a change that deceives.

As Veres chatted with Monfort, he told the Rockies boss that while his approach was about science, it wasn’t the rocket variety. And, more to the point, it could be easily applied to Colorado pitchers at every level of the organization.

“Well, you can’t make a pitcher what he’s not,” Monfort said. “If he’s a four-seam guy, he’s a four-seam guy.”

Funny thing, though: Plenty of ‘four-seam guys’ have found another grip and made it work — even later in their career. Tigers ace Tarik Skubal was a four-seam guy who wanted more drop on his change-up. So he switched to a two-seam grip before the 2022 season. Dude hasn’t looked back.

“I taught a lot of high-school guys how to throw a two-seamer, how to make it sink,” Veres said.

“You watch the (MLB) playoffs, and where did (Kevin) Gausman and (Yoshinobu) Yamamoto live? Down in the zone. You have to pitch ‘up,’ obviously, every now and then.

“I threw the four-seamer up top at 92-93 miles per hour and could get away with it. I’m not saying you can’t throw up there. But (Coors) is just a little bit different.”

The Rockies need to think a little bit differently, too. Although gnashing your teeth over Schaeffer’s return is probably a waste of enamel and time.

The 2025 Rox were the seventh big-league club to lose at least 115 games in a season since 1900. Of the other six, four retained their managers and two replaced them. The new guys averaged a 13-win improvement in the win column. The holdovers averaged 22 more victories the next season.

The takeaway? When you’re already on a sinking ship, changing captains won’t change the icebergs ahead. Schaeffer’s a good dude. A young, minor-league-ish roster keeps a young, minor-league-ish kinda manager. That’s fine.

And let’s be real: The skipper’s job was probably always going to be a can that got kicked down the road. For one thing, John McGraw couldn’t coax the ’26 Rox to 75 wins. Or to relevance. For another, MLB is barreling headlong into a nuclear winter a year from now anyway, as the current collective bargaining agreement expires on Dec. 1, 2026. More Schaeff means a couple things, but they’re things we already knew:

1. The Rockies are going to be pretty much next season what they were this one. Some short-term names will change. The Titanic will swap some deck chairs on 1-year deals, but that will be as sexy as it gets. Gains will have to come via the margins. Or the minors.

2. Whatever vision DePodesta and his surrogates are allowed to start planting, the real flowers won’t be seen until after a new CBA is well underway.

Right or wrong, the owners-vs.-owners and owners-vs.-players fights to come probably mean the Rox can spend a year to self-scout, self-assess — and self-heal.

Besides, the only free-agent pitchers who are going to sign with this club without a loopy, Kris Bryant-level of overpay are either at the end of the line — or at the end of their wits.

Jeff Bridich was the wrong guy with the right idea. When it comes to arms, you’ve got to grow your own. You’ve also got to grow them right and grow them in waves, so that when a few do break out, if some do become All-Stars, you don’t have to become too emotionally or professionally attached.

“So you better draft,” Veres laughed. “And you better develop.”

And hey, if DePodesta and the Monforts want a guy to ride the buses and prop up the minors, Veres is down for that, too. He loves working with kids. He loves teaching the game. He loves pitching, period. Which is why it eats him up to watch his hometown Rockies stink so badly at it.

“With analytics, I’m learning how to blend in some of the other stuff — it’s necessary, I get it,” Veres continued. “But it’s funny how (some) things haven’t changed. It’s possible to teach old dogs new tricks. Every year, you hear about how somebody supposedly comes up with something new. And how the split-finger seems to be the pitch of 2025. That’s my specialty.”

Columnist Sean Keeler can be reached at skeeler@denverpost.com.

Grandview High School alum Kevin Gausman, one of the best starters in baseball over the last half-decade, pitched a scoreless seventh inning that preceded George Springer’s ALCS-winning home run in the bottom of the frame. And former Rockies pitcher Jeff Hoffman came on two innings later to shut the door, becoming only the second hurler ever to face and strike out all three batters in the last inning of a Game 7.

An emotional Hoffman let out a scream and raised his arms to the sky after getting Seattle’s Julio Rodríguez to swing and miss at a 3-2 slider for the game’s final out. Eventually, he found himself embracing Blue Jays manager John Schneider in the postgame celebration.

“This is what full-circle looks like,” Hoffman told FOX’s Ken Rosenthal after he was asked about his hug with Schneider.

With that, the Blue Jays booked their first World Series appearance since 1993 — a showdown that begins Friday at Rogers Centre against the favored Los Angeles Dodgers. Gausman and Hoffman, both cast to the scrap heap at different points in their careers, will play key roles in Toronto’s hopes for an upset.

“You get whacked around a little bit, you get a little shaken, and it takes time to really understand how you’re going to get your outs (in the majors),” observed Bud Black, who managed Hoffman in Colorado and frequently went against Gausman during the latter’s tenure with the Giants. “Those guys have finally done that, after patience was required and adversity was overcome.”

Gausman, drafted fourth overall out of LSU by the Orioles in 2012, showed promise over six years with Baltimore. But then the O’s traded him to the Braves at the deadline in 2018. Roughly a year later, Atlanta designated him for assignment. He was picked up by the Reds and sent to the bullpen, and he posted a 5.72 cumulative ERA in ’19 — his career going in reverse.

But then he signed with the Giants in 2020, a move that jump-started his revitalization. Over two years in San Francisco, he posted a 3.00 ERA in 45 games (43 starts), ditched the wind-up to pitch out of the stretch full-time, and became an All-Star by the time the game returned to Coors Field in ’21.

“When the Giants got ahold of him, they leaned heavily into the analytical stuff,” explained Gausman’s brother, Brian. “They basically told him that he needed to throw everything off of his splitter. That he needed to stop playing an east-west game of going in and out. He needed to play a north-south game — raise the hitters’ eye level, and then throw his splitter down.”

Gausman’s been doing that ever since, finding success as a two-pitch starter with a fastball and which drops off the table so much that the pitch earned the nickname “The Waterfall” during his days at LSU.

Black said the Rockies twice tried to sign him in free agency but “couldn’t quite get there financially.” Instead, he wound up in Toronto after his time in San Francisco and has built a career north of the border. Now in his fourth year there, Gausman has a 3.48 ERA in 125 regular-season starts for the Blue Jays. He’s been even better during Toronto’s 2025 postseason run with a 2.00 ERA over 18 innings.

Gausman throws his fastball 54% of the time, his splitter 38% of the time and mixes in an occasional slider. In the seventh inning of Game 7 against Seattle, he threw his splitter five straight times to Jorge Polanco to induce a groundout to end the frame and strand two runners on base.

“The book is out on me,” Gausman acknowledged to reporters on Oct. 3. “These guys kind of know what they’re going to get. There’s different ways where I can kind of throw a wrinkle into their mind, but I’m going to throw my best two pitches, and I’m going to throw them a lot. If I can throw my fastball to where I want to and locate my split when I need to, I feel pretty confident that I can get any righty or lefty out in the game.”

Hoffman’s road to the World Series is even more unlikely.

The No. 9 overall pick of the 2014 draft came to Colorado in 2015 as a centerpiece in the blockbuster trade for shortstop Troy Tulowitzki. But Hoffman never truly found his footing as a Rockies starter. Colorado finally moved him to the bullpen in 2020, when he posted a 9.28 ERA in 16 games before being traded to the Reds that offseason.

He showed promise as a full-time reliever in Cincinnati, with a 3.83 ERA in 35 games in ’22. But then his roller-coaster began. Hoffman was non-tendered by the Reds and signed a minor-league deal with the Twins the following spring training. His Minnesota tenure lasted a month after he didn’t make the opening day roster.

Hoffman signed with the Phillies three days later, the start of a turnaround that Rockies pitcher and close friend Kyle Freeland called “something special.” Hoffman had a 2.28 ERA over 122 relief appearances in two seasons in Philadelphia, earning an All-Star nod last year and leading to his three-year, $33 million deal with Toronto ahead of this season.

“The talent and potential was always there,” Black said. “The Blue Jays saw it as a first-round draft pick. The Rockies saw it as a key piece in a trade. … He gained confidence as he logged each season, and finally it all crystallized in Philadelphia.”

Black believes Hoffman’s changes to his arm action led to more consistency. Hoffman — who ranks in the in baseball in chase percentage, 90th percentile in whiff percentage and 88th percentile in K percentage — led the majors with 59 games finished this season (33 saves). This postseason, he has a 1.23 ERA and two saves in six outings.

“When we first got him, he had a naturally long, loose arm, and that caused him to be a bit too inconsistent,” Black said. “So he went from a longer circle in the back to a drastic change, a much shorter one, and now it’s evolved to something in between. He’s found an arm stroke that’s really efficient and works for him.”

Moments after recording the final out of the ALCS, Hoffman said he “couldn’t be happier” with how his career has panned out. But he and Gausman’s challenge in the World Series will be the steepest yet, with a lineup featuring future Hall of Famers Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman awaiting them.

Gausman is the likely candidate to start Game 2 after Schneider announced that the Blue Jays will roll out rookie Trey Yesavage to start opposite Blake Snell . Hoffman would, of course, be the one who closes the door in the ninth.

A World Series ring would cement Gausman as the third pitcher in the trio of gold-standard Colorado arms alongside National Baseball Hall of Famers Roy Halladay (Arvada West) and Goose Goosage (Wasson). Gausman wears No. 32 with Toronto as an homage to Halladay, who wore that number in Philadelphia (Toronto retired Halladay’s No. 34 in 2018). But even the A-West legend never got a chance to pitch in the Fall Classic.

“If the Blue Jays win the World Series,” said Chris Baum, the coach who taught Gausman his splitter at Grandview, “Kevin would definitely be third on that list.”