Courtesy: Syracuse-Post Standard
Kevin Carroll showed up on the Le Moyne College campus three seasons ago as an unknown baseball player already in need of a career turnaround.
Scott Cassidy, then the Dolphins’ pitching coach, saw a glimmer in the way Carroll could whip a baseball 60 feet, 6 inches. The problem from the coaching staff’s perspective was that Carroll had it backwards.
Carroll, coming out of Fabius-Pompey, was trying to make the team as a walk-on catcher. The odds of him contributing to the Dolphins from that position were slim, but the sound of a baseball leaving his hand and thumping into another player’s glove resonated with then-head coach Steve Owens.
“Watching him play, we could tell he could be something special because of his arm strength,” said Cassidy, now the team’s head coach.
It took a couple of years and a big leap of faith, but the keen scouting eyes of Owens and Cassidy were proven accurate. Carroll, a junior, has emerged as one of the best closers in Division II and leads Le Moyne (40-13-1) into the six-team NCAA East Regional today in Manchester, N.H.
“It’s a long shot,” Cassidy said of Carroll’s transformation. “It’s an extreme long shot.”
The odds were so imposing because Carroll arrived at Le Moyne with virtually no pitching background. He said he threw a few times in high school, but primarily took the field as an outfielder or catcher.
“I knew this was a good program,” Carroll said of the Dolphins. “If I made it, great. If I did not, well…I pretty much expected to make the team. I knew that if not catching, I could be used at some other position. Originally, I didn’t have the ideal mechanics for a pitcher. I was just all arm, all body.”
The righty was clearly a long-term project. He tossed just 11Ðinnings as a freshman and dropped to the back of the pack with only five frames as a sophomore.
“I felt the first few years I was trying to understand the whole pitching routine,” Carroll said. “That (learning mechanics) was a slower process, little by little. Not rushing.”
The mental side of the position finally caught up to Carroll’s 6-foot, 1½-inch, 220-pound frame last summer. Carroll said he started to get a true feel for the mound playing for the Syracuse Junior Chiefs, and that carried over to Le Moyne’s fall ball.
Cassidy was on an expedition for a new closer, and tossed the competition open. Carroll’s lively fastball and improved location nominated him as the leading candidate.
“I could see in the fall I was having a lot more success on the mound,” Carroll said. “I had a feeling it would be a good year.”
After a winter of weightlifting girded him for the promotion, Carroll backed that up with results. His 10 saves paced the Northeast-10 Conference, and he compiled a 1.65 ERA to go along with 17 strikeouts in 16Ðinnings.
“He’s been a go-to guy for us all year,” Cassidy said. “He doesn’t back down. He doesn’t show the emotions of getting mad if things aren’t going well.”
Carroll was a rock when it counted the most. The Dolphins won five games in the NE-10 tournament, and Carroll saved three of them.
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