ST. GEORGE — Former Desert Hills baseball standout and Deseret News 4A baseball MVP Drew Thorpe was recently named to the 2020 Collegiate Baseball Freshmen All-American team after a stellar beginning to his collegiate career.
Thorpe started four games for the Mustangs this year finishing with a record of 1-1 and a 3.21 ERA.
The freshman pitched against two top-five teams in the country, No. 1 Vanderbilt and No. 5 Michigan, giving up a combined four earned runs. he got his lone win of the season against BYU, pitching eight innings with 13 strikeouts.
After Thorpe’s start against Baylor, it was announced that the NCAA would be canceling the rest of the spring season as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This cut his freshman season short, but Thorpe was still a member of the Mustangs’ pitching rotation and performed at a high level as a freshman against some of the top programs in the country.
While his season was cut short, Thorpe retains his year of eligibility, which will allow him to possibly play out four full seasons of NCAA Division I competition.
When Thorpe was named to the 2020 Collegiate Baseball Freshmen All-American team, he actually found out from his mom who told him about the recognition.
“I just thought it was really cool, just kind of something that I looked forward to at the beginning of the year,” Thorpe said. “With the shortened season, it’s still really cool.”
As for the Mustangs’ strength of schedule and the teams Thorpe competed against, he said when he received their schedule for the 2020 season he was excited to be playing such high-level programs. He was looking forward to the first few weekends of the season, which saw him pitch great games against Vanderbilt and BYU.
“Even before we got shut down, Oklahoma was in San Luis the weekend we got shut down, and then we were going to Oregon the next weekend, so we still had a couple more top teams to play,” Thorpe said.
In regard to the BYU game, in particular, Thorpe was dominant. He gave up only four hits with one walk in eight innings on the mound. His team would beat the Cougars 10-0 to get his first win of the season.
“It was really cool,” Thorpe said. “I played a lot of those guys that I threw against back in travel ball and in some high school games. It was kind of cool to see them and play against them again, it was a lot of fun.”
With a successful first experience at the Division I level, Thorpe is happy with his decision to join the program at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He said the big factors for his decision to attend the university were the coaching staff, the level of competition and the location of the school.
Living in San Luis Obispo with the beach in range has to be a pretty good spot for Thorpe. Add in a high caliber baseball conference in the Big West, and it seems it has worked out well for the Southern Utah native.
From his experiences at Desert Hills High School, Thorpe said one lesson he learned that helped him transition into the collegiate ranks was his work ethic on a daily basis.
“I would just say work hard every day and practice matters a lot,” Thorpe said of his biggest lesson from the Thunder baseball program.
Thorpe hopes to produce and be in the rotation of starting pitchers at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo next season while he is shooting to be selected in the MLB draft down the line.
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