Pitcher rebounds to Beaver mound

Mike Stutes returns to home state with plenty of ‘Friday night’ skill

By Kerry Eggers

The Portland Tribune, May 12, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

CORVALLIS Ñ Mike Stutes, stud pitcher at Lake Oswego High, is now stud pitcher for the Oregon State Beavers.

The transformation took a while, though. It involved another university and a realization that going away to college isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.

“Sometimes when there’s a good program down the road, the grass is greener on the other side,” says Dan Spencer, Oregon State’s well-regarded pitching coach.

So when Stutes Ñ the state’s player of the year in 2004 after leading the Lakers to the state championship Ñ went hunting for a college destination, he chose Santa Clara over OSU.

“I kind of wanted to get away and and be on my own,” says Stutes, who will start Sunday for the fourth-ranked Beavers (34-11 overall, 11-4 in Pac-10 play) in the finale of their three-game series against Arizona State at Tempe. “I wanted to get away from home and do the whole college thing.”

After a freshman year in which he went 4-5 with a 5.40 ERA, Stutes transferred to Oregon State.

“I liked Santa Clara as a school and made some good friends,” says the 6-1, 185-pound sophomore right-hander, “but the baseball program didn’t work out for me. They were playing more politics; I need to be in a program where the whole focus is on winning. That’s how I am. Everything I do is to win the game. That’s my only goal. That’s what’s important here at Oregon State.”

Stutes chose OSU over offers from Louisiana State, Long Beach State and Texas Christian, even though the other schools promised a spot in the starting rotation. Oregon State was returning starters Dallas Buck, Jonah Nickerson and Anton Maxwell from a team that won the Pac-10 and reached the College World Series; the only promise was a fair shake.

“They told me Anton was (the third) starter; he went 11-1 last year and deserved it,” Stutes says. “I knew I was going to have to come in here and prove myself. I thought I could do that.

“I talked to Coach (Pat) Casey and some of the players on the phone when they were in Omaha. I knew (shortstop) Darwin Barney pretty well and had played with and against a bunch of the (OSU) players in high school,” he says. “It was very important for me to be comfortable, and it’s about an hour away from home. I felt my best chance to improve as a player was to come here.”

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