‘People are pretty scared of me right now’: Oregon State baseball’s Trent Caraway goes from slump to scorching hot

CORVALLIS — As

Trent Caraway

bashed his way to a record-setting performance in the Corvallis Regional, fueling the

Oregon State

baseball team’s

surge through the losers’ bracket

, a reassuring thought comforted him like a warm blanket.

“I feel like people are pretty scared of me right now,” he said, cracking a wry smile.

And they should be.

The Beavers’ starting third baseman just might be the hottest hitter in

college baseball

. And as the eighth-seeded Beavers (45-13-1) prepare to

host the ninth-seeded Florida State Seminoles

(41-14) in a best-of-three

Corvallis Super Regional

, the red-hot third baseman no doubt has the attention of FSU pitching coach Micah Posey and his talented trio of left-handed starters.

Caraway just completed the most prodigious stretch of his college career — and one of the best in Oregon State postseason history — hitting .530 with five home runs, one double, 10 RBIs, nine runs scored and seven walks. Caraway belted in a homer in each of the Beavers’ five regional games, delivering the most by any Oregon State player in any postseason in school history.

“I think I’m probably one of the best hitters in the country,” said Caraway, who was named the Most Outstanding Player of the Corvallis Regional.

No one in their right mind would have uttered such a phrase just two weeks ago, when Caraway was laboring through the worst slump of his baseball life and fighting to salvage what he could from a lost season. The 6-foot-2 sophomore from Dana Point, California,

entered the year with lofty expectations

, landing on the Baseball American

preseason All-American team

and at No. 21 on MLB.com’s top draft prospect list. But after a prolific opening month, the one thing he could always count on — his beautiful baseball swing — had betrayed him.

From March 30 to May 15, Caraway hit .156, managing just 14 in 90 at-bats, as he went hitless in 17 of 26 games. Along the way, his batting average plummeted a staggering 62 points, forcing OSU coach

Mitch Canham

to stop him from the leadoff spot to the bottom of the order. The lowest point, Caraway says, came in the finale of a three-game series at Cal State Northridge in mid-April, when he went 0 for 5 with two strikeouts just two days after going 0 for 4 with three strikeouts.

“I’ve never really had problem hitting the baseball,” Caraway said. “So it was definitely new. I’m like, ‘What am I doing?’ I kind of went down a little rabbit hole. I’ve just never been there. I was like, ‘Oh, shoot, I’m thinking about hitting, and I’ve never thought about hitting.’ So that was something new for me.”

For a player with Major League confidence that matched his Major League potential, it spurred a lot of

soul-searching and a few heart-to-heart chats

with

Gavin Turley

, his good friend and roommate. Turley, who had batted his own

hideous slump as a freshman

, knew all too well what Caraway was going through and his advice was simple:

Relax.

“I just think that kids come to college … and they start taking this job too seriously, start kind of going down a rabbit hole,” Turley said. “I mean, I’ve been there. Every kid is going to go there at some point in their career. So I think he just kind of realized that baseball is what you do, not who you are. He started being able to come home after games, even though he was 0 for 4 and whatnot, and he’d be just normal TC. Before, that wasn’t necessarily the case. But it wasn’t his fault, because he just didn’t know any better. I think the growth on the back end, like psychologically, is where the most growth has been with him.”

It was easier said than done for a hyperactive player who brings such infectious and boisterous energy to the game, it’s as if he downs three Red Bulls before he steps between the lines.

Make no mistake, Caraway fought to regain his mojo. He watched hours of video. He lived in the batting cages. He rapped regularly with Canham and hitting coach

Ryan Gipson

.

Along the way, Caraway decided to dial things back from three Red Bulls to two.

His aggressive hitting approach, which often featured first-pitch hacks and little plate discipline, was too aggressive. It wasn’t that he didn’t have good pitch selection, it’s that he had no pitch selection because he rarely bothered to take any. So pitchers pounced on the aggression, peppering him with inside fastballs, many of which were sinkers off the plate. Instead of watching the pitch sail by to work a 1-0 count, Caraway swung away — and was often jammed — preventing him from extending his powerful arms and putting a barrel on the ball.

Caraway drew just nine walks over the first 38 games of the season. But right around the time he endured that strikeout fest at Cal State Northridge, Caraway finally tempered his approach and started taking more pitches.

After drawing just nine walks over his first 37 games, Caraway has drawn 19 over the last 21, including seven in five regional outings.

“I’ve always been a swinger,” he said. “That’s also because, I mean, if you throw it in the strike zone, I usually get a barrel on it. But that’s definitely been something new for me, because I’m taking borderline pitches now, and I’m like, ‘That’s a ball.’ I know it fully. It’s not like I’m taking my A swing on it right off the bat. And I’m excited about that. I’ve actually been seeing pitches better, so it’s just a development.”

As for the out-of-nowhere power surge, Caraway said, he made one minor adjustment on his swing follow through. After using a one-handed finish most of his life, he started tinkering with a two-handed approach before the regional, which, he said, is “loosening” up his swing and creating a “tighter turn” in his body rotation.

But, beyond that slight tweak and his newfound plate patience, most of Caraway’s growth has come between his ears.

“I’d say it’s just clearing my head,” he said.

One thing that never changed: Caraway’s ridiculous confidence. Even when he couldn’t buy a hit, Caraway strutted around the Oregon State clubhouse like a Major Leaguer, grinding through his daily work, taking care of his body and eating right, all while “feeding positive energy to himself” and wearing a smile, Canham said.

When asked to describe Caraway’s confidence, the man who coached Travis Bazzana and Garrett Forester and Jacob Melton and Wade Meckler — and played alongside Jacoby Ellsbury and Darwin Barney and Cole Gillespie — couldn’t help but let out a hearty chuckle.

“Almost unmatched,” Canham said. “He knows he can get the job done in any situation. It’s infectious to everyone around you. When he comes in the dugout after hitting another home run, I’m looking at him, and he isn’t surprised. He knew, he saw it, he felt it. Sometimes they get in there (after hitting one) and they’re just like, ‘Man, how about that?’ He’s like, ‘I expect that each and every time I go up to the plate.’ He’s glowing. He almost looks like he’s four inches taller and four inches wider and just filling up some high-quality space right now.”

And while Caraway’s late-season surge might have come as a shock to some, as far is Turley is concerned, it was inevitable.

“It’s not surprising to me,” Turley said. “It’s what he’s capable of doing. And it’s really cool to see a kid go through something and be able to come back out of it. It shows a lot, more than I think people realize, because a lot of kids will go down the dumps and kind of stay down there for good. And then that’s their career. I think with him being able to come out like he did, it shows a lot about what he’s capable of doing.

“I think he’s in a good spot right now. He’s got this flow to him that not a lot of guys have.”

—

Joe Freeman

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jfreeman@oregonian.com

| 503-294-5183 |

@BlazerFreeman

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@freemanjoe.bsky.social

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