Photo Maryland Athletics
Few teams have changed their fortunes as much over the last two seasons as the Maryland Terrapins. As recently as just a few years ago, the Terps were something of an also-ran team in the ACC, and now, they’ve been to back-to-back super regionals and have as much to do with the Big Ten growing into a top-flight baseball league as anyone.
Not entirely coincidentally, over that same two-year period, Maryland pitcher Mike Shawaryn has been among the most effective starting pitchers in the country.
As just a freshman in 2014, he went 11-4 with a 3.12 ERA. In 92.1 innings, he struck out 72 and walked just 24. At the end of the season, he was named a first or second-team Freshman All-American by four different publications.
In 2015, he topped himself, going 13-1 with a 1.71 ERA. In just a single year, he went from a highly-effective pitcher to an absolutely dominant one. Over the course of his sophomore campaign, he threw 116 innings. In those innings, he struck out a staggering 138 hitters and walked just 29. Opposing batters hit just .202 against him.
His dominance at the top of the rotation was made even more important by the fact that the Terrapins spent much of the season mixing and matching starting pitchers around him. Nine different pitchers started at least three games for Maryland last season and only one pitcher other Shawaryn, Brian Shaffer, had more than seven starts. Had he not been so steady on Friday nights, it’s easy to see a scenario where the team’s season would have gone a lot differently.
Over the summer, he had the honor of pitching for Collegiate Team USA, and coming out of his sophomore season and summer with the national team, D1Baseball.com’s Frankie Piliere named him the 27th-best prospect in the nation.
With another season like his first two, he could see his name even higher on that list before the end of the season, which the Maryland faithful hope comes after another long run into the postseason.
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