Q&A with Jason Stoffel, RHP, Arizona (2009 Draft)
By John Klima
May 20, 2009
(courtesy of UA)
Jason Stoffel is working on a red ZZ-Top goatee and finding more consistency with his breaking ball. He knows that a big league closer cannot survive on a fastball alone, and though he can probably hide that until he gets to where the game gets really fast, he’d prefer to reach the big leagues with two workable pitches in the ninth inning.
Scouts use fancy words like “profile” for what a player will become as a pro, but it didn’t take Stoffel very long to look in the mirror as a freshman at Arizona and realize that his own baseball beginnings were actually going to be at the end of games.
He’s the last link to Arizona’s first-round bullpen of 2008. Ryan Perry and Danny Schlereth each rose from the ranks of the non-drafted to the first round. Stoffel will join them off in never-never land very soon.
Ever prepared, Baseball Beginnings showed the current Arizona closer Perry’s color mug shot and bio in the 2009 Detroit Tigers media guide. Stoffel got a laugh from it. If you happen to be Perry reading this, you’d have to ask Stoffel what he said. It was funny. It was harmless. It was unprintable.
And when he’s on, Stoffel is unhittable, at least for the college kids of the world. We caught him throwing eight pitches at UCLA this spring, sitting at 94. Stoffel has the fastball and the frame to be a closer, but he knows there’s work to do.
We found him at an off-day workout at Cal State Fullerton.
