46 days till FSU baseball: Jake Suddreth brings hard sinker to Florida State

Jake Suddreth will be on his fourth different college roster in the last five seasons going into 2020. Suddreth began his college career at Hawaii Pacific University, before being redshirted and transferring to Mesa Community College. The righty put up big numbers as Mesa’s closer, posting a 1.63 ERA and striking out 61 batters in 49.2 IP. He also led the JUCO ranks with 16 saves on the season. The RHP then transferred to BYU, where he posted a 3.86 ERA in 21 innings in his junior season. Suddreth then entered the transfer portal and took his senior year off to finish classes and make changes to his arm path. The grad-transfer is now at FSU where he is pursuing a master’s degree in sport management.

So what does the Arizona-native now bring to FSU? Suddreth’s sinker and slider combination may be one of the hardest arsenals to hit on the team, but he also has the most trouble with command. The grad-transfer throws a hard sinker, sitting in the low 90’s and topping out at 92. The sinker has the has the ability to move the width of the plate and have a sinking action about a foot. He pairs a sinker with a hard-biting slider, which breaks off in the opposite direction of the sinker. Suddreth’s slider usually sits in the mid 80’s range.

With so much movement on his pitches, comes both pros and cons. The pros are it’s very hard for hitters to pick up and to make solid contact on. The cons are it’s hard to keep it in the zone and leads to many HBP’s and wild pitches. We saw both sides of this in fall exhibitions. Suddreth had one outing where he struck out both batters he faced and made them look silly. In his next outing, he gave up three earned runs without giving up a hit.

Suddreth will have to show the coaches consistency within the zone before being put in leverage situations out of the pen in the regular season. If he can find the zone, or even be around the zone, on a consistent basis, he will be an effective option for Jimmy Belanger and Mike Martin Jr. With a deep depth chart of RH relievers, Suddreth will have to find the zone early and often in spring practices to find himself in leverage situations in 2020.