By Terry Mosher

Editor, Sports Paper

 

Olympic High School senior-to-be Shane Matheny is slowly working his way up the talent list of baseball players who are considered prospects. Well, actually he is making his way quicker then that. Baseball Northwest already lists him as the 42nd best player in the state among the class of 2014.

Matheny, a third baseman/outfielder, was surprised at his listing.

“I hadn’t read anything on that,” he said. “I didn’t think I was that good. I have played with a lot of guys around here. I have grown up with these guys, and from what I can see there is a lot of people better than me.

“In the SPL (Seattle Premier League, which Matheny played in this summer with Narrows Baseball) there are a lot of good players. I have got to know some of them. I kind of idolize some guys I played with, like Reece McGuire. He’s a role model. He went to Kentwood (High School) and was picked 14th overall in this last (MLB) draft by Pittsburgh. I got to know him while I was playing against him, and he’s an amazing player. He can hit and from what I hear on ESPN he’s projected to be the (best) defensive player in the league.”

McGuire, a catcher, was hitting .307 with 10 doubles (no home runs) after 39 games with the Pirates team in the rookie Gulf Coast League.

Although Matheny may downplay his talent, his play has not gone unnoticed.  Washington State already offered him a baseball scholarshiop, which he accepet, and he looked good at the recent Senior Northwest Championship Tournament hosted by Baseball Northwest at Fort Borst Park in Centralia. His team – Washington Peninsula – won the class 2014 tournament, 6-4, over Oregon Metro in the championship game in which Matheny went 2-3 with a double and two RBI.

Washington Peninsula started out by beating Washington East 5-0 (Matheny was 1-2 with two walks), beat Oregon State 5-3 (Matheny was 1-3), tied Mountain West (Utah) 3-3 (Matheny was 1-2), and then beat Idaho 8-1 (Matheny was 3-4 with a double and 3 RBI) to reach the championship game.

If you are following along, the left-handed hitting Matheny (he throws right-handed) went 8-14 (.571 batting average) in the four-day tournament. After the championship game, college scouts there to find their future players and they asked the players they wanted to see to stick around for a workout and then a game at 1 p.m. Matheny was one chosen to play, which he did.

Shane Matheny

 

Today (Wednesday, Aug. 21), Matheny was playing on one of the two Seattle Mariners’ scout teams at Safeco Field. They played two nine-inning games. He already has been invited to play on the Mariners top scout team in October in Arizona at the club’s complex in Peoria. He went through a tryout for the team in June and a few days later got the phone call telling him he had made the scout team.

“It was real exciting”, said Matheny, “it was one of the first big tryouts I have been too.”

What happens is next month the scout team plays weekends against various community college teams at Bellevue and Edmonds CCs and then in October the team goes to Arizona where for five days it plays against other scout teams from the pro teams who have complexes in the Valley of the Sun.

If Matheny continues to improve – and there is no reason to believe he won’t – he could wind up on some lists of pro baseball teams for the 2014 MLB draft. Should that happen, Matheny would come to a crossroads and have to make a decision between going to Washington State and playing college ball or become a pro baseball player.

“It would all depend on how high or how low I get drafted,” says the six-foot-one, 175-pound Matheny, son of Daryl Matheny, the director of golf at Gold Mountain Golf Complex. “But I really want to go to college. Unless it’s really high and it’s something I can’t refuse, I’m going to college.

“I’m real excited to play at Wazoo. I don’t want to miss out on that college experience.”

Matheny carries a 3.8 grade-point average at Olympic High School, where this winter he will take a little break from baseball and continue his basketball career, likely as a starting guard for the Trojans.

“It’s going to be fun,” says Matheny of the upcoming basketball season. “We are looking pretty good. We have a lot of returning juniors who played n the varsity and we had a real good junior varsity last year.”

But baseball won’t be forgotten. Matheny said he will do a lot of late-night hitting at the Narrows Baseball facility in Gig Harbor.

“I’ll probably have a couple sleepless nights, but it’s all worth it,” Matheny said.