By Terry Mosher<\/p>\n
Editor, Sports Paper<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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<\/sup> best player in the state among the class of 2014.<\/p>\n Matheny, a third baseman\/outfielder, was surprised at his listing.<\/p>\n \u201cI hadn\u2019t read anything on that,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIn 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\u2019s a role model. He went to Kentwood (High School) and was picked 14th<\/sup> overall in this last (MLB) draft by Pittsburgh. I got to know him while I was playing against him, and he\u2019s an amazing player. He can hit and from what I hear on ESPN he\u2019s projected to be the (best) defensive player in the league.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Although Matheny may downplay his talent, his play has not gone unnoticed. \u00a0Washington 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 \u2013 Washington Peninsula \u2013 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Shane Matheny<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Today (Wednesday, Aug. 21), Matheny was playing on one of the two Seattle Mariners\u2019 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n “It was real exciting”, said Matheny, \u201cit was one of the first big tryouts I have been too.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n If Matheny continues to improve \u2013 and there is no reason to believe he won\u2019t \u2013 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would all depend on how high or how low I get drafted,\u201d says the six-foot-one, 175-pound Matheny, son of Daryl Matheny, the director of golf at Gold Mountain Golf Complex. \u201cBut I really want to go to college. Unless it\u2019s really high and it\u2019s something I can\u2019t refuse, I\u2019m going to college.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m real excited to play at Wazoo. I don\u2019t want to miss out on that college experience.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to be fun,\u201d says Matheny of the upcoming basketball season. \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n But baseball won\u2019t be forgotten. Matheny said he will do a lot of late-night hitting at the Narrows Baseball facility in Gig Harbor.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll probably have a couple sleepless nights, but it\u2019s all worth it,\u201d Matheny said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Terry Mosher Editor, Sports Paper Olympic High School senior-to-be Shane Matheny is slowly working his way up the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":711,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=709"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":715,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions\/715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}