CORVALLIS - The two returning starting pitchers from the end of the last Oregon State baseball season will be back in the rotation in 2017.
Beavers baseball coach Pat Casey said junior lefty Luke Heimlich (7-4, 3.53 ERA) and sophomore righty Bryce Fehmel (10-1, 2.31 ERA) would be the first two starters of the season, which starts Feb. 17 with a four-game event in Surprise, Arizona.
Casey said he was unsure which pitcher would start on opening day against Duke. The duo concluded the regular season with back-to-back complete game shutouts against UCLA.
Two more rotation spots remain for the season's first two weeks. While acknowledging he believed his staff would be ready, Casey also said he hoped the team's arms would have been further along with first pitch less than two weeks away.
"We just feel like we haven't - the last two weeks - done some things we wanted to do," the coach said. "I think that's been frustrating to (pitching coach Nate Yeskie) and myself as well."
Casey identified redshirt sophomore righty Sam Tweedt (8-1, 2.85 ERA in 2015), sophomore lefty Jordan Britton (0-2, 4.75 ERA), redshirt junior righty Jake Thompson (3-3, 4.28 ERA) and freshman lefty Jake Mulholland as candidates for the final two rotation spots of the first two weekends.
"Those are some pretty quality guys," Casey said. "Who that's going to be is up in the air right now. And then after the first weekend, depending on how everything goes, we'll decide who it will be the next weekend."
Thompson came back in 2016 after missing the previous year with a back injury. He returns with the most recent significant starting experience in that group, making 13 starts before Fehmel replaced him in the rotation for the final two weeks.
The Beavers hoped Tweedt would become a starter as a sophomore in 2016 but he missed the season after undergoing Tommy John surgery the previous summer. Tweedt, who Casey said is "100 percent," made 21 appearances and six starts as a freshman.
Britton often served as a long reliever and weekday starter last season as a freshman, making 14 appearances and three starts. Mulholland, a Snohomish, Washington native, has earned credit for pitching for strikes since arriving in Corvallis.
"I think the one thing that he's done that some other guys haven't done is went ahead and started to emulate some of the things that the best guys in the club do," Casey said of Mulholland. "... Some guys do that, some guys fight it. Some guys have ways of doing things and sometimes somebody has to fail before they succeed."
Redshirt sophomore Drew Rasmussen, the team's original top starter last season, continues to rehab from Tommy John surgery. No timeframe has been established for his return.
Travis Eckert, who took over the top spot from Rasmussen after his injury, was selected by the Kansas City Royals in the seventh round of the MLB draft in June. He went 4-1 with a 3.43 ERA with the Rookie-level Burlington Royals.
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-- Danny Moran
dmoran@oregonian.com
@DannyJMoran
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