NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat Mavericks pitcher Gerrit Erickson pumps his fist after getting the last out of an inning in the Mavericks 10-2 win over the Weyburn Beavers on June 25.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
Gerrit Erickson has fit in well as a starting pitcher for the Medicine Hat Mavericks. What stands out about that? He joined the team as a reliever.
The 19-year-old pitcher comes from Chico State University in Chico, Calif., and threw a total of 22.1 innings in his freshman year, with game highs of three innings and two strikeouts.
In five appearances with the Mavericks, Erickson already has 21.2 innings pitched, including a six shutout-inning start with six strikeouts where he picked up the win.
He said that win, a 10-2 routing of the Weyburn Beavers on June 25, had him excited about how his pitches were working.
“I wasn’t too worried about the numbers and everything, I was just happy with how the hitters were reacting to my pitches,” Erickson said. “I had a lot of swing and misses on the 12-6 curveball, which was telling me that the hitters were having trouble seeing that pitch, which means that should translate over to when I go back to school, hopefully hitters are having trouble picking up that pitch, too.”
The San Diego product said he’s never been a full fledged starting pitcher. Coming from high school he was a long relief arm, and in college, with a lot of older arms on the staff, he was a middle reliever.
The biggest difference between roles is he has almost too much time to think about his next outing as a starter.
“One thing I feel hurts me is sometimes I know I’m starting and I’ll think about it too much all day. So sometimes I just have to go out and do something and just take my mind off it a little bit,” Erickson said. “Then (I) focus up right before the game and go get after it.”
Mavericks head coach Tyler Jeske has been impressed with how Erickson has handled the role and is looking forward to what he can become.
“He took the ball opening night and has really run with it since then,” Jeske said. “A big part of it’s been we’re going to build up his pitch count and we’re going to do it intelligently. We’re going to do it safely in terms of not just spiking the workload and adding an ending, or 5-10 pitches and out, and build up to a true starter – he’s been huge.
“You have a lot of confidence being able to hand a guy like Gerrit the ball every fifth, sixth day. He’s gotten better as the season’s gone on and I’m looking forward to seeing him continue to grow and take those next steps and see where the chips fall.”
Erickson’s go-to hobbies are golfing and fishing to take his mind off basbeall. He hasn’t used his fishing rod in the Hat yet but is looking forward to potentially reeling in some sturgeon in the South Saskatchewan River.
He has at least one fishing partner on the Mavericks, pitcher Garrett Nicholson. The 23-year-old Nicholson stands one inch taller than Erickson, which has earned the elder pitcher the nickname, “Big Garrett.” That, of course, leaves Erickson’s nickname as, “Little Gerrit.”
It’s something he laughs about and has come around on.
“It’s kind of funny because I’m 6-foot-3 and they’re still calling me little Gerrit, but I do enjoy it,” Erickson said.
‘Little Gerrit’ started on the mound for the Mavericks on Friday when they hosted the Swift Current 57’s for their Canada Day action.
Coming from San Diego, Erickson loved the beach growing up, and during the summer, he took part in a summer-long camp called Junior Lifeguards. He said there he was taught how to be a lifeguard and he started to get into surfing with some of his friends form camp.
“My buddies that I met there, we would start surfing before school, like when the sun would rise, we’d go out really early in the morning so we could get a session in before school,” Erickson said. “Then we would show up with our hair all wet to school. But there’s some days where it’s a lot of fun doing that and the waves are always best in the morning, too, so we’d like to go out really early.”
While he doesn’t surf to get better at baseball, he says he thinks being out on the water helps with his balance and stamina when he’s on the mound.
“The balance comes into it because when you’re pitching you balance up on one leg, and then you have to push off. So it’s always good to have balance and then stamina – surfing really wears you out,” Erickson said. “Sometimes when you’re having a great time out there and the waves are good, you’ll be out there for three, four hours.”
