‘Never seen anything quite as special’: Aidan King’s 20 K game still hard to believe

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Aidan King woke up on Wednesday morning and felt bad. Nauseous. Sick to his stomach.

He didn’t stay that way.

In fact, King had never been better. And most high school hurlers who set foot on a pitching mound would only dream about a performance like the one King had this week. The Bishop Snyder senior who has signed with the University of Florida put on a pitching clinic that is practically unheard of in the pitch count era.

King struck out 20 Providence batters during a one-hitter in a 3-0 win in the Region 1-3A quarterfinals on Wednesday night. As a footnote, King belted a homer and doubled, too. But the pitching numbers were so overpowering that even two extra-base hits got lost in the headlines on an all-around spectacular night of baseball across the board for area teams.

King said that he lost track of what number he was at after he whiffed the first 10 batters of the game. By the time he walked off the mound earning the first playoff win in Snyder history, King said he heard the number and didn’t think it was accurate. The win sends the Cardinals (19-8) on the road to face top-seeded Pensacola Catholic (27-1) on Saturday night.

“Before I even got home and my phone was blowing up just from messages and stuff from old coaches and teammates. Like, are you serious? You’re unbelievable and all that,” said King, whose 138 Ks this season rank eighth nationally.

“And it’s just like, I guess what I did was pretty unbelievable; 20 strikeouts, and there’s only 21 outs to play in baseball. It’s pretty unheard of. ... But it was pretty neat. It was special to enjoy it with my family. I mean, it’s my last home game, it’s something special.”

Added Snyder head baseball coach Zach Osbeck: “I’ve never seen anything quite as special as what I witnessed last night.”

There are 21 outs in a seven-inning game. The odds of a pitcher striking out 20 batters on any team, let alone one the caliber of Providence, a state semifinalist last year, are infinitesimal. But King did just that, allowing just three baserunners in all. He allowed one hit, hit a batter and walked one. King and catcher Grant Sheppard were in synch like never before. He threw the maximum 105 pitches and 74 for strikes.

“That was an unbelievable experience, honestly. And to be real honest, I don’t even know how special it was until, you know, after the game,” Osbeck said. “We’re shaking hands and one of my assistant coaches, said ‘20′. And I went, ‘huh?’ He goes, ‘20 strikeouts.’ And it just dawned on me.”

The feat is even more rare at the Major League Baseball level than it is in high school. Three big leaguers — Washington’s Max Scherzer, the Cubs’ Kerry Wood and Boston’s Roger Clemens (twice) — have notched 20 Ks in a game. No high schooler in Florida has hit that number this season.

Providence coach Tommy Boss said that King’s control was “amazing.”

“The most impressive thing to me was how he dominated the strike zone. Everyone knows his stuff is elite, but the way he commanded the baseball in the zone was amazing,” Boss said. “Seemed like he was 0-2, 1-2 on every hitter in the game. As a pitching guy, it was fun to watch …not so much being in the other dugout.”

The National Federation of State High School Associations lists the seven-inning record for strikeouts at 24 (Lingleville, Texas’ Brett Jennings in 1986). Three batters reached on passed balls, but that just meant three more whiffs for Jennings. Six in the NFHS record book have 23 and a dozen have carded 22 in a seven-inning game. But the most recent of those games was in 2014, and much has changed in that span. Florida has a pitch count not to exceed 105 in a game for players 17 and 18 years old. The old rule was innings pitched. It wasn’t uncommon to see high schoolers logging 165 or more pitches in a game in the early parts of the last decade.

“About 12U, someone put into my mind, like each inning, you need to think about like 15 pitches an inning,” King said. “But if you stay under 15 pitches and you get in trouble later in the game, you still have those extra pitches. So, I have always kept that in mind.”

That makes precision and placement at a premium now more than ever.

King said he had coaches when he was younger, Chris Crawford, Corey Crawford and Cody Crawford, who drilled in just how important working on control and spots would be long term. Pitching coach Rusty Kellum has kept that emphasis at the high school level. No better example of how that has worked for King (9-1, 0.81 ERA, 69.1 IP) than this year. His walk last night was just his seventh all season.

“From a very young age, say like 9 [years old], they’re always like, ‘your velo [velocity] is going to get there, but it’s all about the location.’ Because no matter what, if you throw 95, or if you throw 75, if you leave it down the middle, it’s going to get hit at some point in time,” King said. “So, working the corners is going to be very important to you.”

King said that besides the sickness, which was probably from something he ate the night before, it was a day like any other. He got texts throughout Wednesday from former Snyder players who he said left an impact on him when they played, and that they’d be going to the game. Nick Wrubluski, Dolan Ramsey, Kale Kellum, former Snyder players who King said he looked up to when he was coming through the Cardinals ranks, were headed to the game to cheer the team on.

Those in attendance got a chance to see history.

King, one of only two Snyder seniors along with Mason Baptist, said those players left an impact on him when he was an underclassmen, something that he and Baptist have tried to do.

“It was kind of neat, because I grew up from my freshman year, even eighth grade year, like I grew up with them, and just built a good friendship with them,” King said. “So, it was a cool experience to share that memory of what happened last night with them.”

Osbeck has coached in the area for nearly three full decades and coached players like Billy Butler and Eric Hurley. He coached against the Englewood powerhouse in the Brett Myers championship heyday and saw First Coast when Stephen Barnes was ringing up batters.

None were as dominant in one game as what King delivered Wednesday night.

“I just wanted to go back and start the game over and just appreciate it you know, because when you’re in the middle of it, you don’t really know what you’re witnessing, you know, until you really get appreciation and look at the end of it,” Osbeck said. “So yeah, that was extremely special and unbelievable experience and just a great outing for Aidan.”