Pitching, pitching, pitching. It seems like all we ever do around here anymore, right? The most noteworthy pitching performances from college baseball’s second Saturday of the season below, but, before we start, a quick recap of some recent stuff you may have missed this weekend…

College Mid-Week Update, featuring the battle between Mike Leake and Kyle Gibson
All Strasburg, all the time!
College pitching from the second Friday night of the season

Matt Harvey (North Carolina): 4 IP 0 H 0 ER 2 BB 7 K, 2 separate games

Comparing any college pitcher to Stephen Strasburg is unfair and irresponsible, so let’s do it anyway. Strasburg will be the first overall pick of the 2009 Rule 4 Draft. Matt Harvey is the early favorite to go first overall in 2010. Below is a fair and responsible look at how their numbers stack up so far:

Harvey’s line: 9 IP 3 H 3 ER 2 BB 18 K (1 WP, 1 HBP)

Strasburg’s line: 12.1 IP 8 H 2 ER 3 BB 27 K (1 WP, 1 HBP)

Harvey

K/9: 18
K/BB: 9/1
GO/AO/LO: 3/3/2

Strasburg

K/9: 19.7
K/BB: 9/1
GO/AO/LO: 4/4/1

In the weird and wonderful world of amateur baseball, performance doesn’t always necessarily tell the whole story, what with park factors, levels of competition, strength of schedules, and relatively small samples and all. It’s hard to line up two statistical profiles and draw any kind of grand conclusion. But the raw numbers comparing Strasburg and Harvey do suggest similar performances thus far, something I think is pretty interesting.

There are reasons every move Strasburg makes is newsworthy and I’m not not not trying to say that anybody here or elsewhere is sleeping on Matt Harvey (he’s a big deal and has been for a good long while), I’m just throwing this out there as a lead-in to my question – what is the likelihood, if it exists at all, that Matt Harvey reaches the same level of hype other elite college pitchers (Strasburg, Price, and Prior, to name a few) had heading into his draft year?

Six other pitchers to watch after the jump… (more…)