Pitcher of the Week - Week Two - Charlie Leesman - Cincinnati Steam

Cincinnati, home of the Reds, the Bengals, and now the recently named Pitcher of the Week for the week of June 18-24 of the Great Lakes Summer Collegiate League, a wood-bat baseball league for college athletes. Charlie Leesman, a Cincinnati native, and sophomore at Xavier University, turned in a beautiful pitching performance, a single-hit game, against the Stark County Terriers to earn him the title this week.

Although a hometown atmosphere can put extra pressure on players to do well, the fact that Leesman is playing to the home crowd works to his favor.

“It make things a lot better because there’s a lot of Elder [Leesman’s high school] fans,” Leesman says.

Hopefully they continue to cheer because it seems to help.

“Charlie [Leesman] is pitching very well this season,” says Assistant General Manager Tony Brumfield. “The only run he’s given up all year was a home run on opening night. He’s pitched perfectly.”

The “perfect” pitching definitely shows up in Leesman’s stats. He has an ERA of 0.56 and an opponent batting average of 0.085 in 16 innings with a record of 2-1, putting him almost at the lead of all pitchers in the League.

Leesman says his fastball helped do the trick for the game against the Terriers. Considering that he’s fresh off of a shoulder surgery, pitching a one-hit game is more than most could hope for, but he never really thought no-hitter during the game.

“I think about that that stuff before the game, but not during the game,” Leesman said, although he was pitching a perfect game until the Terriers got a base in the fourth inning. However, Leesman maintains that it’s slightly easier to pitch in this league because players are still making adjustments to compensate for the heavier wood bat.

The pitching certainly looks like it’s coming easy for Leesman, and hard on the batters that face him.

Coach Brumfield says, “He’s only given up four hits within 16 innings… and he’s coming off a tremendous spring with Xavier.”

Hopefully, that tremendous spring will spill into tremendous summer with the Cincinnati Steam.