Yahoo Finance Sumner’s Jacob Bresnahan is The News Tribune’s 2023 All-Area baseball player of the year
Like most teenagers, Jacob Bresnahan spends time on his cell phone throughout the day. Unlike most teenagers, though, he isn’t spending all his screen time flipping through TikTok or endlessly-addicting social media apps.
At lunch time or on bus rides to Sumner baseball’s away games, Bresnahan and some of his teammates were glued to their phones for another reason: playing chess.
It’s a hobby that Bresnahan, a senior left-handed pitcher at Sumner High School, picked up when he was around 10 years old.
“For some reason, this school year, everyone was playing chess,” Bresnahan said. “Throughout the school, everyone had chess on their Chromebooks, kids were walking around with chess sets. I love chess.
“It’s just a strategic game. It’s like baseball. There are moving pieces, you have to strategize to do this and that. … I like it because it’s like baseball. It’s a thinking game.”
One by one, batter by batter, Bresnahan outmaneuvered opponents all season long for Sumner, which reached the Class 4A state championship game and secured a runner-up finish, the best in school history.
He earned player of the year honors in a loaded 4A South Puget Sound League, posting a 9-1 record with a 0.88 earned run average, striking out 95 hitters. The highlight came against defending state champion Olympia in mid-April, when Bresnahan threw a complete-game, one-hit performance, in which he struck out 19 of the 23 total batters he faced.
Bresnahan, an Oregon commit, was just as dominant at the plate, too. He hit .393 with 11 doubles, four home runs and 33 RBI for the Spartans. He is The News Tribune’s 2023 All-Area player of the year.
“I just attacked,” he said. “I just trusted myself, didn’t try too hard. A lot of times, when people try too hard, they mess up because they’re stressing about it. I just trusted the work I put in and was just myself. … I just stayed competitive and did my thing.”
Bresnahan baffled opposing hitters all season with his four-seam fastball, circle changeup and a curveball that has been his most improved pitch since the start of his high school career.
“That’s just going to make him even more dominant,” Sumner coach Casey Adcox told The News Tribune last month.
Bresnahan’s fastball has touched 92 mph this season, but his changeup is perhaps his most dangerous pitch.
“His changeup is very advanced for a kid his age,” Adcox said. “It’s a very quality pitch. … His command of his changeup is really good, and it looks just like his fastball coming at you.”
Curtis coach Bryan Robinson and his Vikings saw Bresnahan multiple times this spring. They walked away impressed each time.
“He has a command of every one of his pitches, in every count,” Robinson said. “He isn’t just somebody that throws 92, 93, — he throws it with command, with conviction. He knows how to pitch, rather than just rear back and throw it by high school hitters. He’s next-level in everything he does from a pitching standpoint.”
Robinson said Bresnahan’s 19-strikeout game against Olympia was the “single greatest line” he’s ever seen, even having watched players like former Bellarmine Prep star Jon Lester, who went on to be a five-time Major League Baseball All-Star. He thinks Bresnahan could have big-league potential, too, given his ability both at the plate and on the mound.
“It’s kind of refreshing to see he dominated at the plate,” Robinson said. “He’s the definition of a two-way player. ... He’s got a great swing, he knows what he wants to do at the plate and he’s very aggressive, just like he is on the mound.”
Bresnahan can credit his old man with mixing the curveball into his arsenal more often this spring. It turns out that sometimes, at least, parents know what they’re talking about.
“My dad (Shawn) has always harped on it,” he said. “It’s one of those things where you know he’s right but you don’t want to listen to your dad. I just realized over this last summer, I got up to 90 so I kind of had this mentality of, ‘I’m just gonna gas it all by them.’ I was giving up a lot of hits.”
His dad told him that any competent player can hit a fastball. Message received.
“Just being able to read swings helped a lot,” Bresnahan said. “My curveball has come a long way. It helped a lot in the end of the season.”
Particularly, in the state tournament semifinal game against 4A SPSL and valley rival Puyallup. Facing the Vikings for the third time that spring, Bresnahan knew he wasn’t going to sneak by a stacked Vikings’ lineup just throwing fastballs.
“Mixing in that curveball helped a lot,” he said.
It’d be easy to assume that 19 strikeout game was Bresnahan’s season highlight — career highlight, even. But another game jumped to his mind: The 2-1 win against West Valley of Yakima in the opening round of the 4A state tournament. That win sparked three straight wins — also beating Richland in the quarterfinals and Puyallup in the semifinals — sending No. 11 seed Sumner all the way through the state championship game.
“I didn’t do All-Star good, I just had a solid performance,” he said. “But it set the tone for our playoff run, I felt like. … I think that kind of sparked a lot of competitiveness in us as a team to keep rolling for Richland. Puyallup, we kept fighting. … I competed, I attacked and I felt like I set the tone for our team.”
Up next: Eugene, Oregon, where Bresnahan will suit up for the Ducks. Oregon has made an impressive run to the NCAA baseball super regionals this spring.
“I’m just excited to be a part of the program, to grow even more, get the training, develop more as a player,” he said. “They’re doing good this year, it makes me want to hop on campus even more.”
