Bat-man and Robbins - Aiden's Hit-tool Highway to the First Round
Aiden Robbins celebrating a hit - https://texaslonghorns.com/sports/baseball/roster/aiden-robbins/15083
It’s about a 3 hour drive to Houston from Lafayette. The road corridor narrows often on I-10 West. I’m making good time for the Buccee’s pit stop. The marking lines paint the measure of a siren song that’ll drive you into a ditch if you follow them – meaningless decorations on a one lane work zone that should be three. I’m watching the passing parade of thoughts like injury lawyer billboard signs along the swampy prairies of east Texas, thinking about the Bruce Bolt Classic I’m headed to in Houston and why LSU isn’t in it. A couple weeks back in Baton Rouge, PC made our foray into the NCAA press box, expanding from MLB, NPB, KBO, to finally college ball. Here we are at Daikin Park for the weekend tournament, and, look at that – the roof’s open. We made it to Texas.
I can’t help myself. When I was a kid I’d give into the temptation of peeking at the last page of a book to know how it ends. Or, when I look at a tantalizing appetizer at a table I’m not sitting at by myself, I can’t help doing the mental math of how many ‘polite’ pieces I can have (hint, if X pieces divided by number of people is two or greater, subtract one). Similarly to both, I can’t help myself from thinking about the end result of a good college baseball career – how it leads to one place and for one purpose – some might say Omaha, but probably, for the player, it’s the MLB draft. So when I roll into the College Classic, the main thing now on my mind is, who here’s going to go in the first round? More curiously, still, who’s the diamond in the rough?
My eye’s on Texas’ Aiden Robbins, tonight. Ranked at season start in the top 50 of college ball players and playing for a top 4-ranked team isn’t odds-defying at first sight. Widen the timeline. Aiden’s a transfer portaler (can we patent that?) from chilly, northeast, non-SEC Seton Hall University. Zoom out more: he wasn’t even ranked in Perfect Game’s top 500 of prospective High School outfielders before college. Robbins was on no one’s radar. He came out of Holy Ghost Prep in a little Philly Suburb (Yardley, Pennsylvania), and slugged .512 with a .302 average over his 43 freshman games at Seton Hall. Sophomore year, he picked up steam. He hit .422 with a 1.189 OPS across 53 starts, and rolled right into the Cape Cod Summer League. Like a short-track, Olympic speed skater in the last lap – this is where he makes his move.
Aiden Robbins NCAA Stats (Baseball Reference)
Cape Cod is where Robbins put himself on the transfer portal scouting map. He and the Harwich Mariners go 2-17 in July with 7 and 9 game losing streaks and then mount one of the most improbable comebacks to win the league championship. Robbins wins the Thurman Munson Batting Championship and the Mariners sweep top-seeded Yarmouth-Dennis to win it all. Not quite a hot stove between seasons, but a scorching summer.
Robbins teleports himself through the transfer portal from cool Cape Cod seabreezes into burnt orange in Austin, starting center field for the Texas Longhorns. People are skeptical of Robbins’ successes translating to Texas. It’s plausible to think that the northeast school hit tool will buckle under SEC Friday night starters with power sliders as fast as the heat Robbins saw in New Jersey.
On February 21st against Michigan State, Robbins hit for the cycle and made a “ridiculous” diving catch in center field. As of this writing, he’s leading the team with a .457 batting average and 4 home runs in only 9 games. Friday night in Daikin park, he launched a 466-foot home run that actually hit the train. When asked about it, Robbins said, coolly, “I didn’t even feel it coming off the bat. That’s how I knew it was gone.” Adding muscle to mythos, the 6’2” 185 pound Seton Hall standout bulked up to 205 and is now a power hitter threat with web gem agility to match.
The stage isn’t too big for Aiden Robbins. Under the winning tutelage (7th most D1 wins for active skippers) of Jim Schlossnagle, Robbins stands in good company alongside Carson Tinney, Adrian Rodriguez, and Dylan Volantis. After Robbins hit for the cycle, Schlossnagle credited him, stating that “he plays with emotion, but he's not emotional.” Standing in the box bearing an eye-catching “43” with a Jose Altuve bat waggle and leg lift you just can’t miss in the batter’s box in Daikin Park, Robbins looks to climb in the draft board rankings by summer. The stage will get bigger, as Texas, alongside Mississippi State, Georgia Tech, and Arkansas, stands one of the better chances at dethroning LSU or the perhaps-usurping UCLA Bruins, in Omaha.
Here he is up to bat now in a tight game with Baylor in the bottom of the fourth. Rocking a light blue bat like a dad on Father’s Day in the MLB, he’s showing late on breaking balls, and even 90 MPH fastballs. Then, I realize he’s not late – it’s the inside-out swing of a good hitter. He’s covering the zone and able to spray to any field. With power behind his hit-tool while playing an elite position, I look forward to the college career arc of Aiden Robbins and where it bends.
