Rob Rasmussen on Draft Day

Jon Gold: The baseball draft is so different than basketball and football; there are so much less media coverage and mock drafts. Is it equally hard for you to just wait without knowing much?
UCLA pitcher Rob Rasmussen: “The draft is hard to predict. There’s a lot of guesses out there, and you hear anything from first round to fifth round. I thought I had the talent – and the question was could someone overlook my size. I’m really happy that the Marlins did.”

JG: Were you just waiting around like the rest of us?
RR:”I got a couple calls early this morning, started around 8, calling to see what my signability was, where they saw me going. Interestingly enough, the Marlins weren’t one of them. I was kind of sitting around, just watching some teams I thought I could go to, specifically the Cardinals at 75. I was watching on my computer, laying in bed, and the 73rd pick came up and they got me, and I thought, ‘Wait, I haven’t talked to these guys.’ Their area scout called me right after, told me I was the second guy they’d taken and their first pitcher. Right off the bat, I thought I was in a good situation.”


JG: As a player, do you appreciate that there are several steps to take before you reach your goal?
RR: “The first step that I’ll take is winning this College World Series right now. That’s really the first step. Obviously, we have to go through what is it, five different levels? It’s a learning process. Every level, the hitters get better and better, the pitching gets better and better, and it’s about learning how to make adjustments. I think I’m a step ahead, but it’s about that constant learning.”

JG: Talk more about the CWS and what it’s like now that this is over.
RR: “It’s kind of a burden off your shoulders, you know where you’re going – and I know in my case, that the team really likes me – but I can get back and focus on what’s immediately ahead of us, instead of what’s for me in the future. I got drafted and went off to practice. I had my time to celebrate with my roommates, call my friends. But then it was right back to work. Right now, that’s the Super Regionals. The destination is Omaha. But we can’t get there if we don’t win the first game on Friday, and hopefully we don’t have to play on Sunday.”

JG: How hard will it be to win against Cal State Fullerton, which has had success against you this year?
RR: “Fullerton is a little different than they have in the past. They swing with a lot of power. My first two years, they didn’t have this power. But they haven’t seen our weekend guys. They haven’t seen Cole, Bauer, myself. We know our pitching staff is good. Really darn good. We’re going to go out there and do what we’ve done every weekend, and we think that will be enough.”

JG: How confident are you really in the pitching staff?
RR: “We’re extremely confident. The starters, we have confidence in each other. There’s not one day that we go this can be an iffy days. We watch each other pitch and expect each other to win every time out. And once it’s out of our hands, we have complete faith that our ‘pen is going to take care of it. We don’t have to go nine every game. There’s a lot of confidence. And our hitting…our hitting has been timely almost the entire year. There’s a lot of belief we can do some special things.”