The RoundHouse | 2/16/2022 5:31:00 PM
Podcast with pitchers Spencer Hynes and Connor Holden
Chuck Ingram started his college career with a burst of power, one of those that makes it seem as if baseball is easy.
Double, triple, double, double, single, home run, single, double. His first eight hits for Wichita State included six for extra bases.
"I can hit a fastball, but anyone can hit a fastball," he said.
College baseball isn't easy. However, Ingram isn't used to athletics coming easy.
He battled injuries at Rockhurst High School in Kansas City while playing football and baseball. He didn't make varsity teams until his junior year. COVID cost him a season of baseball and when combined with a wrist injury, ruined his preparation for his freshman year at Wichita State.
He was a catcher who wanted to play the outfield. As a freshman at Wichita State, Ingram wasn't sure he would make the team after a difficult 2020 fall.
"It was pretty rough," he said. "That fall, I had no confidence in myself at all."
A year later, Ingram is a key part of Wichita State's lineup in the outfield. The Shockers open the season on Friday at Louisiana Tech to start a three-game series.
Ingram is coming off a strong fall in which he became the star of Shocker baseball's Twitter documenting of "exit velo," the measurement of who hits baseballs hard. He is responsible for six of the top eight from the fall, a list topped by his 115.7 mph screamer.
"He has a lot of raw power," Wichita State coach
Eric Wedge said. "When he touches it, it goes a long way."
Ingram knew he needed to touch the baseball more often after that sizzling start to his freshman season. He finished 2022 hitting .225 with 34 strikeouts and four walks in 32 games. He hit four doubles and three home runs.
Off-speed pitches, as they often do with freshmen, frustrated him.
"I couldn't hit off-speed, and I was chasing," he said.
Ingram spent the summer and fall working on that problem. Chats with his father, a former minor-league catcher helped. Their routine is for Jeff Ingram to video one at-bat each game so they can discuss.
"I have a lot of talks with my dad about this, and he always tells me that if it starts at your knees, it's going to be a ball,"
Chuck Ingram said. "I've gotten a lot better at recognizing it out of the hand and being able to stay back."
Jeff Ingram wants to encourage and mentor, so that his son will learn to fix his own problems. He coached his son in youth baseball, including several years on a team led by Kansas City Royals president of baseball operations Dayton Moore.
"Chuck just needed to get at-bats seeing nothing but sliders, curveballs, changeups," Jeff Ingram said. "Tell the coaches in summer league, tell the coaches in the fall that he wants to sit in the middle of the lineup when the pitchers start throwing off-speed and show him a steady diet of off-speed."
He wanted his son to study all the subtle things that can give a hitter an edge – watching how the pitcher holds the ball in his glove, arm speed, how the ball comes out of the hand.
"He was just getting in the box and taking hacks," Jeff Ingram said. "It just really came down to recognition of secondary pitches."
Chuck Ingram played for the Derby Twins in the Sunflower League last summer. He saw a lot of breaking pitches. He began to build the skills and confidence to recognize which ones he could hit and which ones he needed to let go out of the strike zone.
"I would get up to the plate and it was people snapping off curveballs every pitch," he said. "This fall, I was still chasing a little bit, but I was recognizing curveballs out of the hand and, actually, hitting curveballs pretty far. I've still got a lot of work to do, but I'm working on spitting on those pitches in the dirt."
Wedge notices the improvement.
"You can see some of the pitches, breaking balls down, that he used to swing at, he is laying off of them or he is recognizing them sooner," Wedge said.
Chuck Ingram is used to struggling a bit and working hard to overcome. He played fullback and defensive end for Rockhurst and credits the football conditioning with improving his strength and speed. He was a late-bloomer who didn't run like an outfielder until the summer before his junior year in high school.
"I've failed more times than I can remember," he said. "I was not getting recruited heavily. I was not having scouts come to watch me. I'm used to not being the top guy, and I think that's helped me out a lot. I've had injuries. I've had it all. If you've failed before, you know how to handle it."
Paul Suellentrop covers Wichita State Athletics and the American Athletic Conference for university Strategic Communications. Story suggestion? Contact him at paul.suellentrop@wichita.edu.
