The Chicago Cubs took a step toward improving their pitching staff when they picked Point Loma Nazarene University relief pitcher Brad Clipp last week in the 33rd round of the first-year player draft.
“I’m very excited to get a chance to play at the professional level,” said the 6-foot-3-inch right-hander. He saved seven games in 2006 and posted a 3.22 ERA in 22 innings while striking out 27 hitters with eight walks. Clipp helped lead PLNU to a 36-14 record and an appearance in the NAIA play-offs. He also had an impressive junior season in 2005, earning a save and striking out 23 batters in 16 appearances.
“I’m very happy for him, but I had a feeling he would be drafted. He had a good season for us and he’s an extremely good guy,” Associate Head Coach Joe Schaefer said.
Prior to PLNU, Clipp played at Palomar Junior College for two years and was named an All-PAC Honorable Mention in both seasons. He also earned two varsity letters at Scripps Ranch High School.
It is too early to say whether or not the Cubs will use Clipp in a relief role, but it is not unprecedented for a reliever to go from college baseball and remain in that position in the majors. Both Clipp and Schaefer believe he will be used as a reliever or set-up man.
There are many factors that go into a new player getting called up to the majors from a similar role in college, which include talent, availability and need. Just two years ago, former Texas Longhorn Huston Street was a top reliever and then was drafted by the Oakland Athletics to become their top reliever last season. Street not only had enough talent to play in the majors, but the A’s were in need of a reliever going into last season.
The Cubs are currently in a similar position.
“Right now I’m in Mesa, Arizona in a spring training for the other rookie and Low single-A players,” Clipp said. “I’ll have a better idea of where I’ll be playing within the organization by the end of the week.”<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Chicago Cubs took a step toward improving their pitching staff when they picked Point Loma Nazarene University relief pitcher Brad Clipp last week in the 33rd round of the first-year player draft.“I’m very excited to get a chance to play at the professional level,” said the 6-foot-3-inch right-hander. He saved seven games in 2006 […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"Cubs 'Clipp' PLNU Pitcher To Roster's Belt","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sdnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}