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Diamond dreaming

Lakeview ace relies on analysis to succeed

Photos special to Tribune Chronicle / Dianna Oatridge Lakeview pitcher Austin Vogt, the ace of the Bulldogs pitching staff, has high expectations for his future — both in baseball and academics.

As Austin Vogt listened to a speaker at a college visit talk about how she connected the nerves of a person to help them retrieve movement in their arm, the Lakeview junior started to realize he may have found his calling.

“I went to Penn State for a college visit and a (baseball) camp, and I got to listen to one of the ladies talk about what they did,” Vogt recalled. “She talked about one of her experiments where she connected a nerve from someone’s shoulder to their hand using a prosthetic mechanism. Ever since that day I’ve really been interested in doing that. That just really piqued my interest.”

Part of him still hopes it’s Plan B.

The hard-throwing right-hander’s real dream is playing on a baseball diamond — for as long as possible. Vogt currently leads a deep Lakeview pitching staff with a 2.29 ERA, 24 strikeouts and just three walks in 18 1/3 innings. His fastball reaches the mid-80s, but it’s his overall control that Bulldogs coach Mike Johnson said sets him apart.

“He has good velocity, and he has two to three really good off-speed pitches to where he can locate,” he said. “His biggest strength is him being able to locate pitches and command his off-speed pitches. … He doesn’t walk people. If you get on base, you earned it against him. He’s around the strike zone all the time.”

Photos special to Tribune Chronicle / Dianna Oatridge Austin Vogt, right, prepares to make a catch at second base as Poland’s MJ Farber starts his slide during a game earlier this season.

Vogt, who hopes to continue his athletic and academic career at the University of Akron (in part because they have the medical engineering major he wants to pursue), is more than just a pitcher.

He’s one of the smoother fielding shortstops around, according to Johnson. It can be difficult for players to master multiple positions, especially shortstop — one of the hardest spots on the field — but Vogt makes it look easy.

“I haven’t had a kid who works as hard as him at everything — at pitching, at shortstop, at hitting,” Johnson said. “The last time someone worked as hard as him, that I remember since I’ve been coaching, was five years ago at Champion, and Lucas Nasonti was playing for me, and he ends up at YSU as a Division I player. (Vogt) works at every aspect of his game as hard as he can. He’s always working at it. He has natural hands, and you have to have natural hands to be good at (shortstop), but he also works at it to the point that it’s always natural, it’s always smooth.”

Hitting is the last part of Vogt’s game that needs mastered, and he’s made drastic improvements there as well.

He struggled at the plate as a freshman and sophomore, but he changed his swing in the offseason to allow for his bat to remain in the strike zone longer. He’s hitting above .300 at this point in the season and sees the changes paying off.

“Last year I was lot on my front foot, real heavy on my front leg,” Vogt said. “And I had a downward swing. It wasn’t really level, so it wasn’t going through the hitting zone as long. Another thing was my back knee, I kept popping it up, so my whole body would pop up when I swung, which would create that downward swing, and I’d hit a lot of pop-ups and ground balls. I really worked on that with my hitting coach this past offseason, and I’ve been trying to improve that ever since.”

Analyzing is what makes Vogt the way he he is.

It’s what makes him interested in medical engineering. It helped him fix his swing, and it’s also part of what makes him such a good pitcher.

He said he enjoys watching hitters during at-bats, so he can find holes in their swing. He’ll throw different pitches depending on their stance, swinging motion, bat placement, etc. He doesn’t take notes. He relies on a sharp memory to recall the deficiencies.

It’s a tool he picked up from his travel league coach, Matt DeSalvo, a former New York Yankees pitcher who attended Union High School in nearby western Pennsylvania.

“One of the big areas that I really focus on is the mental aspect of pitching,” Vogt said. “I like to study the hitters. I like to see their tendencies, I like to see their stance, I like to analyze them and base my pitches off that. I constantly work on that because that’s one of the big things that my coach, Matt DeSalvo, told me. He said that’s one of the big things that, once you get to the higher level, that you’re going to have to do, and so I’ve been working on that a lot. That’s a lot of what I try to do.”

The next level is still a few years away, but it’s always on Vogt’s mind.

“Every since I was little I’ve always had a dream, and I always aspired to play baseball at the highest level possible,” he said. “One of quotes I live and die by is, ‘Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.’ I’ve always gone by that, so everyday I work to achieve my goal and get better every day and do what’s best to help my team.”

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