If Cougars’ baseball head coach Monte Lee ’00 had a team full of Bailey Obers, he’d surely win a lot of games. He also might get bored. With Bailey Ober, Lee explains, there’s just not that much coaching that he needs to do. Ober arrived at the College last year like the perfect Christmas gift: nicely wrapped, ready to go, no assembly required.
“You almost feel guilty,” says Lee. “You feel like you don’t have to do anything.”
By that Lee means the sophomore, who stands 6’ 8” tall, is the near-complete package, in need of just a bit of fine tuning. He’s got “pinpoint command” of his pitches, says Lee, which is unusual for such a tall guy. He also has “great poise and composure,” the coach continues, “which you don’t often see in younger athletes.”
And that’s not just Lee’s opinion. The National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association named Ober Freshman Pitcher of the Year in July after he finished his first season as 
a Cougar with a 10-3 record and a 1.52 ERA, the third-best ERA in College history and the lowest earned run average among all NCAA freshman pitchers in 2014. Ober was also named the Colonial Athletic Association’s Rookie of the Year and played a critical role in getting the Cougars to the Super Regionals and just shy of the College World Series.
There are a couple of reasons it’s so hard to hit against Ober. He packs an arsenal of three devastating pitches, including a curveball, a blistering 92-mph fastball and a changeup that drops to 78 mph. What’s more, Ober throws those three very different pitches from the same arm slot and with the same arm speed, meaning hitters are often unsure of what pitch will be coming toward them until it’s too late.
“That is what guys in the big leagues do,” says Lee. “There’s an extreme level of deception.”
Beyond that, Ober’s 92-mph fastball, which he throws downhill on account of his height, seems more like 100 mph. All this makes Ober a very high prospect for professional baseball teams, and – after earning an alternate spot on the USA Baseball Collegiate National Team during the summer – he is returning for his sophomore year with high hopes for himself and his teammates.
“I think we’ll be pretty good,” says Ober. “We’ve got a lot of good guys coming back and we’ve got one of the best coaching staffs in the country.”
Not that those coaches have to do much coaching when it comes to Ober. After all, look what they’re working with.
Photos by Mike Ledford
