Autry one part of Chester trio driving Cyclone baseball into postseason

Chester senior Trent Autry has that visceral country strength that isn’t developed in a weight room.

Autry, a 6-foot-2, 210-pound pitcher and shortstop for the Cyclone baseball team, is as sturdy as a brick building, but he had never lifted weights until this winter. His strength came from felling trees with a 10-pound ax.

“There’s too much technique lifting weights,” Autry said with a wily grin. “I always thought it’d be easier taking a 10-pound ax to a tree.”

“He was doing it old school,” said Chester coach Chris Powell, whose team is ranked No. 7 in 3A.

Autry began working with former Chester pitching standout Austin Kerr and others this past winter, particularly on strengthening his mechanics and increasingly drawing power from his lower half. Kerr, a starting pitcher at Coastal Carolina, is not quite as big as Autry and was able to show him a way of throwing less reliant on natural arm strength.

“I always had kind of bad mechanics,” Autry said Wednesday. “I’m using my legs more to take some of the pressure off my arms.”

Kerr, in the midst of his own excellent senior season on the mound for Coastal Carolina, and other former Chester players look at Autry’s God-given physique with a dab of envy. But Kerr also sees Autry as one of the most naturally gifted players he’s encountered, and a guy in need of a little spurring.

“When I went home for break I had a talk with him,” Kerr said. “I told him, ‘if you just really buckle down I’ll show you what we do here at Coastal. I’ll run you through the daily life of what you’re gonna have to go through to get better. You need to work out daily ... I just took him through the entire week and he worked out with me and a couple other guys.”

The effort has absolutely paid off.

Autry has thrown two no-hitters – including one that Chester incredibly lost –allowed no earned runs in 20-plus innings, and consistently kissed 90 miles per hour with his fastball. He’s only allowed two hits all season, both by South Pointe in a 10-strikeout, 8-0 shutout win for Autry and Chester.

“It’s like Nintendo numbers,” said South Pointe coach Joel Taylor. “The kid’s having an amazing year, really putting it all together.”

Autry’s fastball topped out at 92 earlier this season, a radar reading courtesy of an Atlanta Braves scout, one of the several pro baseball scouts who have watched him this spring. Autry is committed to USC Lancaster, but it’s possible he never makes it to junior college.

“I want to go to school, but if I get drafted I’ll probably wind up going pro,” he said. “It’s also gonna have to be the right amount of money.”

Autry knows when some of the scouts are coming, but Powell doesn’t tell him all the time.

“I found out with him, when he knows he steps up to that level,” said the coach. “I think that’s been good for him because even when he doesn’t know they’re coming, he’s playing at a high level every single time.”

Formerly listed on recruiting web sites as third baseman/right-handed pitcher, Autry is now listed as a pitcher first but that doesn’t mean his robot-like production is limited to his arm. He’s batting .542 with eight home runs, 29 RBI and a .639 on-base percentage, in part a product of 10-pound ax sessions, as well as ample protection in the lineup. Autry bats third, followed by Erskine signee Josh Alley, a 6-foot-5, 235-pound redwood batting .458 with four home runs and a team-high 33 RBI. Junior South Carolina commitment Jake Wright leads off and is hitting .478.

Alley and Wright are ace arms in their own right. Alley has a 0.94 ERA, while Wright leads the team with 48 strikeouts; the pair have each tossed two one-hitters this season. Two other pitchers – Tyler Jordan and Luke Blanchett – give Chester nearly a full pitching staff to lean on.

“From a coaching standpoint, I’m a fortunate man,” said Powell, in his first year as the Cyclones’ head coach. “I know that any point in time I can go to either one of these three, or Tyler Jordan and Luke Blanchett.”

Any of the five can start and close games. That kind of depth on the mound will be crucial for the Cyclones’ playoff hopes. They’re tied for first place in Region 3-3A with Clinton at 5-2, which puts them on track for crossing off goal No. 1 from the list that the team made at the start of the season: win the region.

The second item on the list was a little more surprising to the uninitiated Chester baseball observer: the program hasn’t won a baseball playoff game in over 20 years. But Autry, Alley and Wright give their teammates and coach belief that this year should be the year to end the postseason victory drought.

“That team, with what they have in three really, really good arms, and they’re swinging too, I think they’re ready for a deep run,” said Kerr.

Chester’s third season goal was to win the district. It’s a tall tree of a goal, but the Cyclones have the right man to chop it down.

This story was originally published April 17, 2015 at 1:02 PM with the headline "Autry one part of Chester trio driving Cyclone baseball into postseason."