Maryland's Three-Headed Monster

Maryland Baseball is in the midst of one of the most remarkable seasons in its program's history, and its three-headed monster of a weekend pitching rotation has a lot to do with that.

Sophomore Jason Savacool, junior Ryan Ramsey, and junior Nick Dean are three of the most skilled pitchers in college baseball and have combined to become one of the most formidable trios in program history.

"We've had some high end guys here like Mike Shawaryn, Jake Stinnett, Taylor Bloom, and Brian Shaffer, but I don't know that I've had three that I look at [like this current rotation]," head coach Rob Vaughn said before the season started. "I think all three of those guys are Friday night starters, we just kind of have the luxury of spreading them out across the weekend."

Each pitcher opened a series for the Terps this season as the coveted “Friday night starter”. 

Savacool began the year as Maryland's Sunday starter, coining the term “Savy Sunday’s” for his days on the mound, but has since moved up to the Friday night role.

Ramsey began the season as the Saturday starter and made some starts on Friday night before being slotted back to Saturday due to weather delays and schedule changes. 

Dean was Maryland's ace coming into the year and is now at the back end of the rotation, making him one of the best Sunday starters in the entire country.

The season isn’t over yet, but that hasn’t stopped the accolades from pouring in.

Ramsey was selected to the All-Big Ten First Team and ranked the No. 21 starting pitcher in the country in D1Baseball's Week 12 Position Rankings. 

Savacool landed on the All-Big Ten First Team and was ranked No. 24 by D1Baseball on that list. 

Dean was named to the All-Big Ten Third Team and ranked the No. 31 starting pitcher in the nation in D1Baseball's preseason rankings.

What makes Savacool, Ramsey, and Dean unique and successful as a unit is that each of them has a different pitching style and diverse personalities. 

"Dean will listen to anything you tell him and he'll go out there and respond … he's the one that's a little bit calmer than the others," Maryland pitching coach Mike Morrison said. "Ramsey on game days is very to himself and he just kind of gets the pitch and reacts and that's what makes him really good, is just limiting the thinking. And then Savy on the other hand, he's the other end of the spectrum. He's one of the most intelligent kids I've ever coached and honestly, I've ever seen on a baseball field."

Vaughn officially hired Morrison last summer, shortly after former pitching coach Corey Muscara left to be the pitching coach at Wake Forest. Muscara will make his return to Bob "Turtle" Smith Stadium with the Demon Deacons on Friday for the College Park Regional.

"Anytime you have turnover, it's not fun," Vaughn said. "But you have to kind of start identifying some things."

Maryland assistant coach Anthony Papio came to Vaughn last June and told him he's worked with Morrison in camps and said, "he's our kinda dude."

Vaughn reached out to Coastal Carolina head coach Gary Gilbert and asked him if he could meet with Morrison, a career Coastal guy who was working down there last summer. 

Over Father's Day weekend in 2021, Vaughn took a trip to Myrtle Beach with his parents and his now 5-year-old son Wyatt. During that NCAA dead period, Vaughn and Morrison met for what they thought would just be a brief visit for coffee in South Carolina. Instead, they were there for almost four hours.

"At that moment, it was very clear," Vaughn said. "This is our guy."

Regardless of Morrison's short coaching resume at just 28-years-old, Vaughn liked the person he was, and he built his program around people. The Terps' skipper thinks that a program will win with good people.

Morrison is fresh off of his playing career. He walked on as a pitcher at Coastal Carolina and played for the Chanticleers from 2013 to 2016. He was a massive part of the national championship team in 2016, going 8-1 with a 1.50 ERA and 11 saves in 34 total appearances. 

Ramsey specifically enjoys Morrison's fun personality, and he credits a lot of his success this season to the fact that Morrison is his coach and recently played the game.

"He's brought a lot of responsibility to us," Ramsey said. "He's fresh off of playing himself and it's nice having him around because he's a young and fun guy that just pushes us to do the right thing."

Every team is different in who calls pitches throughout each game. Morrison calls pitches for the Terps. He called pitches for Ramsey on April 29 against Northwestern when Ramsey threw the 20th nine-inning perfect game in NCAA Division I history. Tears flowed for Morrison after that game, and the two embraced for a while.

Savacool, who Muscara recruited at St. John's before he came to Maryland under him, stayed in College Park after the departure of his former pitching coach. The right-handed pitcher from Baldwinsville, New York, quickly adapted to Morrison's ways once he came in.

"He's awesome," Savacool said. "He's a guy who always has your back as a pitcher. If you go out there and make a bad pitch, he'll take responsibility for it. He's a guy that you want to pitch for. He's really competitive but is able to keep his emotions in check for us and keep us confident and competitive during games. He's such a great coach overall, but I love his in-game aspect where he really wants to get after it with us."

Maryland sophomore catcher Luke Shliger also gets an in-depth look at this pitching rotation. Shliger, a member of the All-Big Ten Second Team, has caught in every Big Ten game this season and all but five weekend starts for this staff. 

"[Catching them] makes my job a little bit easier," Shliger said. "You know what you are going to get every week. You'll get a lot of consistency and a lot of pounding the strike zone and attacking hitters … They're all unique in their own way."

Part of what makes Savacool, Ramsey, and Dean so effective as a group is their uniqueness and how difficult it is for opponents to adjust to that.

Savacool weighed about 185 pounds as a freshman last season and got up to about 210 pounds this season after transforming his body in the weight room and working with Maryland strength and conditioning coach Nathan Garza this offseason.

The right-hander has one of the most versatile pitching arsenals in the nation, as he features a sinking fastball, two-seam fastball, and four-seam fastball in the low to mid-90s, along with a sweeping slider and curveball.

The Terps flip from a righty with a sinking fastball on Fridays to a lefty with a high ride fastball in Ramsey on Saturdays. The lefty from Montvale, New Jersey, throws a lot of fastballs in the low 90s that have a ride to them, and he has a changeup, slider, and curveball to complement the fastball.

Maryland goes back to a right-hander on Sunday to close the weekend out. Dean, who has been a starter since 2020, features an elite changeup and offspeed pitches, along with a low 90s fastball, curveball, and slider.

It is difficult for opposing hitters to see three different pitchers in each game of a weekend series, which makes Maryland's starters so effective. Opponents bat .193 against Ramsey (second in the Big Ten), .209 against Savacool (sixth in the Big Ten), and .256 against Dean (18th in the Big Ten).

Behind the dish, Shliger has to adjust each game to three separate arms and arsenals, but it has not been difficult for the sophomore catcher and the three-headed monster.

"At first as you get used to your rotation, [it can be hard adjusting to each pitcher]," Shliger said. "But as you go on, you build chemistry and I think that I have tremendous chemistry with all three of them, so we all attack the weekend together."

Not only do they all attack the weekend together, but they thrive off of each other, and they push each other to get better every outing.

"When you have three horses like we do, they compete against each other a good bit," Morrison said. 

Savacool describes the competition in the rotation as a "friendly competitive environment."

"It's really good to have those guys around to learn from and them being a little bit older than me really helps," Savacool said. "They've been through a lot of things that they could teach me about … but it's really nice to have a friendly competitive environment just pushing each other and trying to outwork each other, which really drives us all to be better in the long run and allows us to compete beside each other really well."

Savacool (8-2, 2.89 ERA, 99.2 IP, 117 K), the Big Ten strikeouts leader, and Ramsey (10-1, 3.49 ERA, 85 IP, 76 K), the Big Ten wins leader, will make their second career NCAA Regional appearances this weekend. In addition, Dean (6-2, 4.44 ERA, 77 IP, 73 K) will make his NCAA Regional debut after missing last season's Greenville Regional with a wrist injury.

The Terps are hosting a regional for the first time in school history, but they are hungry for more. The team's mantra all year has been to do something that has never been done before. Savacool, Ramsey, and Dean hope to propel the Terrapins to do something never been done before at Maryland; to reach the College World Series.

"They all want to be the best guy on the staff, and that is not an arrogant thing at all," Morrison said. "That's just part of being a great player. When you are a great player, you want to be the best player on the team. I think these three guys work their butts off every day to continue to grow and just the collective group of really good creates guys wanting to be even better."