Justin Foscue: from not feared to first round
It was in the moments after a Mississippi State win over LSU in March of 2019 when Bulldogs head coach Chris Lemonis told a story of one of his early conversations with Justin Foscue. In Lemonis' first fall as State's coach, he told his new infielder exactly what he thought of him as a hitter.
“(Foscue) tells me now I made him mad,” Lemonis told reporters last year. “I just told him, ‘You don’t scare me when you hit.’ It was a lot of backside stuff (with his swing). He really went in the cages and worked in the offseason (before the 2019 campaign). When he came back in spring training, that’s when I knew. The ball was really jumping out to the pull side. He’s taken it into the (2019) season.”
Whether it was the motivation provided by Lemonis or just Foscue's intense, driven demeanor, he certainly did explode in 2019. After a 2018 in which he hit just .241 with three home runs, Foscue followed it up with a 2019 where he batted .331 with 14 homers. He also added 22 doubles, drove in 60 runs and struck out only once every 8.6 at-bats on average. Foscue had become a totally different ballplayer. It carried over into the shortened 2020 season as Foscue was hitting .321 with a pair of long balls and four doubles when the year was called off due to the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
On the night Lemonis told the story of his early chat with Foscue, it was an evening in which Foscue hit a pair of his 2019 homers. Asked if he was even surprising himself with how he'd blossomed as a player, Foscue displayed the confidence that made him a first-round pick by the Texas Rangers this past Wednesday night.
“It’s not a shock,” Foscue said at the time. “I’m supposed to be doing this.”
He of course kept right on doing and it and the Rangers noticed. Foscue became the 15th Bulldog all-time to be picked in the first round of the regular June MLB Draft. He is the fifth-highest draft pick in school history behind only Will Clark, B.J. Wallace, Paul Maholm and Hunter Renfroe.
It might've seemed like a long shot, at best, just two years ago. But here Foscue is, having risen from not feared to first-rounder.
For more on Foscue, here is his Bulldog career bio courtesy of Mississippi State media relations:
On the short list of Mississippi State baseball student-athletes to appear at the College World Series twice, Foscue earned All-America honors from all seven publications after a breakout sophomore season in 2019. A three-year starter, Foscue made the move from third base to second base in 2019 and didn’t skip a beat. In 62 starts, he hit .331 with 36 extra base hits – including 14 home runs – and he struck out only 32 times in 275 at bats.
Spending the 2019 summer with the USA Baseball Collegiate National Team, Foscue made 14 appearances with 12 starts for Team USA. He tied for the team lead in doubles (3) during the summer and picked up right where he left off to start the 2020 season. In the shortened 2020 campaign, Foscue owned five multi-hit games and four multi-RBI games. He posted at least one RBI in the first eight games of the season and produced an RBI in 11 of 16 games.
Foscue owns a career .380 career on-base percentage in 141 games played (131 starts) with 100 runs scored and 96 RBIs. In 594 career plate appearances, Foscue has struck out in just 9.6% of his plate appearances (57 strikeouts) and walked in 11.3% of those (67 walks). In 83 starts over the last two seasons, he posted a .320 batting average and reached base in 70 of those contests.