Swiney's Gem Rates High on Baseball America List

Junior left-hander Nick Swiney pitched eight innings of one-hit ball against Purdue in the Cambra College Classic on Feb 29 to earn the No. 3 spot on Baseball America's list of the best pitched games of the shortened 2020 college baseball season

Jaylynn Nash/NC State athletics

Nick Swiney got off to a blazing start on the mound for the NC State baseball team this season by striking out a career-high 11 batters in each of his first two starts, against James Madison and Tennessee Tech.

Those performances, however, were just a prelude to the masterpiece the junior left-hander produced on Feb. 29 against Purdue in the Cambria College Classic at US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.

Swiney allowed a leadoff single and hit a batter in the first before retiring the final 22 men he faced in combining with reliever Dalton Feeney on a one-hit shutout of the Boilermakers. That 6-0 victory has been ranked as the third-best pitching performance in college baseball's shortened 2020 season by Baseball America.

That's an impressive ranking, considering that the first two performances on the list were no-hitters -- including a perfect game against Cornell by Duke's Bryce Jarvis.

Swiney needed only 98 pitches, 74 of them strikes, in his game on the way to becoming the first Wolfpack pitcher to strike out 15 in a game since first-round draft pick Carlos Rodon did it against Georgia Tech on April 25, 2014. He was named the ACC's Pitcher of the Week for his effort.

Primarily a reliever for his first two seasons at State, Swiney was well on his way to becoming one of the most dominant pitchers in the conference when the season was ended because of the coronavirus pandemic.

In his four appearances, he gave up only four earned runs -- going 4-0 with a 1.29 earned run average, 42 strikeouts and only six walks.

Here's the link to the entire list of Baseball America's top 25 pitching performances of 2020.