Jack Ohman came to Yale with big-league pedigree. After scuffling to get hitters out in his first few weeks, he knew he needed a new pitch.

“I was struggling in the fall, and still struggling in the spring intrasquads,” Ohman said. “Two weeks before the season started, I added a new pitch to my arsenal and it just took off from there. I needed the repetitions, to fail, to learn what I needed to do and how to adjust.”

Ohman, a righthander, the son of former big league pitcher Will Ohman, throws in the  mid-90s, touching 97 MPH with his fastball. He has an overhand “spike” curve, thrown with a one fingertip up, and a changeup. To this impressive repertoire, he added a “gyro slider.”

“My pitching coach (Chris) Wojick said, ‘You need a pitch that goes left,'”Jack Ohman said. “So I played around for a while and I was throwing more of a cutter than a slider, it did not play very well off my fastball. I just messed around a little more and got the gyro spin.”

He unveiled it in his first start against The Citadel, in which Ohman got the call because a teammate had the flu. He allowed one hit in five innings, striking out five, and seven starts later he is Jack Oh-sixty-seven. Going into his scheduled start against Princeton on Sunday in New Haven, Ohman is 6-0, allowing 31 hits, with 15 walks and 62 strikeouts in 54 innings — leading the nation in ERA at 0.67.

“The thing about Jack is, he’d never let you know that,” said senior Colton Shaw, Yale’s Game 1 starter. “You’d never know it unless you saw it on the internet. That’s what makes him a special guy.”

Last weekend, taking the mound after Yale’s extra-inning loss at Penn, Ohman pitched 6 2/3 strong innings to gain the Bulldogs a split of the doubleheader, and they went on to win the series. Though his ERA “ballooned” from 0.19 to 0.67, he’s still a full run better than Drew Horn of Middle Tennessee State, second in NCAA Division I at 1.75.

“There’s no better guy in those spots,” Shaw said. “Last weekend he didn’t have his best stuff, and he still turned in a quality outing. That goes to show what he can do on the mound.”

For Central Connecticut baseball, the NCAA’s top hitting team, line drives reign supreme

Will Ohman, a left-hander, pitched for the Cubs, Braves, Dodgers, Orioles, Marlins and White Sox between 2000-2012 and remains a powerful resource of pitching acumen for his son. Jack would often join his father in the clubhouse and batting cages, meeting players like Manny Ramirez in Los Angeles, Paul Konerko and Chris Sale in Chicago.

As he grew up and began pitching in Arizona, Jack Ohman gravitated toward the Ivy League.

“My family and I always put academics and athletics both high up in importance,” he said. “So I wanted to go to a spot that blended those two, where I could still have an opportunity to play at the next level. The moment I stepped foot on campus, I felt, ‘These are my people.’ Whenever I take the mound, I want to win for the people behind me and that’s a big deal to have, because you don’t have that everywhere.”

Ohman has been Ivy League Rookie of the Week four times, Pitcher of the Week twice, and is the College Baseball Hall of Fame’s national Pitcher of the Year watch list. He’s on a trajectory that could make him a first-round pick before he’s finished in college, but he is committed to his studies in economics, and envisions himself following in the footsteps of Yale grads like Theo Epstein, Mike Elias, James Click, Chaim Bloom or Craig Breslow and becoming an executive when his playing days are over.

“When Jack visited and we showed us what our vision is,” coach Brian Hamm said, “that he could be somebody who could get the chance to pitch right away, a luxury we have over some Power Five schools. That, with Chris Wojick and what he does with our pitchers, is what he was looking for in the college experience. Being the son of a big leaguer, he appreciates organizations with standing in history and what they have to offer in terms of identity.”

You may remember “gyro ball” as a term identified with former Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, but Ohman’s version is a different. “It’s like an old-school slider,” Wojick said. “It spins directly on its axis, on its side and kind of stays in the same place. He has 22-inch vertical movement on his fastball, so it plays off it very well off it.”

Ohman estimates he throws his fastball about 50 percent of the time, his curve about 30. The gyro, which he throws with middle finger on the stitches and forefinger in the middle of the horseshoe, the same position as his curve, but with the forefinger down instead of spiked. It’s unique in that the ball’s movement does not come from its rotation.

“I got command of it really fast,” Ohman said. “As the season progressed, it has gotten better and better. I like to thing my fastball is my put-away pitch, it’s just a matter of how I’m sequencing a hitter.”

Ivy League hitters, Ohman says, always have a game plan, so he needs to come armed with his own. As one could gather, this is high-level sophistication from a college freshman and Yale, in its tight race with Penn and Columbia for top seed and the right to host the Ivy League championships, has come to leave heavily on it.

“Ultimately, he’s a competitor who wants to be in those high-leverage moments,” Hamm said.

More for your Sunday Read:

UConn Athletics announces $15 million donation for student-athlete academic center

Exploring Storrs North

Word came out this week from the Boston Globe that the UConn men, who are not playing in a multiteam event next season (keeping Dan Hurley on the mainland) were exploring a game vs. BYU at TD Garden in Boston. Most on social media seemed to like the idea, some didn’t. AD David Benedict explained on his X account:

“We’re replacing games that most couldn’t attend for local or regional locations and getting paid,” Benedict said. “These are neutral-site games, not home-and-homes, more fans, better financially. We’re going to continue to do what we can to remain relevant. XL and Gampel games will be balanced. … We’re exchanging (multiteam events). Promoters have been driving scheduling and receiving the lion’s share of the money. No more.”

Anytime UConn can expand its footprint from New York to Boston, it’s a good thing. Huskies fans travel.

Dom Amore: WNBA, Dallas Wings gain a powerful force in UConn’s Paige Bueckers

Sunday short takes

*Connecticut high school football lost an icon with the passing of long-time New London football coach Jim Buonacore, who died this week at 91. Buonocore coached football for 30 years, always with a firm, but kind hand, and had record of 205-95-8 with four state championships, and four merit awards preceding the CIAC format. He also founded and coached the softball team at NLHS for 17 years before retiring in 1999.

*College baseball also lost a legend Friday. Frank “Porky” Vieira, who turned the University of New Haven into a nationally known Division II program, died at 91. His 44-year record: 1,127-324-6.

*Kristen Caruso (Lamb), one of the top players on Geno Auriemma’s first successful teams at UConn (1986-90) was named permanent women’s basketball head coach at CCSU last week. Caruso had been out of the college game and working at Central in human resources when the job opened unexpectedly in midseason. She took over on an interim basis and won nine of 15 games.

*John Sterling is back on the air, hosting a call-in show Saturdays from 4 to 5 p.m. on WABC, 770 AM in New York. Sterling, 86, who retired as radio voice of the Yankees last year, has been in radio since 1960. And now that he owes me a favor, I expect to be a guest sometime soon to tell his audience about ….

*More Than A Game, my upcoming book with Jim Calhoun, is posted for pre-order at Woodhall Press’ website.

*My friend and mentor Bill Madden has a new book out, a “Baseball Memoir: Yankees Typewriters, Scandals and Cooperstown” and it’s a must-read, filled with great stories from his long career.

*The UConn Club honored Andy Baylock with its Crystal Award last week, the first time in at least 15 years they presented it. Baylock, 86, has been a fixture in Connecticut sports, particularly at UConn, for seven decades and he still throws batting practice at Eastern Connecticut.

*Former UConn offensive coordinator and interim head coach T.J. Wiest, who has been on the NFL Ravens staff, was among those interviewed for the head football coaching position at SCSU.

*Saw two college baseball games last week and three fabulous catches by centerfielders, Caleb Shpur of UConn and Cheshire’s Anthony Tirado, playing for UMass, both of whom seem to do that regularly, and Quinnipiac’s Gabe Wright, who also homered in the game, a win over Central.

*The Franciscan Sports Banquet and Silent Auction, a date to be circled on the state sports calendar for 39 years, is set for June 3 at the Aqua Turf in Southington. This year’s honorees include long-time voice of the Red Sox, Joe Castiglione, longtime Quinnipiac coach and administrator Billy Mecca and Andrea Hurley. Should make it a fun night.

*Good news for UConn men’s hockey. NHL draftees Joey Muldowney and Jake Richard made it official, they’re back for another year of college. The Huskies landed a player from Norway, Elias Straume Vatne, a first for the program. He has a season to go in Juniors.

*New Britain’s Roberto Mercado, back for another season as manager with the Orioles’ Double A Bowie, Md., affiliate, will be in Hartford this week for a series with the Yard Goats. Plainville’s Tim DeJohn, Baltimore’s infield coordinator, is expected to be with the BaySox, too.

Dom Amore’s Sunday Read: How SCSU’s Jeff Stoutland became NFL’s offense line guru, and more

Last word

Have to say I was surprised the Giants were able to get Abdul Carter at No. 3 in the NFL Draft and trade back into the first round to get quarterback Jaxson Dart, when it seemed like everybody in the league knew that’s what they wanted to do. Now that they’ve had their coup, got their quarterback, the heat ramps up on their management team for a season in playoff contention. It will be an exciting camp.

An aside, I can remember when the Giants retired Lawrence Taylor’s No. 56 in 1994, he said it was really just a formality, because “no young kid would ever have the (guts) to ask for it.” So it was no surprise LT wanted none of  Carter’s request.

Originally Published: April 26, 2025 at 11:12 AM EDT