Last spring, the most read sports story on the Wellsville Sun was after a Portville-Wellsville baseball game in Wellsville.
There were nine major league scouts in the stands, most of them with radar guns on Portville’s Max Yehl who was throwing 92 miles per hour and one pitch hit 93.
Yehl, a 6-foot-6 lefty who signed with Division I West Virginia in the Big XII conference, played summer baseball with some of the Wellsville kids. he was ready for the bright lights of the best baseball in the nation thanks to a great high school coach, Mike Matz at Portville, who also was a left who pitched Division I.
Portville won sectionals and lost in states. Yehl, just 18, has picked up key innings for West Virginia, ranked #19 in the nation.
On Wednesday night in an interstate rivalry game, the state got bigger. Yehl came in with WVU losing in the 7th and came out with one out in the eighth with his team winning.
His scoreless inning in relief was enough to pick up the win, the first in his career. Opponents are hitting .160 off of him (updated stats below).
In this video by John Anderson, an interview with West Virginia head coach Randy Masey. Also Mountaineers freshman pitcher Will Watson turns into a broadcaster with an interview with Maxx Yehl.
Bonus: The team sang John Denver’s Country Roads after the win over Marshall as over 5,000 fans packed Charleston’s GoMart Ballpark where there is a lot of Pittsburgh Pirates history.
The game was sold out.
UPDATE: Yehl pitched again two nights later in relief of starter Ben Hampton in the Big 12 home homer against Kansas. With West Virginia trailing, Yehl came in and shut the Jayhawks down by throwing 3.1 hitless innings with three strikeouts. His season stats are, 1-0 record, 11 innings, 8 strikeouts, 4 hits, 7 walks and a 2.45 ERA>
