‘He’s As Good As It Gets’
Apr 12, 2023 | Baseball, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
He sauntered into the team meeting room in Tointon Family Stadium on Monday night, his white No. 16 Kansas State uniform like the "after" product of a Tide commercial, and his "KS" ballcap sitting neatly on his head, as he leaned forward in a black leather swivel chair at a glass table. He grinned like a guy who hit on 20 and drew an ace. He said, "I'm Tyson Neighbors."
The 6-foot-2, 220-pound sophomore right-hander, the pride of Royse City, Texas, didn't throw a pitch during the Wildcats' 10-0 win over Creighton on Monday.
He did his damage this past Saturday in Austin, Texas.
"I feel like I'm a perfectionist," Neighbors says, "so it might sound crazy, but I have the headspace to go out there and say, 'Hey, I'm going to go out there and there's going to be no hits and three strikeouts.'
"I'm going to go out there and get the job done for the team, so in the end, my goal is a zero ERA."
With father Brandon and his wife Heather in the stands — Brandon wearing a Horns Down T-shirt and Heather wearing a purple-and-white Horns Down ballcap — Neighbors mowed down eight of 10 batters faced while throwing a total of 46 pitches over the final three innings of a 6-5 win at No. 21 Texas on Saturday, ending the Longhorns' 16-game winning streak at UFCU Disch-Falk Field.
"Neighbors was outstanding," Texas head coach David Pierce said.
Don Neighbors, Tyson's great-grandfather, ran track at the University of Texas, and he was one of the first four-minute milers, so the Neighbors clan featured a long line of Longhorn fans. Tyson changed everyone's allegiance. And then he left the mound after throwing spectacular final three innings against his home-state team.
Neighbors earned Big 12 Co-Pitcher of the Week on Monday for his efforts.
"I told my wife last night, I said, 'I've coached that dude as hard as you can coach him all the way through, and I was hard on him and loved on him and it was a tough relationship, and now it's so refreshing just to be proud,'" Brandon says. "It was one of the proudest moments I've ever had for him, for sure."
Neighbors didn't know that he earned Big 12 Co-Pitcher of the Week until moments before he took the field with his teammates for pregame warmups prior to facing Creighton.
He received a text from first-year K-State pitching coach Rudy Darrow.
"Congrats. You did it," Darrow wrote.
"Did what?" Neighbors replied.
"Pitcher of the week."
Neighbors is tied for third in the Big 12 Conference with five saves. He has a 1.16 ERA — opponents are hitting just .125 against him — while allowing just three earned runs, and giving up six walks to 42 strikeouts in 23 1/3 innings this season.
"He's as good as it gets talent-wise and stuff-wise," K-State head coach Pete Hughes says. "It's apples and oranges when you start comparing him and some other guys who have elite stuff. It's just who can slow the game down and execute a pitch in pressure situations. He's learned to do that this year.
"He's as good as it gets right now in the country, honestly. His numbers back that."
Thing is, everybody, including Neighbors, believed that football — not baseball — would be in the cards. Neighbors played outside linebacker, running back, safety, punter and quarterback, because, as Brandon puts it, "You've got to play football if you play sports in Texas." When he was 13-14 years old, he really gripped a baseball at an elite level. He garnered attention when his team traveled to Alabama and Georgia one summer.
"I think that's when Tyson really woke up," Brandon says.
Neighbors comes armed with a fastball timed in the mid-90s and a nasty slider and curveball. His velocity prominently arrived his sophomore year while also training under former major-leaguer Matt Miller. At Royse City High School, he earned all-state honors as both a pitcher and outfielder — he went 7-for-7 in save opportunities while striking out 52 batters in 21 innings and hit .500 with 11 home runs.
It was while competing on a summer league team his sophomore season that Neighbors' coach, Brandon Sherard, recommended that he take a look at K-State. Neighbors announced his commitment to K-State on September 8, 2019. He fell in love with Manhattan during his official visit. On his way home, he told his father, "This is where I want to go."
"Are you sure?" Brandon replied. "We have all of these other visited lined up. But if that's what you want, I think Manhattan is a great place to be."
The Little Apple quickly caught Neighbors' attention.
"Manhattan is all purple," he says. "I had walked onto tons of college campuses and cities. Everyone is Manhattan is wearing purple — always. You don't see red and blue and all these other colors. That's really cool."
He came to K-State with a self-described "bulldog" mentality reared from the football field, along with a 355-pound bench press, and super-high energy. He struck out the side in order on 11 pitches in his collegiate debut against Arizona last February. But there were learning pains along the way. He finished his freshman season with a 5.40 ERA, striking out 13, walking 14, and allowing five earned runs in 8 1/3 innings over nine relief appearances.
"It's very easy, especially in the game of baseball, it's based around failure, and you can hit a wall and stay down," Neighbors says, "but the game will eventually come back to you if you keep putting in the work."
The big adjustment? Neighbors had to establish and maintain a routine and regain command of his command on the mound. The game sped up for Neighbors as a freshman. After a couple appearances, he says that he became "like a robot."
"No emotion," he says, "and that was very out of character for me."
Here's how Neighbors got his groove back: This past summer he played for the Mankato Moon Dogs of the Northwoods League, where he recorded eight saves in 16 appearances while boasting a 1.06 ERA. Hughes urged him to pitch, pitch and pitch some more to find that command that could make him one of the most effective pitchers in Division I baseball, and Neighbors responded.
"There's a learning curve," Hughes says. "He's learned to pitch in high-pressure situations. In the Northwoods League, he was in every high-level situation you could possibly be in to slow the game down and let your stuff play. The Northwoods League is a tour-of-duty for college and summer baseball, 73 games in 73 days, but I felt like we could put him into that situation time and time again so he got comfortable with pitching in big moments. He did that."
Soon after, Neighbors became tight with Darrow, whose presence has ignited energy while sharing a baseball encyclopedia worth of knowledge about pitching technique and strategy.
"I just like building off each pitch, like tunneling," Neighbors says. "My pitches come out of the same little tunnel and then they all do what they need to do. Coach Hughes would say my fastball is my favorite pitch, but I love them all, really. It's very important for them all the collaborate with each other to make each one more effective."
Hughes appreciates Neighbors' knowledge on the mound. He calls him "very cerebral." And it becomes apparent after spending just a few moments with the 20-year-old ace.
"For a hitter, it's a lot harder to hit a pitch that looks like it's coming out of the same little tunnel," he says. "Last year, I had a slider that moved a lot, but it didn't play very well with my fastball. My slider, I got a lot of ugly swings and misses, but once batters realized that's what they were going to see, they'd lay off. It became harder to throw strikes, one, because many times I wasn't in the zone, and two, they could eliminate the slider and sit on one pitch and hit it.
"The main goal is to try and make everything look straight and hard until it's not — or until it is."
These days, everything seems to be on target.
"I really go out there and know it's all on me," he says. "As far as executing pitches, I mean, you can't really control what happens outside of that, but if I execute my pitches, I know the defense will play behind me and that my stuff will play if it's in the zone.
"As long as I execute my pitches, we're going to come out of here with a win. It's really an incomparable excitement, just going out there and getting a save for the team. If I get the save, that means we won, and it's good for all of us."
When it comes to competitiveness, Neighbors is at a different level.
"Shoot, I could be playing my little brother in Madden and I'm going to try and beat him by 200 points," he says. "I'm hooting and hollering, getting into it. It's awesome."
During quiet times away from baseball, Neighbors enjoys going to his grandparents' pond on a 17-acre plot of land just outside Mineola, Texas, an hour down the road on US-80 East.
"I can bass fish all day long," he says. "I could go out there and not catch a fish and still have a good day. It's just really relaxing. You can take your mind off everything else."
His casts are straight and they're on target. Just like in baseball during this breakout season, K-State's star closer is always looking for something — or someone — to bite.
He sauntered into the team meeting room in Tointon Family Stadium on Monday night, his white No. 16 Kansas State uniform like the "after" product of a Tide commercial, and his "KS" ballcap sitting neatly on his head, as he leaned forward in a black leather swivel chair at a glass table. He grinned like a guy who hit on 20 and drew an ace. He said, "I'm Tyson Neighbors."
The 6-foot-2, 220-pound sophomore right-hander, the pride of Royse City, Texas, didn't throw a pitch during the Wildcats' 10-0 win over Creighton on Monday.
He did his damage this past Saturday in Austin, Texas.
"I feel like I'm a perfectionist," Neighbors says, "so it might sound crazy, but I have the headspace to go out there and say, 'Hey, I'm going to go out there and there's going to be no hits and three strikeouts.'
"I'm going to go out there and get the job done for the team, so in the end, my goal is a zero ERA."
With father Brandon and his wife Heather in the stands — Brandon wearing a Horns Down T-shirt and Heather wearing a purple-and-white Horns Down ballcap — Neighbors mowed down eight of 10 batters faced while throwing a total of 46 pitches over the final three innings of a 6-5 win at No. 21 Texas on Saturday, ending the Longhorns' 16-game winning streak at UFCU Disch-Falk Field.
"Neighbors was outstanding," Texas head coach David Pierce said.
Don Neighbors, Tyson's great-grandfather, ran track at the University of Texas, and he was one of the first four-minute milers, so the Neighbors clan featured a long line of Longhorn fans. Tyson changed everyone's allegiance. And then he left the mound after throwing spectacular final three innings against his home-state team.
Neighbors earned Big 12 Co-Pitcher of the Week on Monday for his efforts.
"I told my wife last night, I said, 'I've coached that dude as hard as you can coach him all the way through, and I was hard on him and loved on him and it was a tough relationship, and now it's so refreshing just to be proud,'" Brandon says. "It was one of the proudest moments I've ever had for him, for sure."
Neighbors didn't know that he earned Big 12 Co-Pitcher of the Week until moments before he took the field with his teammates for pregame warmups prior to facing Creighton.
He received a text from first-year K-State pitching coach Rudy Darrow.
"Congrats. You did it," Darrow wrote.
"Did what?" Neighbors replied.
"Pitcher of the week."
Neighbors is tied for third in the Big 12 Conference with five saves. He has a 1.16 ERA — opponents are hitting just .125 against him — while allowing just three earned runs, and giving up six walks to 42 strikeouts in 23 1/3 innings this season.
"He's as good as it gets talent-wise and stuff-wise," K-State head coach Pete Hughes says. "It's apples and oranges when you start comparing him and some other guys who have elite stuff. It's just who can slow the game down and execute a pitch in pressure situations. He's learned to do that this year.
"He's as good as it gets right now in the country, honestly. His numbers back that."
Thing is, everybody, including Neighbors, believed that football — not baseball — would be in the cards. Neighbors played outside linebacker, running back, safety, punter and quarterback, because, as Brandon puts it, "You've got to play football if you play sports in Texas." When he was 13-14 years old, he really gripped a baseball at an elite level. He garnered attention when his team traveled to Alabama and Georgia one summer.
"I think that's when Tyson really woke up," Brandon says.
Neighbors comes armed with a fastball timed in the mid-90s and a nasty slider and curveball. His velocity prominently arrived his sophomore year while also training under former major-leaguer Matt Miller. At Royse City High School, he earned all-state honors as both a pitcher and outfielder — he went 7-for-7 in save opportunities while striking out 52 batters in 21 innings and hit .500 with 11 home runs.
It was while competing on a summer league team his sophomore season that Neighbors' coach, Brandon Sherard, recommended that he take a look at K-State. Neighbors announced his commitment to K-State on September 8, 2019. He fell in love with Manhattan during his official visit. On his way home, he told his father, "This is where I want to go."
"Are you sure?" Brandon replied. "We have all of these other visited lined up. But if that's what you want, I think Manhattan is a great place to be."
The Little Apple quickly caught Neighbors' attention.
"Manhattan is all purple," he says. "I had walked onto tons of college campuses and cities. Everyone is Manhattan is wearing purple — always. You don't see red and blue and all these other colors. That's really cool."
He came to K-State with a self-described "bulldog" mentality reared from the football field, along with a 355-pound bench press, and super-high energy. He struck out the side in order on 11 pitches in his collegiate debut against Arizona last February. But there were learning pains along the way. He finished his freshman season with a 5.40 ERA, striking out 13, walking 14, and allowing five earned runs in 8 1/3 innings over nine relief appearances.
"It's very easy, especially in the game of baseball, it's based around failure, and you can hit a wall and stay down," Neighbors says, "but the game will eventually come back to you if you keep putting in the work."
The big adjustment? Neighbors had to establish and maintain a routine and regain command of his command on the mound. The game sped up for Neighbors as a freshman. After a couple appearances, he says that he became "like a robot."
"No emotion," he says, "and that was very out of character for me."
Here's how Neighbors got his groove back: This past summer he played for the Mankato Moon Dogs of the Northwoods League, where he recorded eight saves in 16 appearances while boasting a 1.06 ERA. Hughes urged him to pitch, pitch and pitch some more to find that command that could make him one of the most effective pitchers in Division I baseball, and Neighbors responded.
"There's a learning curve," Hughes says. "He's learned to pitch in high-pressure situations. In the Northwoods League, he was in every high-level situation you could possibly be in to slow the game down and let your stuff play. The Northwoods League is a tour-of-duty for college and summer baseball, 73 games in 73 days, but I felt like we could put him into that situation time and time again so he got comfortable with pitching in big moments. He did that."
Soon after, Neighbors became tight with Darrow, whose presence has ignited energy while sharing a baseball encyclopedia worth of knowledge about pitching technique and strategy.
"I just like building off each pitch, like tunneling," Neighbors says. "My pitches come out of the same little tunnel and then they all do what they need to do. Coach Hughes would say my fastball is my favorite pitch, but I love them all, really. It's very important for them all the collaborate with each other to make each one more effective."
Hughes appreciates Neighbors' knowledge on the mound. He calls him "very cerebral." And it becomes apparent after spending just a few moments with the 20-year-old ace.
"For a hitter, it's a lot harder to hit a pitch that looks like it's coming out of the same little tunnel," he says. "Last year, I had a slider that moved a lot, but it didn't play very well with my fastball. My slider, I got a lot of ugly swings and misses, but once batters realized that's what they were going to see, they'd lay off. It became harder to throw strikes, one, because many times I wasn't in the zone, and two, they could eliminate the slider and sit on one pitch and hit it.
"The main goal is to try and make everything look straight and hard until it's not — or until it is."
These days, everything seems to be on target.
"I really go out there and know it's all on me," he says. "As far as executing pitches, I mean, you can't really control what happens outside of that, but if I execute my pitches, I know the defense will play behind me and that my stuff will play if it's in the zone.
"As long as I execute my pitches, we're going to come out of here with a win. It's really an incomparable excitement, just going out there and getting a save for the team. If I get the save, that means we won, and it's good for all of us."
When it comes to competitiveness, Neighbors is at a different level.
"Shoot, I could be playing my little brother in Madden and I'm going to try and beat him by 200 points," he says. "I'm hooting and hollering, getting into it. It's awesome."
During quiet times away from baseball, Neighbors enjoys going to his grandparents' pond on a 17-acre plot of land just outside Mineola, Texas, an hour down the road on US-80 East.
"I can bass fish all day long," he says. "I could go out there and not catch a fish and still have a good day. It's just really relaxing. You can take your mind off everything else."
His casts are straight and they're on target. Just like in baseball during this breakout season, K-State's star closer is always looking for something — or someone — to bite.
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