FAYETTEVILLE — As Arkansas pitcher Brady Tygart comes set on the mound, hitters stare back into his tattooed forearm displaying roses with his birth year 2003 shaded in the middle.
The 19-year-old from Hernando, Miss., is building a reputation as he confuses older hitters with constant knee-buckling breaking balls. His curveball that spins at a rate of more than 3,000 RPM is a pitch he had no choice but to develop.
Tygart, recently selected as one of 62 players on the midseason NCBWA Stopper of the Year watch list as college baseball's best closer, sports a 1.59 ERA and a stranglehold on the closer role as a true freshman for the fourth-ranked Razorbacks. However, the son of Josh and Belinda Tygart had a much different freshman experience a few years ago at Lewisburg High School, just south of Memphis.
He did not have a season after being cut from the ninth-grade team due to a lack of velocity and height. His fastball topped at around 80 mph at that age and he far from stood out physically.
It was the second time he had been cut from a baseball team. He did not get selected to a travel team in a local youth league.
“It was good for Brady in the long run because it put a chip on his shoulder,” Josh Tygart said. “He always felt like he had something to prove.”
Being overlooked by a 4A high school in northwest Mississippi is likely the end of the road for many pitchers. For Tygart, it was just the beginning.
He decided to focus on things he could control, such as pitch movement and accuracy. Going into his sophomore year, Tygart hit a growth spurt that coincided with a moderate velocity increase but still needed to fill out his lean 6-2 frame.
That summer, his mother drove him five hours to the Razorbacks' baseball camp, where he wowed then-Arkansas pitching coach Wes Johnson. His fastball sat around 87 mph, but the late-breaking action on his pitches raised the eyebrows of the coaching staff.
Johnson pulled the lanky right hander aside and asked him how many offers he had.
“I don’t have any offers yet,” Tygart told him.
Johnson told Tygart to have his mom meet with Johnson and Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn in the office. There he received his first scholarship offer to pitch for the Razorbacks.
“They saw he was still in a little boy’s body with giant feet and he had all the movement in the world,” Belinda Tygart said.
Johnson’s faith in Arkansas strength coach Blaine Kinsley, who he called one of the top coaches in the nation, led him to believe Tygart could add 10 to 15 pounds of muscle and become a difference maker.
“If Kinsley could get him beefed up in the weight room, we knew we would have something special,” said Johnson, who is now the pitching coach for the Minnesota Twins.
One week after receiving an offer from Arkansas, he attended the Mississippi State camp and left with his second offer. Despite living about an hour away from the Ole Miss campus, he never garnered the Rebels’ attention.
“I think it’ll be pretty cool if he gets the chance to pitch against Ole Miss and maybe it will mean a little extra to him,” Josh Tygart said of this week's series at Baum-Walker Stadium.
Tygart’s ascension to the linchpin of the Razorback bullpen has come as a surprise to nearly everyone. He suffered a hairline fracture in his arm during his first outing last fall and was shut down for the rest of fall camp.
“The majority of the time when freshmen come in you are not even considering that they’re going to be your closer,” Johnson said.
“It’s a little shocking to me that he is closing,” Josh Tygart said. “I didn’t expect anything like that. Honestly, I was just hoping he would get an inning or two here and there to get a little experience.”
On April 3, Tygart entered the eighth inning of a 3-3 game against Mississippi State and struck out six consecutive batters. He allowed 1 hit and 1 walk across a career-high 3 2/3 shutout innings.
“If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody will believe in yourself for you,” Tygart said in the postgame interview.
The mental fortitude required to pitch successfully in crucial situations is something the rookie reliever has been preparing for since his little league days.
While coaching his son’s initial seasons of kid pitch, Josh Tygart intentionally put him on the mound in spots where he was destined to fail. The hope was that the more he was exposed to pressure, the less it would affect him.
“We didn’t coddle him at all,” Josh Tygart said. “The worse the situation the better. We told him to just go in there and throw strikes.”
The hurler faced similar pressure during his final two years at Lewisburg High School, where a lack of run support often resulted in defeat. He allowed 2 earned runs and struck out 104 batters in 56 innings, according to MaxPreps.
The Tygarts wanted their son to wait until his junior year to decide between Arkansas and Mississippi State. However, he had no interest in waiting and committed to the Razorbacks in February 2019.
“He tells us all the time that he is right where he belongs,” Belinda Tygart said of Brady's decision to move away from Mississippi.
Josh (Little Rock) and Belinda (Arkadelphia) grew up in Arkansas and could not be prouder to see their son live out his childhood dream while dealing for their home-state team.
“This is something that he’s set his sight on since he was 7 years old,” Josh Tygart said. “To watch your kid work for the last 12 years…it’s very satisfying as a parent to see it paying off.”