Johnny Bench Award finalist Keith Skinner almost gave up baseball after freshman season
Keith Skinner moved to catcher from third base as an 8-year-old, got drafted by the New York Yankees and plays minor-league baseball 45 minutes from home.
Part of that dream scenario, however, is how close it came to unfolding in a different way. Skinner, one of three finalists for the Johnny Bench Award, almost quit baseball after his freshman year in college.
“It was about a whole year of just really, really struggling,” he said. “I was sore. I was tired. I was thinking I can’t do this anymore and I just want to forget it.”
He will join Oregon State’s Logan Ice and Miami’s Zack Collins at the Greater Wichita Area Sports Commission banquet on Thursday and one will win the award given to the nation’s top college catcher.
His parents helped convince him to stick with baseball and the next three years went much better, culminating in a standout career at North Florida.
“He’s a blue-collar type — if somebody needs to do a bullpen, he’s down there catching the bullpen,” North Florida coach Smoke Laval said. “If he had a normal 9-to-5 job, he’s not showing up at five ’til 9 and leaving at 4:45.”
Skinner, from Berkeley Heights, N.J., spent the 2013 season at Fairfield, a private university in Connecticut where things didn’t work academically or athletically. Three years later, Skinner owns a degree in criminal justice from North Florida and is playing minor-league baseball for the team he grew up supporting.
“I felt like I either had to pick baseball or school,” Skinner said. “I was not playing very well and I was not doing very well in the classroom. It wasn’t the right demographic for me, a little preppy. I wasn’t used to that lifestyle.”
After the spring semester ended, Skinner debated quitting baseball. His parents encouraged him to take it game by game to rediscover his enthusiasm. He transferred to Seminole (Fla.) State College in Sanford, 117 miles from Laval’s program in Jacksonville.
Seminole State’s structure — study hall and class attendance required — pushed him back on track academically and athletically.
“Some people don’t like it, but I kind of need somebody to be over my shoulder, making sure I get all my stuff done,” he said.
He continued to thrive at North Florida, earning All-Atlantic Sun honors after hitting .382 as a senior.
“The coaches —they didn’t play games, they were all straight-forward,” Skinner said. “I loved their philosophy on the game. They told you what you needed to hear and they genuinely wanted to see you improve.”
Skinner (6-foot-1, 200 pounds) made his biggest improvement after a junior year in which he hit .325 with three home runs. He improved his slugging percentage from .429 to .486 and his on-base percentage from .395 to .466, third on the school’s single-season list.
In 100 games over two seasons, he committed two errors, threw out 26 runners and picked off five.
“He could always frame it, he could always block it,” Laval said. “He was kind of a two-part thrower. All of sudden, he came out of it and could catch it and throw it. He’s going to play catch with the second baseman all day long. He’d get it there in the air and you were out.”
Laval trusted him to call pitches for most of the two seasons, a responsibility he rarely hands over so quickly.
“He takes criticism in real well — ‘Hey, tell me what you were thinking, Skinns?’ ” Laval said. “And he’d say, ‘I wasn’t.’ Then it would never happen again.”
Skinner, drafted in the seventh round, plays for the Class-A Staten Island Yankees and games at Richmond County Bank Ballpark are often a family affair. He interviewed with federal law enforcement agencies to start his post-baseball career plans.
Sticking with baseball worked out.
“It’s definitely surreal,” Skinner said. “It made me work a little harder, thinking about poorly you were playing in the wrong spot and how well you were playing in the right spot.”
Paul Suellentrop: 316-269-6760, @paulsuellentrop
Greater Wichita Sports Banquet
When: 6 p.m. Thursday
Where: Century II Exhibition Hall
Keynote speaker: Jim Sundberg, former major-league catcher
Johnny Bench Award candidates
▪ Miami’s Zack Collins, a junior, is a two-time All-ACC pick. This season, he hit .363 with a team-leading 16 home runs and 59 RBI.
Collins signed with the Chicago White Sox after being drafted 10th overall. He earned All-America honors from Baseball America and the American Baseball Coaches Association.
▪ Oregon State’s Logan Ice, a junior, earned Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year and All-Pac-12 honors. He hit .310 with 13 doubles and seven home runs, while throwing out 44 percent of opponents attempting to steal. He allowed one passed ball.
Cleveland selected him with the No. 72 pick in the draft and he signed.
▪ North Florida’s Keith Skinner, a senior, led the Atlantic Sun Conference with a .382 batting average, threw out 17 runners attempting to steal and fielded .998. He is an All-Atlantic Sun selection.
Skinner, a seventh-round pick, signed with the New York Yankees.
▪ A national committee voted during the College World Series to decide the winner.
This story was originally published June 29, 2016 at 4:38 PM with the headline "Johnny Bench Award finalist Keith Skinner almost gave up baseball after freshman season."