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This from Baseball America's college weekend preview today...

"Everyone has surely been following Jered Weaver's junior season for No. 7 Long Beach State, and hopefully got to read Allan Simpson's early draft preview look at him and the other top 50 prospects. Weaver's just been phenomenal this season, going 7-0, 0.71 with 73 strikeouts and six walks as well as two 15-strikeout performances. Those numbers rival Mark Prior's junior statistics at Southern California. Actually Weaver's are better.

So when you thought Weaver couldn't top himself anymore, he goes out against a very explosive offensive club in No. 11 Wichita State on Wednesday and throws six shutout innings in a 10-1 win. He recorded 18 outs, 16 by strikeout to tie a Long Beach State record and set a new career high. He got 14 of the first 15 outs on strikes. The other two outs came on a foul pop to first base and when third baseman Derek Schermerhorn walked and got picked off first base Weaver.

"It was pretty amazing," said UC Irvine coach John Savage, who drove across town to watch the Dirtbags before they travel to face his No. 19 Anteaters in two games this weekend. "Sixteen strikeouts in six innings. It was 0-2 on every batter before they got in the box. His command is special, three pitches for strikes."

Would anyone else like to vote for first baseman Mike Hofius having let the popup fall to see if Weaver could have fanned 18? In all seriousness, we don't expect a player to actually do that, but there is historical precedent.

Don Baylor did what Hofius could have in Roger Clemens' first 20-strikeout game on April 29 1986, dropping a foul pop along the first base line hit by Gorman Thomas in the fourth inning. Baylor was charged with the only error of the game, and the Rocket ended up getting Thomas on a called strike three to add an extra K to the docket. (Thanks to retrosheet.org for refreshing the memory on that game.)

Summing it up, Weaver improved to 8-0, 0.64 with 89 strikeouts, eight walks and 22 hits allowed in 57 innings. And credit Long Beach State coach Mike Weathers for using his stud judiciously. Weaver didn't top 100 pitches Wednesday and hasn't thrown a complete game this season. Part of that has to go to Weathers' confidence in his bullpen, a group led by righthanders Neil Jamison, Brian Anderson and Brent Andrade that has allowed 15 earned runs all season. "

You can read the entire weekend preview here.

Something tells me that Irvine Anteaters Coach John Savage is glad that Jerod Weaver will not start at Irvine this weekend! But with the Dirtbags staff ERA standing at 1.91 his guys will have their hands full anyway.