The 14th best starting pitcher in the 2018 Valley League season is Covington’s Chase Best, from Lawson State!
The 6-foot-4, 220 pound lefty sophomore was outstanding for the Lumberjacks:
| Cov | ERA | W | L | G | GS | IP | H | R | ER | BB | K | BAVG | WHIP | BB/9 | K/9 |
| 2018 | 3.37 | 6 | 3 | 17 | 3 | 34.7 | 32 | 13 | 13 | 14 | 39 | 0.248 | 1.326 | 3.6 | 10.1 |
| Play | 1.00 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 9.0 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 8 | 0.207 | 0.889 | 2.0 | 8.0 |
Chase finished 7th in innings pitched, 5th in strikeouts, 10th in BB/9, and 8th K/9 among the pitchers surveyed for this list. His 7 wins also led the league. It’s interesting; Chase only started 4 total games all summer, but two of them were top-10 starts by game score.
The second best one was the line you see above next to “Play,” meaning the start happened in the playoffs against the Harrisonburg Turks. That one earned a game score of 77, which is tied for the 7th best of the entire summer. The 3rd best, though, happened on July 14th, also against Harrisonburg: 7 innings, 3 hits, 0 runs, 0 walks, 9 strikeouts. That one earned a game score of 80. For his work on the mound, the league named him second team All-Valley at starting pitcher.
Chase redshirted his first year, 2016, at Faulkner. I couldn’t find stats for 2017, but he spent 2018 at Lawson State:
| ERA | W | L | G | GS | IP | H | R | ER | BB | K | WHIP | BB/9 | K/9 | |
| 2018 | 2.96 | 2 | 1 | 13 | 0 | 48.7 | 58 | 33 | 16 | 21 | 54 | 1.622 | 3.9 | 10.0 |
He has transferred to North Alabama for the 2018-19 school year. Congratulations, Chase!
