BELLVILLE — It’s a good thing Travis Hissong’s 2005 Scion gets good gas mileage.
His odometer has been busy recently.
A 2010 Clear Fork High School graduate, Hissong will sign a free agent contract with the New York Yankees later this week.
The hard-throwing right-handed pitcher was playing for the Lakeshore Chinooks when he got the call. Lakeshore is a member of the Northwoods League headquartered in Mequon, Wisc., located on the western shore of Lake Michigan just north of Milwaukee.
“My advisor asked me, ‘How fast can you get from Milwaukee to Knoxville?’ Hissong said early Monday afternoon, “so I jumped in my car at 5 a.m. and I’ve been driving ever since.”
For the record, the trip from Mequon to Knoxville, the city Hissong now calls home, is about 650 miles and nine-and-a-half hours. He was about 60 miles outside of Knoxville when the Richland Source reached him Monday.
“I’ve only had to stop once,” Hissong joked. “My car is pretty reliable and it gets great gas mileage. It has about 120,000 miles on it.
“I’m going to drop my car off at my brother’s house and then I’ll fly from Knoxville to Staten Island, where I’ll have my signing in a few days.”
The Staten Island Yankees, the parent club’s Class A short season affiliate, is a member of the New York-Penn League. The SIYanks, as they are most often referred to, open the season Friday against the Brooklyn Cyclones (the New York Mets’ short season affiliate) and play 77 games in 81 days. The season concludes Sept. 1 at home against the Cyclones and includes a three-day series at Mahoning Valley, the Cleveland Indians’ New York-Penn League affiliate in Niles, on Aug. 9 to 11.
“To tell you the truth, my head is spinning a little bit,” Hissong said. “This all happened pretty quickly.”
The 6-foot, 195-pound Hissong recently completed his redshirt junior season at Wright State University in Dayton. He was 2-3 with a 4.23 earned run average in seven starts with 39 strikeouts in 44.2 innings. He was the Raiders’ No. 1 pitcher shut down early after suffering a hamstring injury.
“I was our Friday night starter but then I partially tore my hamstring,” Hissong said. “Instead of having surgery, I rehabbed it and threw a lot of bullpens.”
Hissong was off to a solid start before suffering the hamstring injury. He was selected the Horizon League Pitcher of the Week for the week of Feb. 17 to 23 after limiting UC Irvine to three hits and striking out five in seven innings of a 3-1 Wright State victory.
“He was pitching very well,” said Jeremy Riddle, Hissong’s high school coach. “They decided to shut him down and let him get healthy.”
The decision paid off. During his brief stint with the Lakeshore Chinooks, Hissong was 1-0 with a 1.58 earned run average and 16 strikeouts in just 11.1 innings. He was the Northwoods League Pitcher of the Night on June 6, striking out nine batters in six innings of a 2-1 victory.
“The Northwoods League is a collegiate, wooden bat league. There are a lot of SEC (Southeastern Conference) and ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference) players up there,” Hissong said. “I had two quality starts and a lot of teams showed interest before the draft.”
Hissong wasn’t selected in Major League Baseball’s recently completed first year player draft, largely because of the hamstring injury, but the Los Angeles Dodgers were prepared to sign him before the Yankees began sniffing around. New York had shown interest in Hissong last spring — when he was 4-1 with a 2.39 ERA, five saves and a whopping 52 strikeouts in just 37.2 innings as Wright State’s closer — but Hissong informed the club he planned to return to WSU.
“I was ready to sign with L.A., but the Yankees contacted my advisor and let him know they were interested,” Hissong said. “They said, ‘You are an East Coast guy. Let’s keep you on the East Coast.’ I thought about it and it made a lot of sense. My family can come see me play this way.”
Hissong’s star began to rise in the spring of 2010, when he led Clear Fork to the Division III state championship. He fired a one-hitter with 11 strikeouts in Clear Fork’s 5-0 win over Independence in the state semifinals and came back three days later with 2.2 innings of two-hit relief in the Colts’ run rule-shortened 14-3 win over Wheelersburg in the title game.
“That was a special group,” Hissong said. “We all played together for so long that we knew what each other was going to do before we did it.”
Hissong’s freshman year at Wright State ended almost before it began. He ruptured the ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching elbow in his first outing. The injury required Tommy John surgery.
“I rehabbed for six months after the surgery and nine-and-a-half months later, I made my first outing against North Carolina,” Hissong said. “I think having Tommy John surgery was a blessing in disguise.”
Riddle agreed.
“Before the surgery, he was hitting about 91 (miles per hour) on the radar gun,” Riddle said. “After the surgery, his velocity increased to 94 or 95. He has thrown a lot harder since he had the surgery.”
Hissong excelled as Wright State’s closer in the spring of 2013 and was the stopper for the Fayetteville (N.C.) Swampdogs of the Coastal Plain League last summer.
“The regional scout for the Yankees said they haven’t decided yet if I would be a starter or come out of the bullpen,” Hissong said. “It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other, as long as I’m getting a chance to pitch regularly.
“Playing for the Yankees is a dream come true. I have photos of me when I was little wearing a Yankees hat. This is the opportunity of a lifetime.”
Follow Curt Conrad on Twitter @curtjconrad.
