I was reading through The New York Times from about two weeks ago when I came across an interesting fact...There have only been two 20-game winning pitchers in NCAA history...the first was Derek Tatsuno (photo, right) of the 1979 Hawaii Rainbows who went 20-1 with a 1.86 ERA...in his 3 years at Hawaii he posted a 40-6 mark with 541 strikeouts...however, many of those strikeouts came against lower echelon competition such as DeVry Institute and Whittier College...he was a 1st round pick of the Milwaukee Brewers in the January 1982 regular phase draft...Tatsuno never made it to The Show...in 1982 he played for the Brewers' AA affiliate, the El Paso Diablos of the Texas League, going 7-2 with a 6.42 ERA and walking more than a batter an inning...he bounced around the minors until 1987...
Richard W. Johnston of Sports Illustrated did a feature story on Tatsuno in the April 30, 1979 edition of the magazine...
The other 20-game winner was Mike Loynd of the 1986 Florida State Seminoles
who went 20-3 with a 2.45 ERA...Loynd was a college stud as he was named the winner of the 1986 Golden Spikes Award which is the Heisman Trophy of college baseball...Loynd helped Florida State get to the College World Series...he was drafted by the Texas Rangers and was called up to the big leagues in less than two months...with the Rangers in a pennant race, Bobby Valentine gave the ball to Loynd as he won his first start 6-3 over the Cleveland Indians...Loynd started his career 2-0 which would be his only highlight...soon thereafter, he began to struggle and within two years he found himself traded to the Houston Astros...he spent the next seven seasons in the minor league organizations of the Astros, Toronto Blue Jays, St. Louis Cardinals and Atlanta Braves before ending his career with the West Palm Beach Expos of the Florida State League in 1994...Loynd finished his brief career with a 3-7 mark and 2 saves...
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