Josh Graham has filled the role of ‘utility man’ for Oregon baseball all season long, and may be a fixture in the lineup during the team’s NCAA tournament bid down the stretch. On top of starting fifteen games and contributing 13 hits and 12 runs batted in offensively, Graham has thrown 27 innings of lights-out relief with an opposing batting average of .202.
The Ducks recruited Graham, the No. 2 player in the 2012 Baseball Northwest Oregon Prospect, from Roseburg High School just 70 miles south of Eugene. He attended a few training camps and primarily focused on his catching skills, reserving pitching as a back-up option.
Despite specializing at catcher, Graham has found himself in the midst of a playing time battle throughout his collegiate career. He started 35 games during his freshman campaign but couldn’t maintain the job with a .147 batting average. As a sophomore, he lost an extensive position competition to Shaun Chase, whose 14 home runs led the Pac-12.
As a young member of the program, Graham made decisions that manager George Horton described as “immature,” and was scrutinized by the coaching staff. The criticism served an intervention for Graham, who took the opportunity to realign his priorities.
“The most important thing to me is, ‘What do I want people to see me as?’,” Graham said. “What kind of a man am I?”
Graham acknowledged his change in outlook came gradually, as opposed to overnight.
“It’s an amazing transformation with him,” Horton remarked of Graham. “What a real man he’s become; I wouldn’t say he started out his career that way.”
In 2015, Graham once again found himself in a daunting three-way tryout for the catching job with Chase, the clear-cut favorite, and defensive specialist Tim Susnara. Fifteen games into the season, the Ducks cruised at 13-2, but Graham was a non-factor in the equation. He made just one start as a designated hitter and two relief appearances.
The Ducks, however, dropped eight of their next thirteen games and Graham’s pitching duties expanded significantly. Chase and Susnara grew expendable at the plate and Graham began seeing more at bats on a regular basis, as well. His grand slam and season-high six RBIs in a win over UC Riverside clinched Oregon’s two-game series sweep.
“All the sudden, he’s catching and pitching and leading and doing all kinds of great things for us,” Horton said.
Graham did not throw a pitch in his first two years with the Ducks, but has thrived out of the bullpen as a junior. He’s appeared in 12 games and struck out 26.79 percent of his batters faced. His mid-nineties fastball attracts professional scouts with radar guns to every Oregon game.
The Minnesota Twins drafted Graham as a catcher in the second round of the 2012 MLB Draft. He turned down the gesture in efforts to become the first member of his family lineage to graduate college.
With a business degree a year away, the prospects of being drafted as a pitcher or catcher now also on Graham’s horizon. He has no preference between the two.
“Whatever [position] it’s gonna take to get me to the big leagues, that’s what I’ll go with,” he said.
Graham has endured 11 eleven combined innings in his last two appearances, each coming in starting pitcher Conor Harber’s relief. Harber, on the other hand, has lasted just 5.2 innings combined over his last three outings and doesn’t own a quality start this season. With a 5-10 record in conference, Oregon will examine other options for the third spot in the rotation.
His upside alone makes Graham a compelling candidate for the position, even if it’s not the one he’s been working toward.
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