WESTFIELD, Ind. – Purdue baseball's Ben Nisle and Jack Firestone have been selected to be part of Thursday's summer league showcase at Victory Field in Downtown Indianapolis, representing the Boilermakers in the College Summer League at Grand Park's All-Star Game.
Nisle (Blue Team) and Firestone (Red Team) are both outfielders for the Park Rangers in the wood bat summer league in suburban Indianapolis, which was organized in the spring as a Central Indiana alternative option. Fellow Boilermaker Tanner Haston also plays for the Park Rangers.
Purdue's Miles Simington was a fellow all-star outfielder for the Park Rangers when the initial list was released last week. However, he opted to return home to his native Bloomington-Normal to finish the summer playing for the Gems of the Kernels Collegiate League, debuting July 8. That four-team league was formed by the Normal CornBelters after the Prospect League canceled its season in late May.
The Grand Park League's All-Star Game is set for Thursday, July 16 at 6:30 p.m. ET. Victory Field is the home of the Triple-A Indianapolis Indians as well as the IHSAA state finals. The state's premier professional baseball stadium is also slated to host the Grand Park League's championship game Thursday, July 30.
Pitchers Connor Ayers (Turf Monsters) and Eric Hildebrand (Local Legends) also joined Grand Park League teams in late June. Andrew Bohm, James Kulak and Kyle Wade are also expected to be placed with teams in the Grand Park League later this month if not sooner. Incoming freshmen Wes Gingerich (Marksmen) and Jake Stadler (A-Team) are also playing in the league.
Nisle is listed as a center fielder for the Park Rangers after serving as a corner outfielder for Purdue dating back to his Freshman All-American campaign in 2018. He produced the top exit velocity (106.99 mph) in the league during the second week of the summer league season. For games on June 29 to 30, his 418-foot home run was the longest in the league. Firestone connected for a 394-foot blast that same week, good for fourth longest in the league.
Meanwhile, Hildebrand also jumped into the league's top-10 data made available for June 29 to 30 with a fastball clocked at 92.9 mph. The Grand Park League has been utilizing Trackman Baseball to collect the data, but traditional stats have generally not been made available.
Mike Carmin of the Lafayette Journal & Courier caught up with Nisle, Simington and Firestone for their thoughts on being back on the field after the NCAA season was canceled March 12 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Nisle: "It's definitely nice to get back out on the field. Just seeing live at-bats and just playing baseball is fun because it ended pretty abruptly. This is very nice. It's very important to get at-bats and see good pitching. The pitchers are really good here. You can work on the little things in your game. It's a lot more relaxed here so you can do things that you couldn't really do during the season."
• Simington: "We were all supposed to go to different places, and everything started to get canceled. Our coaches got on it pretty quickly and I would say within a month, most of us had somewhere to play. It's taken some time to get back to 100 %. We're back to seeing live pitching and we're starting to feel really good. We're playing only Monday and Tuesday but getting at-bats is really important."
• Firestone: "I feel like I'm getting back into a little bit of a groove. It's just difficult when it's only two days out of the week seeing live pitching."
MORE SUMMER LEAGUE LOCATIONS
• Ryan Howe and Mike Bolton Jr. are teammates with the MCL Minutemen of the Midwest Collegiate League, playing their games in Northwest Indiana. Both Boilermakers have played in each of their team's first seven games. Howe is off to a hot start – 8-for-19 with 3 extra-base hits, 7 RBI and 8 free passes (6 walks, 2 HBP), producing a .593 on-base percentage. Bolton's OBP is also a solid .414 thanks to 5 hits and 7 free passes (6 walks, 1 HBP) in 29 plate appearances.
• Ricky Castro struck out the side in order to close out a July 1 opening-night win for the Wisconsin Rapids Rafters of the Northwoods League. He surrendered only one hit to the 15 batters he faced over his first three appearances.
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July 15, 2020 at 04:39AM
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Nisle, Firestone Set for All-Star Game in Indy - Purdue University Athletics - Purdue Boilermakers
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