7/9/2020 baseball Edit

Oregon State Baseball: Jake Mulholland To Return For 2021 Season

Brenden Slaughter • BeaversEdge

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The Oregon State baseball program and head coach Mitch Canham received welcome news on Wednesday afternoon as senior southpaw Jake Mulholland elected to return to Corvallis for his fifth year in the 2021 season.

"Beaver Nation, it's been a great four years, let's do one more," Mulholland said via Twitter. "We've got some unfinished business."

The 6-foot-2, 202-pounder went undrafted in the shortened five-round MLB Draft and will be taking advantage of the NCAA's newest exemption that will allow him to return for a fifth season despite taking part in each of the last four seasons.

Mulholland didn't quite have the start to his senior season in 2020 that he would have hoped for as he appeared in five contests and sported a 13.00 ERA with 16 hits, 13 runs, and three walks allowed.

There was an internal expectation that Mulholland would have been able to slide into a starting role, but he struggled early in the 2020 campaign and we never got to see exactly what the master plan was going to be over the course of the year.

It's anyone's guess whether or not Canham and pitching coach Rich Dorman will give him a similar starting opportunity next season or if he'll return to a closer role, but in either case, it's a huge coup for the Beavers to have Mully back in the fold.

With ace Kevin Abel announcing his intention to return shortly after the MLB Draft, the Beavers now have two very experienced arms leading the pitching unit next season and that should give optimism about what might be able to happen in year two of the Canham era.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly why Mulholland struggled in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, but given his previous accolades and big-time experience in his prior seasons, I'm willing to bet that the Mulholland we saw in 2020 was simply an outlier and that he'll return to his previous form next season.