Over the past few years, the Plant City area has built some of the best high school baseball programs in state, with four FHSAA Final Four appearances and one state championship between Plant City, Strawberry Crest and Durant alone since 2018.
But alongside those successful teams naturally comes high-end players, with future Division 1 athletes and professional prospects littering the rosters at all three schools. For Plant City, that has specifically come in the form of their elite pitching staff.
The Raiders’ pitchers currently sit seventh in the state of Florida’s 7A division with an earned run average of 1.18, allowing just 12 earned runs thus far over their 7-2 start, and lead the division with 112 strikeouts — just over 1.5 per inning — over their 71 innings of work.
“They’ve been huge this year,” senior catcher Colin Shultz said. “They keep us in games even when our offense isn’t performing, they single-handedly give us a chance to win at all times.”
Head coach Mike Fryrear said earlier in the season that he set a goal for the unit to take a 0.00 ERA into the Saladino Tournament when Spring Break arrived, and the team nearly reached that seemingly-impossible milestone as they allowed just one earned run over their 5-0 start to the year. And to make it all the more impressive? Not a single one of the five pitchers that Plant City has used this spring are in their senior season.
The starting rotation is led by junior Adan Longoria who started his year with 16 strikeouts in a no-hitter against Middleton and recently announced his commitment to the University of South Florida last week.
“I’ve always told my parents that I’m going to do this and I worked for it,” Longoria said. “I don’t think that it’s really sunk in yet, I haven’t felt that shocking moment yet like my parents have, but when that day comes, I’m excited for it.”
Longoria added that he had spoken to a few colleges but USF was his first official offer, and that it was an easy decision once that offer came in.
“It’s close to home, I’m a home-town kid,” Longoria said. “My mom went there, she graduated from there. It’s right down the road so it doesn’t get any better than that.”
Longoria has a 2-1 record over four appearances and three starts this season, totaling a 1.24 ERA and 35 strikeouts over 22.2 innings pitched.
Next in the rotation is sophomore Chase Mobley, a towering 6-foot-5 right-hander who was already committed to Florida State the summer before he began his freshman year at Plant City. Armed with a fastball that currently tops out at 94 miles per hour — despite being 15 years old — Mobley has built a 3-0 record in four appearances this year, giving up just four hits and zero earned runs over 21.1 innings pitched.
Following Mobley and Longoria, the Raiders have a deep bullpen headlined by juniors Preston Rogers and Tanner Rollyson at their disposal. Rogers has made five appearances on the year, with a 2.05 ERA over 13.2 innings while Rollyson joins Mobley as another member of the staff who has yet to allow an earned run over his nine innings of work.
“Preston Rogers is our bullpen guy but he could be a starter at any level, he could be a starter or an ace on any other team,” Fryrear said. “So we’ve got Adan Longoria, Chase Mobley, Preston Rogers and then Tanner Rollyson is just as good too, he would also be an ace for any other school. Then on the back half we have Zane Wright… We just have a really, really good pitching staff, this is probably the best pitching staff that I’ve had as a whole.”
While Rogers and Rollyson have yet to commit, they both noted that they have been in conversations with several programs about continuing their education and baseball career at the college level.
“I believe all of our pitchers could be good, Division 1 college pitchers one day,” Mobley said about how good this young pitching staff could be. “And I think we’re all going to be throwing in the low- to mid-90’s by next year so I think that we have a really good shot this year, next year and the year after.”
Plant City’s depth and talent at the position is as close as you can get to being a proven unit, despite being a young group, but all of that will be put to the test as the Raiders take on a two-week stretch where they will play six regular season games over 12 days.
“They want to compete against each other on every level,” Fryrear said. “They all want to be starters but we only play two games per week. Now we have to expand our starters to a three-game week and that leaves our bullpen on the back half in a disarray a little bit. But we have three or four really good arms and even our fifth and sixth guys are pretty dang good.”
The Raiders came away with a 10-1 victory over Spoto on Tuesday to move to 8-2 on the year and they’ll return to action at Sumner on Thursday and at Newsome on Friday to wrap up the week.