By IAN WILSON
There’s being in the zone and there’s dominating it.
Lefty starting pitcher Kenny Jinks did both during a June 7th matchup against the Moose Jaw Miller Express at Mitchell Field in Swift Current.
The lanky 6-foot-4 hurler for the 57’s befuddled batters and sat down swingers during his eight innings of mastery. In this case, the stats didn’t lie: 121 pitches, 84 of them for strikes, 18 strikeouts, three hits, one walk, one earned run and, most importantly, the win in a 5-1 triumph for Swift Current.
“In my twenty years of playing baseball, I have had some double-digit strikeout games but this game just felt special. I didn’t even know until the sixth inning that I had that many. I knew I had a lot but I was surprised when I started counting up on the K counter. I just knew I had to keep going,” the 24-year-old said of his 18 Ks.
“To be honest, this is by far the best game I could ever throw. I was talking to my teammates and coaches, just in awe of what happened. It still seems like a dream.”
Based on how he’s performed for Swift Current, perhaps the outing shouldn’t be such a surprise.
Since joining the 57’s in 2022, Jinks has been a consistent force in the Western Canadian Baseball League (WCBL). That first summer, the Cartersville, Georgia native went 4-2 with a 3.75 earned run average (ERA) and 69 Ks over 57-plus innings for Swift Current. He pitched in 13 games and made nine starts, shutting the door in two of them.
A recruit of Joey Jordan, who was the head coach of the 57’s at the time, Jinks was made familiar with the WCBL through his roommates at Shorter University. Both Tyler McWillie and Jesse Simpson were playing with the Sylvan Lake Gulls that season. In addition, fellow Georgians and Shorter University teammates Logan Stockton and Justin Barnes made the trek to Swift Current to play alongside Jinks.
“We thought it was a no brainer,” said Jinks of spending the summer in Canada.
Jinks followed up his stellar play in 2022 with another solid campaign last summer and earned a spot on the WCBL East Division All-Star roster both years. In 2023, the southpaw went 5-3 with 58 Ks and a 3.31 ERA over 51.2 regular-season innings. He appeared in 19 games and made six starts for the 57’s while picking up three saves.
“Swift has been amazing. I keep in touch with my billets every week when I’m at school and I’m still in touch with some guys from the last two seasons. The 57’s and the WCBL have been great for me since I’ve been here,” said Jinks.
This season, the senior has been used exclusively as a starter in the early going of the campaign. Through three starts and 22 innings, he’s 2-1 with a 2.04 ERA and 33 strikeouts. His outing against the Miller Express vaulted him to the top of the league’s strikeout leader board.
“For this summer I really only had one goal, and that was just to have fun this summer and enjoy this, my last experience as a player on the field. I knew coming in this summer this was probably my last and I just wanted it to be the best and most enjoyable season that I could have,” said Jinks, who admitted he’d love to see his name called during the Major League Baseball (MBL) Draft or get the opportunity to play professionally after his time with the 57’s comes to an end.
“There’s always that thought in my head of hoping to get a chance of getting signed, but I know with this being my last year the chances are getting slimmer. But after this summer I’m expecting to go back to school and start a coaching career and get a masters degree. Either way I just hope to stay in the game that I love.”
Helping to foster that love of the game was his phenomenal showing against the Miller Express.
And after looking at the WCBL scoreboard and seeing so many teams reach double-digits in run production during the early part of the 2024 season, Jinks was excited to contribute to a low-scoring contest.
“As good as Moose Jaw has been the past two years, and even this season, it meant a little bit more. I knew they were a good offensive team that could put a crooked number up at any moment, so to perform that well against that team still amazes me,” said Jinks, who went 12-5 with 146 Ks over his 133.2 innings at Wheeling University the last two years.
Heading into the Miller Express contest, Jinks said it “felt like a normal day,” other than an equipment malfunction at first base that required fixing ahead of the game.
He also admitted that he wanted to go for a complete game, but agreed the decision to pull him after eight innings.
“Of course, deep down I wanted to go, but the inning before we had a talk about if I was going to even go out for the eighth, but I told him that I had the bottom of the lineup due and was fortunate enough to get two pinch hitters in the game and I kind of knew what the result was going to be and we got to the ninth and I was at 121 pitches,” explained Jinks.
“I just felt like I did my job getting us here and giving us a chance to win and I trusted our closer to end things out for us. We have a young pitching staff and, me being the old guy, I want these boys to get as many chances to move on to the next level.”
The “next level” is also another way of describing how Jinks has been pitching.
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