NEOSHO, Mo. – It was only a matter of time that Aaron Ashby, the former Crowder College standout pitcher, would make his Major League Baseball debut, and on Wednesday, he got the call.

“Getting to watch him today was really surreal, honestly,” Crowder head coach, Travis Lallemand, says.

Ashby graduated from Crowder in 2018, and just three years later, is starting on the mound for the Milwaukee Brewers.

“Two years of full professional baseball and he’s already a big leaguer,” Lallemand says. “There’s not too many people that take that path. That’s the really special part and it takes a special person to be able to navigate that quickly. It is not just performance based. That’s the proud moment for me, how quickly he did that.”

As a sophomore in 2018, Ashby lead the country in strikeouts and was recognized as an all-American.

“It was February game and I think he punched out like 15 or 16 that night,” Lallemand says. “It was early in the year. That was when you knew his stuff was real.”

There’s many stories of impressive outings just like that.

“In that 2018 year, he was absolutely unhittable. It was a situation where he had 150-something strikeouts on the season.”

Today, in his debut, Ashby struggled to settle in. He pitched two-thirds of an inning with four earned runs.

“Hopefully, he gets another opportunity soon to go out and kind of rectify the results,” Lallemand says. “He handled himself well and I’m very proud of him for not just losing it and going awry in that situation. He was around the zone and had good stuff.”

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