The road included a curve at Guilford Tech in Jamestown, North Carolina.
Authoring a book on the nation’s most obscure colleges, Riefenhauser’s apex would occur during a chapter at Chopola Junior College (Marianna, Fla).
“I was in the middle of nowhere,” Riefenhauser recalls.
The kid they call ‘Rief’ penned with Chopola (sounds more like a chocolate chip cookie recipe than a reputable NCAA breeding house) because it was baseball school, with a history of churning out pro-level talent.
He remembers playing games before a pin drop quiet crowd of 10 people. He recalls long, brutal bus rides through Florida’s swamplands.
Any time Riefenhauser sees a cheap, rickety motel, memories of his campus-to-campus and minor league journey resurface.
Shortly after committing to Division-I Elon on what appeared to be another stop on his unpredictable college journey, Riefenhauser was drafted.
Riefenhauser’s never let his focus falter.
The goal is day-to-day progress. The top-order commitment is to keeping batters guessing. Riefenhauser’s velocity and movement has rendered him a tough hit.
It’s vastly different than playing on the Florida JUCO circuit, when he heard crickets chirping even while engaged in a 3-2 battle with some hard-raking righty.
The 23-year-old, who has hiked his fastball up to 91-93 MPH range, has an ERA of 1.83 and a WHIP of 0.97. He’s fanned 20, walked eight, yielded 11 hits, and surrendered just four earned runs.
Riefenhauser said thoughts of having a cup of coffee, a cocktail, or a contract in the big leagues have not crossed his mind lately.
“You only worry about the things you can control and change. The things that you can’t control, you can’t get tangled up thinking about them.”
“It’s a constant grind after the All-Star break,” Riefenhauser said. “That’s the beauty of it.”
Riefenhauser has taken workaday steps to sharpen up his command and utilize his breaking ball more. He’s managed to mesh in a changeup as well.
