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CSN pitcher Phil Bickford has big league talent

Phil Bickford, the College of Southern Nevada’s hard-throwing right-handed pitching prospect from Ventura, Calif. — he’s projected as a high first-round selection in June’s major league draft — has an easygoing style to him.

He’s a pretty big kid, though one still probably would classify him as lanky. As one scouting report put it, his arms always seem to be bent around the elbows.

He stands 6 feet 4 inches tall, weighs around 210 pounds. He has a wild shock of blond hair that flies in the breeze, where there is one, from under his cap.

He sort of reminds one of the Angels’ Jered Weaver, who pitched for Long Beach State in college. If Bickford wore Vans, he could pass for the younger, flame-throwing brother of Jeff Spicoli from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

Bickford sort of flows to and from the pitcher’s mound, the way a surfer would. Every now and then he says “dude.”

He was asked Friday if he did any surfing. He said with a major smile that he prefers body boarding. “I like Zuma in Malibu, Silver Strand in Oxnard,” he said of the beaches he frequents.

Bickford also likes hanging 10 strikeouts or so on the opposition at Morse Stadium on the CSN campus in Henderson, and wherever the Coyotes play road games.

On Friday, the sophomore was flowing to and from the mound against Salt Lake Community College. He threw 81 pitches in CSN’s 5-0 victory in the first game of a doubleheader. He allowed four hits in six innings. Three were bleeders; one was a triple.

He didn’t walk a batter. He struck out 12.

The usual coterie of major league scouts pointed radar guns at him and clicked. Ninety-two mph consistently; then 93; then, in the top of the sixth when he was nearing the end of the line, 94. Every now and then the coterie of scouts would take out notebooks and scribble something.

When CSN coach Nick Garritano removed Bickford from the game, most of the scouts removed themselves from the blue plastic seats behind home plate. They had seen what they came to see. Again.

After the game, after Bickford was done talking to his adviser and some other guys with tanned faces and golf shirts who may have been his adviser’s advisers, he sidled over to chat with a reporter.

He comes off a nice kid, not standoffish in the slightest for someone whose baseball future is so bright. A prima donna? Not Phil Bickford. I was told that when the wall behind home plate needed painting before the season started, Bickford was the first guy to grab a brush.

He was asked if the 81-pitch performance against the Salt Lake City team was indicative of the other games he has pitched for CSN. Yup, pretty much, he said with an impish grin that seemed humble.

“Every time I go out there, I try to get a little better,” he said. “Today was one of the good ones.”

Plus, the Coyotes scored some runs for him this time. Last week at Utah State University Eastern, Bickford and two other Coyotes combined on a no-hitter — and lost.

“That was something else,” he said.

So Bickford was grateful when CSN (35-13, after a four-game weekend sweep) scored five runs on a bright 74-degree afternoon.

“That was awesome,” he said.

It must have been like Phoebe Cates getting out of the swimming pool in “Fast Times.”

When Bickford is drafted in the first round in June, it will be the second time it has happened — Toronto picked him 10th overall out of high school in 2013. But instead of signing with the Blue Jays, Bickford enrolled in classes at Cal State Fullerton, which has one of the top college baseball programs in the country.

As a freshman for the Titans, Bickford went 6-3 with a 2.13 ERA. He struck out 74 in 76 innings. He walked 13. He said he had every intention of remaining at Fullerton, even if it meant he couldn’t be drafted again until after his junior year, per baseball rules.

Then he went to the Cape Cod League during the summer where his stock among the radar gun-toting fanatics skyrocketed.

Bickford said baseball advisers and other people told him he might want to reconsider his baseball future.

“It was like ‘Dude, you’re wasting your time,’ ” he said of having to pitch two more years at a four-year school before he could sign with a major league team.

Still, he called the decision to leave Fullerton and transfer to CSN — no, he didn’t bring his boogie boards — “emotional.”

In 62 innings with the Coyotes, Bickford is 7-1 with a 1.60 ERA. Pitching in a wooden bat league, he keeps sawing them off. He has allowed only 34 hits. He has walked just 15 while striking out a whopping 117.

He has painted one wall behind home plate. He helps take the tarp off the field. He seems like a great teammate.

He hits 94 mph on a radar gun in the sixth inning.

As Nick Garritano likes to say, you get a couple of hits off Phil Bickford, you’re probably going to get your name in the newspaper.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.

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