Brule leads Marcos to state title

Tim Tyers The Arizona Republic
May. 15, 2007 01:44 PM

Kyle Brule admits that early in his baseball career, he had a tendency to slack off when it came to conditioning. Then he received advice from former Arizona State All-American Jamie Allen, a close friend.

"He told me, 'You have all the talent in world. Don't ever let anybody outwork you,' " said Brule, who helped hit and pitch Marcos de Niza to the state Class 5A Division II baseball championship with a 5-4 win over Scottsdale Desert Mountain last Saturday.

Allen's message became Brule's mantra.

"That quote has been hanging above my bed and it's on my bathroom mirror, so every day when I wake up, it's the first thing I see," Brule said. "My goal is to never let anybody outwork me. If I'm not good enough to make it, somebody will tell me, but it won't stem from a lack of work.

"I want to reach my potential, whatever it is. If I'm not good enough, then I'm not good enough. But I don't ever have to say what if I had worked harder here, or worked harder there."

Brule's coach, Felipe Becerra, will testify to Brule's work ethic.

"He's a gym rat. He works his tail off 12 months a year just for the purpose of playing baseball," Becerra said. "He has a bulldog mentality."

Brule's hard work has paid off handsomely, and not only in a state championship. He has accepted a full athletic/academic scholarship package to play for ASU next season.

And when major league baseball's amateur draft rolls around, his name will be called at some point. How high it is called will determine whether he's bound for ASU or bound for his ultimate dream, pro baseball.

"Since moving here and watching ASU play while I was growing up, it has always been a dream to be on that field," said Brule, who moved to the Valley when he was 6 from Rochester, N.Y. "It works out that I have a ton of friends going there next year from the Valley and out of state, so it should be a lot of fun."

Brule has good size at 6 feet 1. He throws a fastball that has been clocked at 95 mph, in addition to a curve and slider.

A four-year varsity starter, Brule has played every position at some point during his career at Marcos. In Saturday's championship game he pitched all eight innings, allowing three earned runs and striking out nine, and drove in two runs.

He compiled a 9-2 record this year with an earned-run average under 2.00, and he hit better than .400.

"I struggled a lot at the beginning of the season," he said. "My velocity was down and my off-speed stuff wasn't good. I wanted to take it slow this year and progress in steps. My numbers aren't great, but it worked out in terms of performance at the right time and that's all that matters."

In his last four starts before the championship game, he didn't allow an earned run in 28 innings.

Brule started pitching in seventh grade, then gave it up for a year because he didn't consider it as fun as playing other positions, and then re-invented himself on the mound as a freshman at Marcos to make the varsity. He also played basketball as a freshman and football as a sophomore. Just prior to the start of his junior season he realized baseball was his future.

"I went to an ASU baseball camp and they asked me to commit to them then, which is very early," he said. "Once that happened, I kind of had a feeling that I could play at the next level and maybe go to the highest level. At that point I just started focusing on baseball and not worrying about the other things."

As the academic portion of his ASU scholarship indicates, Brule is more than a power pitcher. He is also a thinking man's pitcher.

He realizes his fastball moves better when he throws it around 90 mph vs. overthrowing it at 95 mph, and considers location - moving the ball inside, outside and up and down to keep hitters' eyes moving - just as important.