Even if Shawnee Mission East left-hander Joey Wentz’s reputation had not preceded him to the mound at his high school Tuesday, the Free State High players would have quickly deduced this was not going to be just any day on the diamond.

“It was pretty easy to tell from the 30 to 40 scouts right behind home plate watching him with the radar guns, watching him warm up,” Firebirds leadoff hitter Mikey Corbett said. “It was pretty easy to tell even before the first pitch.”

Nothing about the first pitch changed anybody’s mind.

“High fastball,” Corbett said. “I knew right then it was going to be a pretty tough day. He was throwing pretty dang hard. The hardest part was that it was so gray out. He was throwing hard, the fastest I’ve ever seen, and it was so difficult to see it off that backdrop. And he hides the ball really well. You don’t really see the ball until late.”

Corbett struck out on five pitches to start a game Free State lost, 2-0. Zion Bowlin struck out on three pitches for the third out of the first inning.

Wentz, one of two high school pitchers from Kansas projected to go in the first round of June’s major-league draft, has allowed two hits in 30 innings and has 60 strikeouts. Heading into the Free State game, he had not allowed a hit. The names of the only two baseball players in the state to get a hit off him this season: Corbett and Bowlin.

Corbett led off the fourth with a push-bunt single that neither the pitcher nor the first baseman could field in time. Bowlin lined a hit-and-run single to center, a play on which Shawnee Mission East’s Jake Randa, son of former Royals third baseman Joe Randa, threw out Corbett at third.

The Firebirds have a strong nucleus back from a state-championship team, so moral victories don’t cut it. Still, in lining a ball into the outfield for hit, Bowlin accomplished what no other player has thus far. It was news, and he wanted to share it with his father. So he texted him after the game.

The father’s response, according to the son: “You got swag, boy!”

Bowlin also has, according to coach Mike Hill, “some of the quickest hand-strength in his hands. There are a lot of things we would modify on his swing if you could build it the way you want it, but he does things with his hands that honestly very few kids we’ve ever had can do. His ability to drive a ball the other way with power is really impressive.”

Corbett and Bowlin said that as the game progressed, hitters throughout the lineup did a better job of adjusting to Wentz’s velocity and put some balls in play, giving them confidence that if they face Wentz again at Hoglund Ballpark with a state title at stake, the outcome could be different.

“Hitting is timing,” Hill said. “They don’t see that velocity. Their zone is 82 to 85. They’re comfortable with that. They’re not comfortable with 92 to 95. It disrupts their timing. I thought our kids actually had a really good, aggressive approach. He was just simply a dominant pitcher.”

Overpowering and precise.

“The thing that really caught me about him is his control,” Hill said. “He didn’t walk anybody. He strikes out 13 in 88 pitches, 64 for strikes. You don’t see that from power arms at the high school level because they’re going to be all over the place.”

The Firebirds prepared for Wentz by taking batting practice against coaches who threw hard from halfway between the mound and home plate, but there is no simulating a 90-plus fastball in practice.

Free State won’t need to prepare for Overland Park Aquinas right-hander Riley Pint, potentially the first overall pick of the draft.

As for Wentz, the Firebirds would like nothing better than to deny him a state title and then watch him work his way to dominance in the major leagues.

“Getting home from my 9-to-5 job some day, turning on the TV and saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I got a bunt single off that guy,'” Corbett said.

That bunt single was a start. The Firebirds would like to get one more chance at a better finish.