Among the area’s varsity baseball teams, Hinsdale South senior Charlie Klemm is no secret as a pitcher.
After going 6-0 with a 1.96 ERA as a junior last year, he has helped the Hornets get off to a 5-0 start entering the week. He’ll pitch for North Central College next year, bringing with him a four-seam fastball, two-seam fastball, curveball and changeup.
So far this season, though, he’s surprising teams with his bat.
“There are balls I’ve hit this year that I thought were sure outs,” Klemm said, “and when I look up, they’re still going.”
Klemm has played the field through most of his high school career, but last year Terrence Cribbs manned second base, leaving Klemm mainly to his pitching duties. With Cribbs now playing for Beloit College, Klemm is playing second base when he’s not pitching.
While he’s excelling on the mound so far, Klemm has also hit a double off of Michigan-bound pitcher Angelo Smith of Richards in the first game of the season and a game-tying home run with two outs in the seventh inning off Addison Trail ace Nick Villasenor.
“He’s done a fabulous job,” Hornets coach Paul Hoel said of Klemm. “We knew he’d add a little punch, but he’s been hitting great. He has more power than he’s had in the past. The last two years, he has probably been our hardest-working kid in the offseason.”
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Two years ago, Klemm was a 5-foot-8, 145-pound sophomore. He added 10-15 pounds of muscle before his junior year, hit a growth spurt and added another 10 pounds to his frame prior to the current season. He’s now 6-foot-0 and 175 pounds.
“I did a lot of lower-body lifting, squats and deadlifting, and nothing overhead because I wanted to avoid shoulder injuries,” Klemm said. “Not only did it help my pitching, it helped my hitting, too.”
As a pitcher, Klemm’s fastball averaged roughly 85 miles per hour last season, but he improved on that in the offseason and believes he’ll hit the upper 80s this season.
“I have a lot more on the mound. I feel stronger,” Klemm said. “Last year, my curveball was a bit of a struggle at the beginning of the year, but I worked on my mechanics and was able to make it my best pitch by the end of the year.”
Klemm credits his father Steve, a former college pitcher for Chicago State, for teaching him about pitching and for guiding him in baseball’s direction.
“I wanted to play football when I was 12 or 13, and he wouldn’t let me do it because of the chance a football injury might hurt me in baseball,” Klemm said. “I didn’t like it at the time, but now I see that he was right. And I’ve been able to focus on baseball year-round.”
The Hornets feature a pair of varsity veterans in catcher John Stoltz and center fielder Danny Mazzei, and Klemm returns to the mound along with Austin Peay-bound Jaxon Herchenbach and junior John Colucci, who were both starting pitchers last year.
Junior Matt Uba is the fourth starter in the rotation, and Klemm believes the team can sustain its hot start.
“I think we have a balanced lineup, one through nine,” Klemm said. “There isn’t anyone who can’t come up and get a big hit.
“The thing that will separate us is our fielding. We know we can hit it and pitch it, and so far we’ve fielded it really well, too.”
Gary Larsen is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
Twitter @Pioneer_Press