IU baseball produces lefty sluggers. Carter Mathison's freshman numbers outpace them all.

BLOOMINGTON — Carter Mathison tells himself when he's at the plate to stay tight, because the IU freshman slugger's swing functions like a wound coil.

His stance is crouched, not severely, but enough that his strike zone is shortened and the tension is visible in his powerful quadriceps and calves. The left-hander keeps his bat close to his shoulder as he waits, allowing it to bounce off his clavicle as something of a timing mechanism.

When pitchers begin their delivery, he spins back just slightly to his left so his number is facing the mound and cocks back his hands, shifting all of his muscular 215 pounds on to his back foot. When all of that potential energy becomes kinetic and his bat and body twist forward in unison, creating collisions with baseballs, Mathison sends them soaring.

Such was the case Sunday when Mathison launched an 0-1 pitch from Minnesota's Noah Deluga over the right-field fence and the patio behind it and on to the grass hillside at Bart Kaufman Field. The 403-foot, two-run home run was Mathison's 16th blast of the season, adding to his IU freshman record and putting him in a tie for fifth in the Big Ten.

"He's strong, but he's mobile," IU coach Jeff Mercer said. "So when you're strong and you're mobile, you create a terrific amount of torque. Some guys are strong and they hit the ball straight into the ground without the mobility. Carter is really strong and mobile, can create torque, and he has a great trajectory, so what for others would be line drives, for him are 410-foot home runs."

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Mathison is the latest in a growing line of IU power-hitting left-handed hitters who have been uncontainable by Bloomington ballparks in the past 15 years. It's a legacy that includes professionals Matt Lloyd, Grant Richardson and Craig Dedelow, but most notably, major leaguers Alex Dickerson and Kyle Schwarber. Mathison still has at least two years left at IU to construct a career similar to theirs, but he is already ahead of their respective paces.

Dickerson held the previous IU freshman home run record with 14, and he hit those in 2009 before the BBCOR era when bats were more loaded with trampoline effect while the Hoosiers were playing at Sembower Field, the precursor to Bart Kaufman that stood up the hill on Fee Lane and was more prone to out-blowing wind. Schwarber played with BBCOR bats at Sembower and he hit just half as many home runs in his freshman season (eight) as Mathison has now.

Of course, both of them took off as sophomores, earning first-team All-America honors with Dickerson hitting 24 home runs in 2010 and winning the Big Ten triple crown and Schwarber blasting 18 in 2013 during IU's magical run to its first College World Series. Schwarber now has 162 career major-league home runs and a World Series ring and Dickerson 40 career major-league home runs, so Mathison has a long way to go to reach their total body of work. However, after what he's done in his first year as a collegian, it doesn't seem at all out of the question for him to follow their path to the big leagues.

"There's nothing physically, emotionally, intelligence wise, that will limit Carter," Mercer said. "There's not a limit to him."

Mercer believes that in part because of the way he's seen Mathison transform himself in his game in just the short time he's known him.

Mathison didn't really think much about baseball being his path to college scholarship money, much less to a professional career, until ninth grade. Until that point, he had played on travel teams in his home town of Fort Wayne, but only on squads that stayed relatively close to home for tournaments, rarely leaving the state. But after Mathison broke into the starting lineup of Homestead High School's varsity squad in his freshman year, his father Craig suggested he think bigger.

"I'd always played just locally, just having a good time with my friends," Mathison said. "My dad kinda sat me down and said, 'OK, you're a pretty good player. We can see how this goes. You want to challenge yourself.' That challenge came with me going to an Indianapolis team and playing with a team down there. That's where I kind of realized, If I could compete with the Indy kids, then I have a good possibility. That was the big realization I could do something with this."

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Mathison played with the Indiana Mustangs as a freshman, but that team broke up, and he and several of his teammates when to play for the powerhouse Indiana Bulls the following season, a program Mercer played for and keeps close ties to.

Mathison thrived against the better competition and Mercer saw enough in the summer after his sophomore year to offer him a scholarship, and Mathison committed.

"I really liked the way that he moved," Mercer said. "Just a really smooth operator in the outfield, obviously left/left. Long and athletic. Some of his high school hitting coaches that he worked with raved about him. He's from Fort Wayne like Grant Richardson, and they told me he was similar to Grant Richardson, but more advanced at the same age."

But even then he was a long way from being the player he would become. He showed athleticism, he could hit and he showed signs of power, but it wasn't fully developed. According to MaxPreps, he hit .435 in nine games as a freshman with four doubles, but no home runs. As a sophomore, he hit .326 and slugged .617 but hit a modest four home runs in 29 games.

"Sophomore year he was a solid guy for us," Homestead coach Nick Byall said. "He was one of our top hitters. You saw some of the power. It would come and go. You knew it was there. He hit one against Huntington North that went off the school. You would see flashes of that."

Mathison knew the only way that power would become consistent was if he turned more of his 6-1 rangy frame into muscle, so he devoted himself to the weight room. He had room to grow in his upper body, but he also realized power comes from the lower half.

"I would be in the weight room 3-4 times every week ever since my sophomore year," Mathison said. "My main focus were my legs. A lot of power comes from the legs, so we did everything from front squats, dead lifts, single leg stuff. Stuff like that really benefited me a lot."

Mathison's junior season was wiped away by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but that didn't keep him out of the weight room. His father works in commercial real estate, and a building he owned had weights available, so Mathison was able to work out even when everything else was shut down.

By his senior season, his body was completely transformed with muscle from his wrists and forearms to his shoulders and throughout his torso and lower body. His new found power made him arguably the best hitter in the state. He posted an absurd slash line of .515/.621/1.242 for an OPS of 1.863 with a best-in-the-state 16 home runs as well as 12 doubles and six triples. He had 51 hits, 34 of them for extra bases, 64 runs and 53 RBIs in 33 games, earning Mr. Baseball honors from the Indiana High School Baseball Coaches Association. He led Homestead to the Class 4A regional semifinals where they lost to eventual state runner-up Fishers.

"His legs were massive, strong upper body," Byall said. "It just came easy to him. The ball would jump off his bat different from other guys. We had some talented guys in his class, but it just seemed to fly a little further and fly a little harder." 

Mathison was so good IU almost lost him. Big league scouts noticed his power numbers and teams started inquiring about how much of a bonus he would require to sign if he was drafted out of high school. MLB.com ranked him as the 234th prospect in the draft, which equates to an eighth-round pick. Fortunately for IU, Mathison placed a lot of value on the college experience and set his price at $1 million, life-changing money that fits in Competitive Balance Round B after the second round. That figure scared most teams off. Mathison said one franchise called in the 11th round and asked if he would be willing to sign, but the bonus they offered wasn't close to what he wanted so he stuck with his commitment and enrolled at IU.

When Mathison arrived in Bloomington in summer school, Mercer knew he had a much different player than the one he'd recruited. He hadn't been able to see him up close because of the pandemic and the difference from the player he'd last seen in 2019 was drastic.

"When he went into the COVID shutdown he was a really good player," Mercer said. "But what you didn't know was he was going to go gain 20 pounds of muscle over that COVID break. When he came out, he came out a different guy. When a lot of kids went in and came out worse, he came out way better. When Carter came to my house, he's got the square jaw, big neck, wide shoulders and you could just tell he was very vascular you could tell this guy had changed tremendously."

Mercer knew it would take Mathison some time to figure out Division I pitching, especially with the Hoosiers opening the season with Clemson and then the Round Rock Classic, which included games against Arkansas and Stanford. He still made him the opening day starter in left field.

Mathison got just one hit in his first 10 at-bats at IU and two in his first 18. He didn't hit his first home run until his eighth game and as of March 13, he was hitting .156 (7-for-45) with just two homers.

Since then, he's hitting .311 for a better-than-respectable .272 average on the year. He has hit 11 home runs since the calendar turned to April and leads the Hoosiers in slugging percentage (.600) OPS (1.002) and runs (49) while ranking third on the team with 49 RBIs.

"I was just showing up every day, doing my job, doing the drill work and gaining the confidence," Mathison said. "Getting the experience helped a lot earlier in the year, seeing the college pitching, seeing the speed of the game. Now it's normal to me. I'm more used to it. I'm more comfortable and it's helped me a lot."

Mathison still has time to build on this excellent season with a Big Ten series this weekend in Iowa and possibly the Big Ten tournament next weekend in Omaha, but he'll have challenges beyond this year. Next year, opposing pitchers will have a better understanding of how to approach him and he'll have to adjust.

Mercer also thinks he needs to work on his game away from the plate to maximize his appeal for the next time he's draft eligible in 2024. He runs a 6.6 60-yard dash and has a strong arm, having pitched in high school, but he has just eight stolen bases and hasn't yet proven to be a plus defensive player. With some improvements, he can present himself as a five-tool player.

"He needs to get better defensively so he can play center field," Mercer said. "He needs to trust his throwing. I think you're going to see him really explore the base-stealing part of his game. He's a 20-stolen base guy. If you're a 20-homer, 20-stolen base, 20 doubles guy that can drive in runs, that makes you more well-rounded, more attractive."

And in Mathison, Mercer sees not only the talent but the work ethic needed to make that happen.

"There's nothing that will limit him from doing that," Mercer said. "That's just a natural progression for him. If he does those things, he'll put himself in position to play baseball for a long time. A long, long time."

Follow Herald-Times IU Insider Dustin Dopirak on Twitter at @DustinDopirak or email him at DDopirak@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Indiana baseball: Carter Mathison on MLB path with IU HR record