Underdog mentality, overpowering fastball fueled the rise of 2025's No. 5 Draft pick

This story originally ran previously, before Liam Doyle was drafted with the No. 5 pick by the Cardinals.

PHOENIX -- If you paid attention to college baseball in 2025, odds are that you saw Tennessee’s Liam Doyle. He was likely bounding off the mound after one of his program-record 164 strikeouts, exuberantly celebrating winning another one-on-one battle.

Doyle opened the season as MLB Pipeline’s No. 75 Draft prospect but quickly vaulted his way up the charts. He whiffed 47 batters across his first four starts, allowing just six hits and one run in that stretch. He spearheaded a pair of Volunteers no-hitters, accounting for just the ninth and 10th such milestones in program history. And in a sport awash with viral moments, the 21-year-old, now MLB’s No. 8 Draft prospect, has perpetuated the "all-gas, no-breaks" style that has endeared him to fans.

So what is Doyle pumping into his headphones pregame to set the stage for all this energy?

Pitbull. “Fireball” in particular, but the southpaw says that anything by Mr. Worldwide should do the trick.

But beyond any beats, there’s a chip that Doyle has carried on his electric left shoulder for years now. Coming out of the New Hampshire high school ranks, the reports on him were positive, but not glowing. He’d have to go to college to prove himself.

“I've always had that kind of underdog mentality, just being a kid from the North,” Doyle said. “Not a lot of baseball players come from where I'm from, so I always had that mentality going for me, and that's where that competitive spirit comes from. That's where that drive and passion for the game is.”

Where Doyle’s from is Derry, N.H., although he was born in Boston. He played for the powerhouse program at Pinkerton Academy and caught the eye of scouts, but limited exposure on the national scene had him behind the proverbial 8-ball in terms of his peers.

“The thing about Liam is he's always been a competitor, even as a freshman,” said Pinkerton head coach Steve Campo. “I mean, he was just competitive. He wanted the ball, he wanted to pitch. He was always looking at the guy ahead of him and thinking, ‘I could be better than him’ and pushing himself to get there. That fieriness has always been a part of him and it's always what separated him.”

Pinkerton -- by far the largest high school in New Hampshire -- has produced just one big leaguer: Lefty Tyler, who won 127 games and compiled a 2.95 career ERA across 2,230 innings with the Boston Doves/Braves and the Cubs from 1910-21 (unsurprisingly, he was a lefty).

So it seems fitting that Doyle, himself a southpaw, has put himself on track to become the first Pinkerton Astro to make The Show in more than a century (two others from the program played pro ball but never reached the big leagues). The game has changed immeasurably since the days of Tyler, but that chip of coming from The Granite State has never worn off for Doyle, who makes it a point to return to Pinkerton every year and be present for the school’s baseball camps.

“That's just the kid he is,” Campo said. “What’s in front of him, he wants to be the best he can be at it.”

It’s been a circuitous route to the top of 2025 Draft boards for Doyle. It included one-year stops at Coastal Carolina, Ole Miss and Tennessee after his time at Pinkerton, and he proved himself at each stop. The culmination came this spring when the southpaw led all of Division I baseball with his 15.4 K/9 strikeout rate.

“Learning really how to pitch and how to compete, when you need to show emotion and [when you need to] control your emotions and stuff like that,” said Doyle of what’s changed most during his three seasons on campus. “I’ve just grown as a man in that way.

“Learning how to pitch to college hitters, learning how to throw a lot of offspeed pitches in the zone and get ahead of counts and all those basic pitching things that you didn't necessarily know in high school because you didn't really need to know. So you learn a lot in college baseball and grow so much as a player and a person.”

When Doyle was a senior at Pinkerton, leading the program to a NHIAA Division I title, he was utilizing his unorthodox delivery to ramp his heater up into the low 90s. That was around where his fastball sat through his sophomore campaign of college. But now at 6-foot-2 and 220 pounds, Doyle has added velo (the pitch has hit as high as 99 mph on the radar gun), spin and exceptional vertical break to make his four-seamer one of the most dominant offerings in his Draft class. For context, his 75-grade fastball is not only the highest-rated heater in this year's Draft class, but it's the highest rated since Paul Skenes was slinging for LSU.

“Watching him develop over the four years from I think like a 140-pound freshman to a 190-pound senior, and the fastball going from, 82 [mph] to I think by the time he left high school, he was upwards of 90, 93 at times, it was just a tremendous treat as a high school coach to watch him develop,” Campo said. “It's just amazing to be a part of.”

But Doyle is far from a one-trick pony. You don’t win SEC Pitcher of the Year with one pitch, after all. All three of his other offerings -- slider, cutter, splitter -- grade out as plus. With eight double-digit strikeout performances in 2025, he has gone from a 5.73 ERA with Ole Miss a season ago to a 3.20 ERA and a reputation as one of college baseball’s most difficult hurlers to square up.

“I'm a fastball dominant pitcher,” Doyle said. “I’m going to throw my fastball -- my goal is to win or lose with my best stuff in the zone, with that being my fastball. But I also have a ton of different pitches that are really good and have taken great leaps this year. So you’re gonna get a good four-pitch mix.

“Good luck.”

That intensity and self-belief reverberate from Doyle when he talks about the game. But he's not all baseball all the time. He'll go out and hit the links or play with his five-year-old Golden Labrador.

“He has that switch,” Campo said of Doyle. “When you talk to him and you're just talking to him as a person, he's just a goofball.”

“I'm just a normal guy,” Doyle agreed. “I like to have a lot of fun and hang out, but on the mound, I'm a competitive guy and a person that just wants to win more than anyone.

“And that's why I have so much success on the field.”