ST. PETERSBURG ― When Emilien Pitre arrived in Lexington, Kentucky, for college, he had more of an adjustment period than a typical Wildcat freshman. The Canadian infielder not only was seeing a new level of baseball and meeting new teammates, but dealing with another language.
Pitre grew up speaking French in the hockey-loving suburb of Repentigny, Montreal.
“The Lexington community is far different from Quebec,” Pitre said with a laugh. “So that was definitely an adjustment, but the people there, they were so welcoming to me, they made the transition easier.”
Pitre did not have the traditional baseball path but Sunday night, the second baseman out of the University of Kentucky was the Rays’ surprise second-round draftee, No. 58 overall. Draft “experts” predicted he would go in the later rounds, but the Rays liked what Pitre showed just getting here.
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“We’re thrilled to take Emilien Pitre,” Rays amateur scouting director Chuck Ricci said. “I think he’s another guy with really good contact skills and the power kind of emerged this year. (He’s) a very, very self-made player. I think he showed up at Kentucky, probably wasn’t ready to play that level, and just worked really hard at his English, at his body and his game, and where he’s come in that amount of time is just, it’s so impressive.
“Our guys did a Zoom with him the other day, and they came away just really, really impressed by just, just how far he’s come on his own. He’s at a good program in Kentucky, and he really made the most of an opportunity.”
Pitre had to take advantage of any opportunity.
Growing up in a suburb of Montreal, Pitre calls himself a Canadian “outlier” in that he never played the national sport of hockey. Instead, he gravitated to soccer and baseball. No one in his family played the latter; his family just supported his love of the game.
Pitre grew up playing baseball maybe two to three months a year because “it’s so cold” up there.
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“I played travel ball with this organization from Quebec when I was 15 or 16, and luckily, I got calls from a couple of different schools, and Kentucky was the first one to reach out to me,” Pitre said. “They mentioned how much they believed in me from the beginning so that really stuck with me.
“The past three years have been the best three years of my life.”
Pitre saw action in just 11 games as a freshman. He came in undersized and needed experience.
“I got into Kentucky and I was little,” Pitre said. “I was not big, not strong, and so my first year was all about getting bigger, stronger and faster. I made my goal to be at a certain weight and be certain strength. So my first year, I ate and lifted every single day. I focused on my body as much as I have ever done in my life.”
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Pitre had missed two seasons due to the COVID pandemic and then his 12th-grade year, which is a gap year in Quebec, he had spent living with a family in Ontario to learn English.
“But after that, I played summer baseball for the first time in, like, a couple years,” Pitre said of competing in the Cal Ripken Sr. Collegiate Baseball League. “So I was just ready to, you know, obviously, get on the field and play. That summer, I went to Maryland and Bethesda and played summer ball, and absolutely had a blast there and played well. So it was nice to see all the work I put in and finally show up on the field and perform.”
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In three years at Kentucky, Pitre was a .307 hitter with a .460 slugging percentage. He hit 11 home runs (10 in 2024) and stole 46 bases (26 this past season).
The Rays think that Pitre’s power will continue to come as he grows stronger — and not at the cost of his speed.
“We made a couple of adjustments to my swing. And I got stronger. That summer I gained about 10 pounds, while still keeping my ability to steal bases and stay fast,” Pitre said.
Pitre is excited to start the next leg of his unlikely journey to professional baseball with the Rays organization. He had several meetings with Tampa Bay and was not surprised — like some draft experts — that they picked him so early.
“It feels amazing,” Pitre said. “It’s been a dream since I started playing baseball. So being able to feel this moment with my family is awesome.”
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Day 2 Rays picks
Round 3, 94th overall
Nathan Flewelling, Catcher, St. Joseph High School (Alberta, Canada)
Round 4, 124th
Nate Knowles, RHP, William & Mary
Round 5, 157th
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Jacob Kmatz, RHP, Oregon State
Round 6, 186th
Janzen Keisel, RHP, Oklahoma State
Round 7, 216th
Ryan Andrade, RHP, Pittsburgh
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Round 8, 246th
Jayden Voelker, RHP, Northern Essex CC (Massachusetts)
Round 9, 276th
Garrett Gainey, LHP, South Carolina
Round 10, 306th
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Trey Pooser, RHP, Kentucky
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Fasig-Tipton has cataloged 348 entries for the main catalog of its Kentucky Winter Mixed Sale Feb. 3, in Lexington. The sale will begin at 10 a.m. ET.
“Kentucky Winter Mixed offers an important marketplace for buyers at all levels before the breeding sheds open,” said Fasig-Tipton president Boyd Browning. “There is good quality and variety among the racing and breeding stock this year, as well as a large group of short yearlings that will be a popular draw.”
Covering sires represented include Arabian Lion , Arcangelo, Constitution , Corniche , Elite Power , Forte , Girvin , Gunite , Hard Spun , Jackie’s Warrior , Mage , McKinzie , Nyquist , Olympiad , Oscar Performance , Volatile , and Yaupon .
Yearling sires cataloged include Candy Ride , Charlatan , Corniche, Epicenter , Ghostzapper , Girvin, Golden Pal , Maclean’s Music , Maxfield , Olympiad, Practical Joke , Street Sense , Tiz the Law , Uncle Mo, and Vekoma .
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The catalog’s front cover spotlights sale graduate Adare Manor , a 2024 Eclipse Award finalist for champion older mare and winner of the Apple Blossom Stakes (G1) and Clement L. Hirsch Stakes (G1). The back cover features additional 2024 graded stakes-winning graduates Fast as Flight , First Peace , Leave No Trace , Olivia Darling , and Running Bee .
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Entries remain open for the sale’s supplemental catalog. Fasig-Tipton will continue to accept supplemental entries over the next few weeks.
The main catalog for the Kentucky Winter Mixed may now be viewed online. Print catalogs will be available early next week.
Online bidding and phone bidding services will be available.
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This press release has been edited for content and style by BloodHorse Staff.
BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (AP) — Mason Nicholson’s 20 points helped Jacksonville State defeat Western Kentucky 73-67 on Thursday night.
Nicholson also contributed 12 rebounds and three blocks for the Gamecocks (9-6, 1-1 Conference USA). Quel’Ron House scored 14 points and added nine rebounds and seven assists. Jaron Pierre Jr. went 5 of 18 from the field (1 for 7 from 3-point range) to finish with 12 points.
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Enoch Kalambay finished with 24 points for the Hilltoppers (10-6, 1-2). Julius Thedford added 17 points.
House scored eight points in the first half and Jacksonville State went into halftime trailing 27-24. Nicholson scored 14 second-half points.
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The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.
Kentucky’s loss to Georgia felt like deja vu in that the issues that plagued the Cats vs. Ohio State and Clemson came roaring back. Once again, Kentucky let a physical team bully them around, turned the ball over too often, and didn’t create enough shots. Even though it feels like the blueprint to beat Kentucky is laminated after Tuesday night, Mark Pope believes all of those issues are fixable, even in the short term.
“Listen, it’s not triage where we have a bad team,” Pope said today. “We have a really good team. We didn’t play particularly well and so there’s a lot of things that were a little bit anomalous, where we just didn’t play great. And certainly, Georgia had some contribution to that.”
Ahead of his team’s trip to No. 14 Mississippi State, which is even more physical and talented than Georgia, Pope outlined two areas of focus: rebounding and ball protection. Georgia outrebounded Kentucky 41-34 on Tuesday, the fourth game in a row the Cats have lost the battle of the boards. On Saturday, they’ll face a Mississippi State team that ranks just outside the top 30 nationally in offensive rebounding rate (35.9%).
“We’re continuing to work on the glass right now. That’s been something interesting because we had been one of the top defensive rebounding percentage teams in the country, and that’s kind of bit us, a little bit. And so we’re rethinking some approaches there that hopefully will see immediate progress on, because we’ve been really good, right? We’ve just got to be good in this league right now, with the physicality and the way this is being played.”
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Pope seemed less concerned about the 14 turnovers the Cats committed vs. Georgia. Kentucky still ranks No. 3 in the country in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.94), but that number would be a lot higher if not for their losses.
“We’ve been really good in terms of ball protection. I think we’ve been number one in the country. I think we’re close so I don’t think it’s reinventing the wheel for us on the ball protection side. We just didn’t do it well in this game.”
“So, there are certainly areas that we’re going to continue to grow and fine-tune, but there’s not a lot of total restructuring going on.”
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All season, Pope has talked about the importance of getting his guys not to default to bad habits. The Georgia loss showed that’s still a work in progress. After the game, Pope talked about how distracted his guys seemed on the floor, whether it be from the crowd, the whistles, a shot not going in, etc. Getting them to tune that out and lock in on each other will be what determines how far they go this season.
“Our guys trust and believe in each other, but when you start talking about trust and belief in where you go for answers, that’s a process that everybody is trying to find. It’s not a matter of not being able to find it. I mean, our guys have found it a lot this season. Like there’s been a whole lot of trust and faith on this team, where we’ve gone to the well, the right well, to find answers in the biggest games that have been played all season, right? But being able to get there every single time is part of the challenge, right? At the end of the year, it’s, can you get there six straight games? Can you go to the right space with all the different distractions, different vibes? Can you keep going right to the same place and keep trusting over and over and over again?
“And so that’s kind of the space we’re living in right now, is, how consistently can we be in the right spot on the floor? How consistently can our faith be placed in the right space? How consistently can we tune out all the distractions that happen around the game and kind of be locked in just to the moment? We’re fully capable. We’ve done it. We’ve done it at the highest level. We’ve done it pretty consistently. But now can we do it every time?”
When it comes to being more physical, Pope said that’s something everyone in the SEC is striving for right now. He just wants his team to understand how to do it and when to do it.
“The game always gets more and more physical in the league, and so our guys understanding — and there’s also a part of understanding where you can be really, really physical and where you can’t, right? And that’s part of our determinations. There are a lot of facets to that. One is just the physics aspect of it, of having a low center of gravity and kind of being the hit-first guy and a first hit and second, there’s all the schematics and the skill of it.
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“And then there’s also the mentality of it, and the IQ of it. The mentality of it is kind of this aggression side of it where you’re always thinking about contact, contact, contact, and then the IQ of it is understanding when and where it’s appropriate and where it can be utilized and where it’s important.”