Hall of Fame Class of 2024: Hunter Moody
He was mature beyond his age baseball-wise when he arrived on the UL campus, but it took a year for things to really click for Hunter Moody.
Actually, a little less than a year. Long-time Ragin' Cajun assistant coach Anthony Babineaux said that things fell into place for Moody at the 2005 NCAA Regionals in New Orleans, at the end of his freshman season.
"We knew he was special, with his attitude toward his craft, with the way he pitched and with the professional manner that he worked," Babineaux said. "He was very good for us even as a freshman, he'd give us five good innings with consistency every time out and that's really rare for a first-year pitcher.
"But he had to get over that hump, to where he could go more than five innings, and that happened in that regional tournament."
Moody only had two victories in that freshman season, but one came in that regional when he went eight strong innings in a 9-1 second-round victory over Southern. That season, and maybe that one outing, turned him into the winningest all-time pitcher in a Cajun program known for pitching.
The late Tony Robichaux, heralded as one of the nation's top pitching instructors throughout his legendary career as UL's head coach, often said that Moody might have been the most complete pitcher he ever tutored.
"He never had the overpowering fast ball," Babineaux said, "but he had an arm slot that gave hitters problems, it kind of came out of the side of his chest, and he had the change and the curve. More than anything it was his competitive spirit, and you mix that with the stuff he had, it just made him a winner."
Moody was enough of a winner that he will be inducted into the UL Athletic Hall of Fame on Friday as part of the university's Homecoming celebration, one day before UL meets Sun Belt rival Arkansas State in the annual Homecoming game. She will be inducted along with baseball's Eddie Mouton, softball standout Stacie Gremillion, football standout Elijah McGuire, soccer's Yazmin Montoya Gutierrez and legendary track and field coach Bob Cole at the annual induction ceremony at the UL Student Union Ballroom on McKinley St.
During his four-year career from 2005-08, the lefthander from Clinton recorded 31 wins, a mark that has stood up without any serious challenges (the next highest UL career win total is 26). His 12 wins in his sophomore season is tied for the fourth-most in UL history, and he remained consistent by leading the Cajuns with eight wins in 2007 and nine in 2008 – a year in which he also led the squad in ERA (3.26).
He remains second on UL's career lists in starts (52, one behind the record) and innings pitched (354 2/3), and twice led the Cajuns in innings pitched.
More importantly, he helped lead UL to a 162-85 record and a 74-34 Sun Belt Conference mark during a career in which the Cajuns won Sun Belt regular-season titles in 2005 and 2007. Both of those years, he pitched in NCAA Regional competition, in New Orleans as a freshman and at College Station as a junior when UL reached the final round.
It was at that New Orleans regional against Southern that Moody first showed that he could get past the five-inning mark and be an elite pitcher.
"Nowadays that's all you want," Babineaux said of the five-inning starter stints, "because everybody's bullpens are so good. But back then, middle relief wasn't a big part of the game. We had starters and we had a guy at the back end. If your starter just went five, you had two or three innings to eat up to get to your closer.
"When he (Moody) was able to go six, seven, eight and get it to that back-end guy – we had some good ones there that could finish a game – that's when he just took off. Our bullpen guys knew when he pitched that they mostly had the night off."
Moody was a two-time first-team All-Sun Belt pick along with being the league's Pitcher of the Year as a sophomore in 2006, the same season in which he was Louisiana's state Pitcher of the Year, a second-team All-America honoree by Louisville Slugger and a third-team A-A pick by the American Baseball Coaches Association. Those same two years in 2006 and 2008, he was a first-team All-Region selection and an All-Louisiana first-team selection.
Babineaux said both he and Robichaux saw that potential from the start.
"You could tell in that first fall that he had a chance to do some special things," Babineaux said. "A lot of times guys have good stuff and he had that, but often times it's more the way they go about their business, how mature they are at an early age. Some things he had to become better at, but when he matched up the maturity in baseball and the maturity outside of baseball, that's when it became special.
"Plus, he always was a little more vocal than many guys. He had a great personality about him, even when he was a freshman. He had a great rapport with the guys in the clubhouse, and over time his voice became more and more important to the mission of our team and our program."
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