Cooper Hjerpe
Cooper Hjerpe (born March 16, 2001) is an American college baseball pitcher for the Oregon State Beavers. Career. Hjerpe attended Woodland High School in Woodland, California, a city northwest of Sacramento. He committed to play college baseball at Oregon State University as a sophomore. As a junior in 2018, he went 8-0 with a 0.78 ERA and 128 strikeouts over innings alongside hitting eight home runs. In 2019, as a senior, he struck out 105 batters in 44 innings and threw four no-hitters. He went unselected in the 2019 Major League Baseball draft and enrolled at  Oregon State University to play college baseball. In 2020, Hjerpe's freshman year at Oregon State, he made six relief appearances and went 1-1 with a 5.25 ERA before the season was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a redshirt freshman in 2021, he was named the Pac-12 Pitcher of the Week as well as the National Player of the Week by "Collegiate Baseball Newspaper" on May 24 after he gave up one run and two hits while striking out 11 in a 3-1 win versus the seventh-ranked Arizona Wildcats. For the season, he pitched in  17 games (making 16 starts) and went 3-6 with a 4.21 ERA and 98 strikeouts over 77 innings. Hjerpe entered the 2022 season as Oregon State's number one starter and garnered numerous preseason All-American honors. On March 22, he was named Pac-12 Pitcher of the Week for the second time in his career after pitching seven innings and giving up one run and one hit while striking out 12 in a 21-0 win versus the Arizona State Sun Devils. On April 1, in a 1-0 loss versus the Stanford Cardinal, Hjerpe threw eight scoreless innings  and struck out 17 batters, tied for the most in school history. He was once again named Pac-12 Pitcher of the Week and National Player of the Week by "Collegiate Baseball Newspaper". Personal life. Hjerpe's father, Carl, played college baseball for the Cal Poly Mustangs in the 1980s.