The Odyssey and Revelation Of Chris Flynn
May 25, 2023 | Baseball, #ForBoston Files
The D-III transfer and former construction engineer gets the ball with the postseason on the line.
Chris Flynn wasn't so sure he was done with baseball.
He went the college student-athlete route for four years while attending Roger Williams University, and the two-time all-conference selection in the Commonwealth Coast Conference readied for the next stage of his life. He had a diploma and a contract working as a project engineer for a commercial construction company in Providence, Rhode Island. He possessed extra eligibility - two years, thanks to COVID-19 - but he wasn't sure if he wanted to utilize it.
He wanted to at least explore a graduate year season as a Division III athlete, so he talked to his employer and opted to return to the Hawks for a fifth year. One year later, he still wasn't done with the sport, so he entered the transfer portal in search of competition against the game's elite levels.
Flynn found it at Boston College, and little more than a year after he once assumed his baseball career was over, the former construction engineer in Rhode Island is now the stopper on a team bound for the Division I national tournament. A second-team All-ACC selection for the Eagles, he toes the rubber on Friday with an opportunity to lead his new club to the conference semifinals, while simultaneously hunting for an elusive national regional host spot previously unimaginable to a New England-based team.
"[This season] has meant a lot," Flynn said. "It's obviously been a ton of fun, clicking with the guys and trying to get the most out of the potential we saw in ourselves. It's just been a fun experience. College baseball is the best, and even though I transitioned to a new school and a new division, it was kind of the same thing, where [playing's] been a ton of fun."
Flynn is the prime example of baseball's ability to hide depth and talent in its lower divisions. A two-time pitcher of the year at Holy Cross High School in Connecticut, the Naugatuck native was a two-time All-Naugatuck Valley League selection who starred at multiple sports. A two-time team captain on the cross country and indoor track team, he ultimately chose to pursue a college career in baseball after winning the 2017 CIAC Class S championship, a decision that led him to Division III following a tryout for Roger Williams University.
The Hawks were, by then, two years' removed from a postseason run that saw them advance to the CCC conference championship, but the program was in transition after head coach Derek Carlson departed to coach his alma mater at Brandeis. His replacement, Jason Tower, had been on staff with a Tufts program renowned for its ability to churn out winners, but the two-year interim process resulted in a rebuilding period at RWU. Flynn's arrival in 2018 coincided with an infusion of a class that ran 18 players deep, and the development process helped them push to .500 and beyond before COVID's arrival in 2020.
The program seeded roots for the future, and Flynn's initial breakout occurred during a four-appearance stint during 2020's ill-fated season marred by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. His first two years produced swollen ERAs despite a 3-3 overall record, but in the limited, five innings of baseball, he dramatically improved to nearly two strikeouts per inning with a .133 opposing batting average. His ERA, which stood in the mid-8.00 range in 2019, dropped to 1.69, and his control found its footing after he issued 34 walks over his first two years.
The small sample scratched the tip of his iceberg, and after baseball resumed one year later, his 12 appearances out of the Hawks' bullpen produced a team-high four saves over 15 innings thrown. His ERA lifted to 2.40, but his 2-0 record included a strikeouts-to-walks ratio greater than 3:1. He held opposing hitters to a .220 average, and the CCC responded by giving him First Team status.
It offered a solid ending to a career interrupted by COVID-19, but the year left Flynn with a desire to achieve something greater from baseball. The pandemic granted him an extra year of eligibility, and though he'd signed a contract during the fall of his senior year to begin his professional life outside of baseball, he simply wasn't ready to walk away from the game after a canceled year and a weird, semi-functional, abbreviated spring
"I didn't know if I was ready to stop playing," Flynn told The Podcast For Boston earlier this year, "so I worked out something with my work where I saw what we could do. They were super cognizant of everything as long as I could get my work done, so it was back to work for that grad year."
Less than a year after he graduated from Roger Williams, it meant Flynn was back in uniform for a fifth go-round with the Hawks. Fully converted to a starter, he appeared in 10 games and went 7-2 with one complete game, while earning one save during his two-game continuation as a reliever. He threw 61 innings, but he only walked nine hitters - the same number from when he threw 15 innings in 2021 - while ballooning his strikeout numbers towards triple digits.Â
Opposing hitters hit .183 against him, and as a Second Team All-CCC selection, it was obvious how the next decision was into the transfer portal for a shot at Division I, and within that process, Boston College came calling with pitching coach Kevin Vance. The Eagles needed to improve on the hill and struck luck in Babson transfer Henry Leake a year earlier. Having found a 50-inning pitcher, the Eagles dove back into the well for Flynn and Salve Regina reliever Andrew Roman, whose exploits helped push the Seahawks into a Regional Final in the Division III national tournament regional hosted by Birmingham-Southern.
"I knew the record BC had," Flynn said, "and even though I wasn't here, I felt like we could make some noise. I was out there thinking that we had a good team, [but] I didn't know how we stacked up against any of the ACC teams or any other Division I teams because I had never played [at that level]. The brotherhood and the culture here was great, and my thought process was that I didn't see why we couldn't be competing with the best teams in the country."
The payout gave Birdball immediate dividends as Roman settled into the high leverage back-end of the bullpen, while Flynn quickly established himself as a weekend starter. Handed the ball for the second game of the season-opening series at Pepperdine, he fired six shutout innings of one-hit baseball, and over his first three starts, he struck out 27 hitters while surrendering four walks. BC didn't lose any of his first five starts, and after he threw seven innings against Florida State to the tune of nine strikeouts and four scattered hits, it was evident that the Eagles had a stopper who could bounce back any losses incurred in the first game of a weekend series.
"All the noise you hear in the preseason is that the Eagles had to figure out their pitching," Flynn said, "and if they could do that, then they could be a pretty good team. Everyone kind of harped on this 'crappy pitching' from years past, and it just kind of put a chip on our shoulder. If you want to have a successful team, then we have to get it done on the mountain, and we all gelled really well."
Flynn finished the season with a 7-2 overall record, but he takes the mound on Friday with an opportunity to pitch the Eagles into the ACC semifinals in a winner-take-all matchup with third-seeded Clemson. Earlier this season, his five innings against the Tigers produced arguably his worst outing of the year, but after he surrendered four runs on six hits with five walks to four strikeouts, he dominated hitters in two of his final three outings, a stretch that culminated with his seven-inning masterpiece against Notre Dame in the front end of the doubleheader that ended the regular season last Friday.
In total, he struck out 80 hitters this year over 70.2 innings, numbers that easily led the team this season. Hitters batted .249 against him, and his ratios remained high enough to warrant mentions among some of the ACC's best arms. He finished in the top-10 in the league in strikeouts and ERA, and his 14 starts are in a group with Rhett Lowder, Connelly Early, Carson Liggett, Ryan Hawks, and Jackson Baumeister as the league's front peloton. When the conference announced its postseason awards, he was the highest-honored BC pitcher, having placed on the league's Second Team All-ACC list.
"I've transitioned a bit," Flynn said. "I had a cutter/slider last year, but I changed the grip in the offseason and made it a lot more effective, and I [gained] more control of it. I've kind of had that for give or take the whole season, and it's been pretty solid [while] the curveball has been up-and-down. I started the season out and didn't have a great feel for it for, like, the first month, but I eventually got the feel back for it. I'm still using it a little less than the cutter, but it's just small cues and small fixes that I'm working on in bullpens throughout the week. It's kind of surprising to me to see how that cutter has also evolved."
Friday morning stands alone as one of the most important days in BC program history, and with a win, the Eagles move closer to hosting a regional for the first time ever. Several other programs in the hunt all lost in the opening rounds of their conference tournaments, but the unintended result is, like last week, handing the ball to Flynn with the season on the line. For a former Division III pitcher who once thought he was done with the game, it's a long way from construction throughout the Boston and Providence regions, but it's exactly where his yellow brick road meant to take him.
"Every team is good," said Flynn. "It's the ACC, and anyone can beat anyone. If you take a game off, you're going to put yourself in a pretty [bad] situation."
Sixth-seeded BC plays third-seeded Clemson on Friday morning at 11 a.m. from the Durham Bulls Athletic Park in Durham, N.C. The game can be seen on national television via the ACC Network with streaming available through ESPN's online platform of Internet and mobile device apps. If BC wins, the semifinals of the ACC Tournament are on Saturday with the championship round on Sunday.
Sunday also marks the announcement of the NCAA Tournament regional hosting sites with the selection show set for Monday at Noon ET.
He went the college student-athlete route for four years while attending Roger Williams University, and the two-time all-conference selection in the Commonwealth Coast Conference readied for the next stage of his life. He had a diploma and a contract working as a project engineer for a commercial construction company in Providence, Rhode Island. He possessed extra eligibility - two years, thanks to COVID-19 - but he wasn't sure if he wanted to utilize it.
He wanted to at least explore a graduate year season as a Division III athlete, so he talked to his employer and opted to return to the Hawks for a fifth year. One year later, he still wasn't done with the sport, so he entered the transfer portal in search of competition against the game's elite levels.
Flynn found it at Boston College, and little more than a year after he once assumed his baseball career was over, the former construction engineer in Rhode Island is now the stopper on a team bound for the Division I national tournament. A second-team All-ACC selection for the Eagles, he toes the rubber on Friday with an opportunity to lead his new club to the conference semifinals, while simultaneously hunting for an elusive national regional host spot previously unimaginable to a New England-based team.
"[This season] has meant a lot," Flynn said. "It's obviously been a ton of fun, clicking with the guys and trying to get the most out of the potential we saw in ourselves. It's just been a fun experience. College baseball is the best, and even though I transitioned to a new school and a new division, it was kind of the same thing, where [playing's] been a ton of fun."
Flynn is the prime example of baseball's ability to hide depth and talent in its lower divisions. A two-time pitcher of the year at Holy Cross High School in Connecticut, the Naugatuck native was a two-time All-Naugatuck Valley League selection who starred at multiple sports. A two-time team captain on the cross country and indoor track team, he ultimately chose to pursue a college career in baseball after winning the 2017 CIAC Class S championship, a decision that led him to Division III following a tryout for Roger Williams University.
The Hawks were, by then, two years' removed from a postseason run that saw them advance to the CCC conference championship, but the program was in transition after head coach Derek Carlson departed to coach his alma mater at Brandeis. His replacement, Jason Tower, had been on staff with a Tufts program renowned for its ability to churn out winners, but the two-year interim process resulted in a rebuilding period at RWU. Flynn's arrival in 2018 coincided with an infusion of a class that ran 18 players deep, and the development process helped them push to .500 and beyond before COVID's arrival in 2020.
The program seeded roots for the future, and Flynn's initial breakout occurred during a four-appearance stint during 2020's ill-fated season marred by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. His first two years produced swollen ERAs despite a 3-3 overall record, but in the limited, five innings of baseball, he dramatically improved to nearly two strikeouts per inning with a .133 opposing batting average. His ERA, which stood in the mid-8.00 range in 2019, dropped to 1.69, and his control found its footing after he issued 34 walks over his first two years.
The small sample scratched the tip of his iceberg, and after baseball resumed one year later, his 12 appearances out of the Hawks' bullpen produced a team-high four saves over 15 innings thrown. His ERA lifted to 2.40, but his 2-0 record included a strikeouts-to-walks ratio greater than 3:1. He held opposing hitters to a .220 average, and the CCC responded by giving him First Team status.
It offered a solid ending to a career interrupted by COVID-19, but the year left Flynn with a desire to achieve something greater from baseball. The pandemic granted him an extra year of eligibility, and though he'd signed a contract during the fall of his senior year to begin his professional life outside of baseball, he simply wasn't ready to walk away from the game after a canceled year and a weird, semi-functional, abbreviated spring
"I didn't know if I was ready to stop playing," Flynn told The Podcast For Boston earlier this year, "so I worked out something with my work where I saw what we could do. They were super cognizant of everything as long as I could get my work done, so it was back to work for that grad year."
Less than a year after he graduated from Roger Williams, it meant Flynn was back in uniform for a fifth go-round with the Hawks. Fully converted to a starter, he appeared in 10 games and went 7-2 with one complete game, while earning one save during his two-game continuation as a reliever. He threw 61 innings, but he only walked nine hitters - the same number from when he threw 15 innings in 2021 - while ballooning his strikeout numbers towards triple digits.Â
Opposing hitters hit .183 against him, and as a Second Team All-CCC selection, it was obvious how the next decision was into the transfer portal for a shot at Division I, and within that process, Boston College came calling with pitching coach Kevin Vance. The Eagles needed to improve on the hill and struck luck in Babson transfer Henry Leake a year earlier. Having found a 50-inning pitcher, the Eagles dove back into the well for Flynn and Salve Regina reliever Andrew Roman, whose exploits helped push the Seahawks into a Regional Final in the Division III national tournament regional hosted by Birmingham-Southern.
"I knew the record BC had," Flynn said, "and even though I wasn't here, I felt like we could make some noise. I was out there thinking that we had a good team, [but] I didn't know how we stacked up against any of the ACC teams or any other Division I teams because I had never played [at that level]. The brotherhood and the culture here was great, and my thought process was that I didn't see why we couldn't be competing with the best teams in the country."
The payout gave Birdball immediate dividends as Roman settled into the high leverage back-end of the bullpen, while Flynn quickly established himself as a weekend starter. Handed the ball for the second game of the season-opening series at Pepperdine, he fired six shutout innings of one-hit baseball, and over his first three starts, he struck out 27 hitters while surrendering four walks. BC didn't lose any of his first five starts, and after he threw seven innings against Florida State to the tune of nine strikeouts and four scattered hits, it was evident that the Eagles had a stopper who could bounce back any losses incurred in the first game of a weekend series.
"All the noise you hear in the preseason is that the Eagles had to figure out their pitching," Flynn said, "and if they could do that, then they could be a pretty good team. Everyone kind of harped on this 'crappy pitching' from years past, and it just kind of put a chip on our shoulder. If you want to have a successful team, then we have to get it done on the mountain, and we all gelled really well."
Flynn finished the season with a 7-2 overall record, but he takes the mound on Friday with an opportunity to pitch the Eagles into the ACC semifinals in a winner-take-all matchup with third-seeded Clemson. Earlier this season, his five innings against the Tigers produced arguably his worst outing of the year, but after he surrendered four runs on six hits with five walks to four strikeouts, he dominated hitters in two of his final three outings, a stretch that culminated with his seven-inning masterpiece against Notre Dame in the front end of the doubleheader that ended the regular season last Friday.
In total, he struck out 80 hitters this year over 70.2 innings, numbers that easily led the team this season. Hitters batted .249 against him, and his ratios remained high enough to warrant mentions among some of the ACC's best arms. He finished in the top-10 in the league in strikeouts and ERA, and his 14 starts are in a group with Rhett Lowder, Connelly Early, Carson Liggett, Ryan Hawks, and Jackson Baumeister as the league's front peloton. When the conference announced its postseason awards, he was the highest-honored BC pitcher, having placed on the league's Second Team All-ACC list.
"I've transitioned a bit," Flynn said. "I had a cutter/slider last year, but I changed the grip in the offseason and made it a lot more effective, and I [gained] more control of it. I've kind of had that for give or take the whole season, and it's been pretty solid [while] the curveball has been up-and-down. I started the season out and didn't have a great feel for it for, like, the first month, but I eventually got the feel back for it. I'm still using it a little less than the cutter, but it's just small cues and small fixes that I'm working on in bullpens throughout the week. It's kind of surprising to me to see how that cutter has also evolved."
Friday morning stands alone as one of the most important days in BC program history, and with a win, the Eagles move closer to hosting a regional for the first time ever. Several other programs in the hunt all lost in the opening rounds of their conference tournaments, but the unintended result is, like last week, handing the ball to Flynn with the season on the line. For a former Division III pitcher who once thought he was done with the game, it's a long way from construction throughout the Boston and Providence regions, but it's exactly where his yellow brick road meant to take him.
"Every team is good," said Flynn. "It's the ACC, and anyone can beat anyone. If you take a game off, you're going to put yourself in a pretty [bad] situation."
Sixth-seeded BC plays third-seeded Clemson on Friday morning at 11 a.m. from the Durham Bulls Athletic Park in Durham, N.C. The game can be seen on national television via the ACC Network with streaming available through ESPN's online platform of Internet and mobile device apps. If BC wins, the semifinals of the ACC Tournament are on Saturday with the championship round on Sunday.
Sunday also marks the announcement of the NCAA Tournament regional hosting sites with the selection show set for Monday at Noon ET.
Players Mentioned
From the Desk of Blake James | Ep. 2
Friday, September 19
Patrick and Ella Might Run the Marathon? | The Podcast For Boston: BC Cross Country/Track and Field
Wednesday, September 17
Football: Owen McGowan Postgame Press Conference (Sept. 14, 2025)
Sunday, September 14
Football: Reed Harris Postgame Media (Sept. 14, 2025)
Sunday, September 14
