The Butler BlueSox needed a starting pitcher. Connor Coward needed innings.

Now neither needs anything.

Coward signed with the BlueSox Saturday. The Seneca Valley graduate and Virginia Tech freshman is expected to make his first Prospect League start on the mound Thursday at West Virginia.

“It’s strange how things work out,” Coward said. “I got frustrated in the New England league and decided to come home just to sort things out.

“Now I get to pitch in a quality league and I can live at home while I’m doing it.”

Coward played on two WPIAL Class AAAA championship teams at Seneca Valley and played in the title game three successive years. He made 15 appearances — three starts — for Virginia Tech this spring, going 2-0 with a 7.81 earned run average in 27.2 innings pitched.

But in his three starts, Coward posted a 3.95 ERA in 13.2 innings.

“I got to start a few non-conference games in the middle of the week,” Coward said. “That’s when I threw my best. Our coach told me I was being groomed as a starting pitcher for next spring and wanted me to be a starter somewhere this summer in preparation for that.

“I went to the New England Collegiate Baseball League and was excited about pitching there. But the team I signed with over-booked pitchers. I was only getting an inning a week and had a couple of rough outings in a row.”

In the meantime, the BlueSox were counting on Sean Thompson, a freshman from Virginia Commonwealth, to be one of their main starters on the mound this summer. But Thompson pitched a lot of innings during his team’s run through the NCAA regionals.

“VCU’s coach decided to shut him down for the summer,” BlueSox manager Jason Radwan said. “We were just looking for another arm. No way did we figure we’d be able to replace the quality we would have had in Sean.”

BlueSox relief pitcher Zach Spangler was a teammate of Coward’s at Seneca Valley. Infielder Jamie Switalski, a Pine-Richland graduate, is from Gibsonia.

“Jamie and I have been best friends since I was a little kid,” Coward said. “We played on travel teams together since I was 8.

“He and Zach put in a good word for me with the coaches. They told them of my situation and we just got together.”

Radwan said Coward will become part of Butler’s rotation right away.

“He’s got a good arm and he throws strikes. We can definitely use him,” the manager said.

Coward welcomes the change in pitching address, referring to Kelly Automotive Park as “my favorite park to pitch in anywhere.”

He also sees ptching for the BlueSox as an opportunity to get himself back on track.

“I definitely went from being a big fish in a little pond to being a little fish in a big pond,” Coward said of his transition from high school to Division I college baseball. “I was able to dominate in high school, but I was told that everyone I’d be playing with and against at Virginia Tech was the ‘you’ at their high school, too.

“I found myself going up against guys who threw harder than me, were bigger, stronger, had more break on their curve ball ... It was a bit of a shock to my system, for sure.

“All of a sudden, I’m facing hitters from Clemson, Virginia, Wake Forest, Florida State. I had to challenge myself to raise my game and compete at that level. Now, I feel like I can,” he added.

And when Coward struggles, he thinks back to his high school days and the championship success he experienced.

“I have a video of me pitching in the (WPIAL) finals on my phone and I still have the radio broadcast of the game in archive,” he said. “When I get down, I look and listen to that stuff.

“I tell myself ... ‘You’ve been there before. You can be there again.’”