Cleveland Sports Forum

Two days until the draft !

He’s an Aussie schooled in cricket. And he might be the top pick in the 2024 MLB Draft
Brian Hamilton
Jul 10, 2024
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CORVALLIS, Ore. — In 1884, less than three decades after American miners introduced the sport to a new continent during the Victorian gold rush, an Australian made his professional baseball debut. Joe Quinn, born in a squatters’ camp outside of Ipswich, Queensland, years before his family immigrated to Iowa, suited up for the St. Louis Maroons of the United Association. Inauspiciously, the league folded after his first year. But it merged with the then-fledgling National League and Quinn appeared in 1,772 games for seven teams. One year, as a player-manager, he led the Cleveland Spiders to a total of 12 wins. He worked as a mortician in the offseason. He played his last game in the summer of 1901.

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It would be 85 years before another Aussie set foot on a major-league diamond in the United States.

But a line that continued when Craig Shipley broke through with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1986 now stretches 38 men long. Three Australians have made major league All-Star teams. It is not a robust history comparable to, say, the Dominican Republic or Japan. But it’s something.

So it’s a little weird that nobody in the land of the “fair go” – an Australian ethos that, in part, emphasizes opportunity for all – assured Travis Bazzana he could do what nobody else has done.

“Why are there 1,000 kids in America that can go to these schools every year for baseball and I couldn’t do that?” says Bazzana, one of college baseball’s best hitters, sitting at a mezzanine picnic table inside Oregon State’s Goss Stadium this spring. “Because I’m from Australia? It doesn’t make sense. If I work towards being ready for that as a player, then it shouldn’t matter that I’m from Australia, and ‘Australians don’t do that.’”

On Sunday, Travis Bazzana will be the first Australian-born player selected in the first round of the Major League Baseball draft. If the consensus All-American second baseman doesn’t go No. 1 overall to the Cleveland Guardians, he likely won’t slip out of the top 5. A prospect who filled developmental gaps by playing cricket takes a massive step in changing a national paradigm. It’s a lot to process, for everyone else.

During his college recruiting visit, Bazzana took photos of the records on display in Oregon State’s recruiting lounge, to note the bars to surpass. He gave a presentation on induced vertical break and slider usage after studying them during the summer of 2022. He wears a nasal strip and tapes his mouth shut to maximize sleep and recovery. He envisions not only Olympic medals, but also the necessary infrastructure to earn them.

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What’s next is not a mystery but a decision. Because he’s thought of everything. “I’m going to look for edges in all aspects of life, knowing it’s not just the five tools or going out here between the lines,” Bazzana says. “There’s so much more that goes into it. And I’m looking to be the best at those things. My ‘why’ leads to me caring a lot about being great at this. And being great is more than just doing what everyone else does.”



Once upon a time, a friend of Gary Bazzana’s asked Gary to join a local baseball team. Gary did and loved it. Years later, he introduced the sport to his three sons. The youngest was especially enthralled. “It was my identity from when I was pretty young,” Travis Bazzana says. He guesses he was 7 or 8 when he started logging on to MLB.com every day after school to study highlights of the day’s home runs, trying to understand what those swings looked like and how to recreate them. At age 10, his coach sent videos to officials in Williamsport, Pa., to prove Travis was worthy of an exemption to play up for a team seeking the country’s Little League World Series berth. At 15, he linked up with the Sydney Blue Sox of the Australian Baseball League, the country’s top level of pro baseball. Bazzana hit a respectable .257 across three seasons competing against players twice his age.

He was the baseball kid, per local shorthand, in a country without many of them.

Eventually, videos and word of mouth about his makeup from people such as former major league pitcher and Australian Ryan Rowland-Smith made their way up the banks of the Willamette River. The Oregon State staff caught Bazzana during a showcase in Arizona in 2018 and offered a scholarship when Bazzana kited into town for that recruiting visit. And by the end of it all, Bazzana had set eight Oregon State career records, capped by a junior campaign in which he hit .407 and established new single-season standards for homers (28), runs (84), walks (76), total bases (195) and slugging percentage (.911).


He’s played cricket and rugby and comes from the other side of the world. But this is a baseball story, not a bedtime story. “It’s always good when Australians can break some new ground,” says Liam Hendriks, the Boston Red Sox veteran righty and Perth native, who is one of the trio of Aussies to make an All-Star team. “Even being in the conversation (for No. 1 overall) will be great for Australian baseball.”

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The trajectory makes sense – college program finds supremely gifted prospect overseas, said prospect delivers, professional franchise drafts him – but if it happened all the time for Australians, it would’ve happened already.

Bazzana is the outlier, because more has never been too much. “A lot of kids, no matter where they’re from, don’t have as clear of a picture of their goals that Bazz had,” Oregon State assistant coach Ryan Gipson says.

It was good fortune that Golden Jubilee Field, a park in the Sydney suburb of North Wahroonga, had batting cages and a pitching machine and was less than a 10-minute drive from home. A resource not widely available in Australia was available to Bazzana for hours and hours at a time … but that also required recognition of what being there for hours and hours, with his father feeding ball after ball into the machine, could do for him. “If I was struggling to hit the inside pitch, we’d do inside pitch,” Bazzana says, “and I’d get blown up in the cold night with a wood bat, over and over, until I could figure it out.” It allowed him to pile up repetitions, but not at the pace of peers in, say, the United States, where players might compete in three times as many games.

Fortunately, there was also cricket.

Another sport where a wood implement has to meet a small object moving with velocity and spin. And a heaping dose of urgency to connect: Record an out as a batsman, and you’re done for the entire match, left to stew on failure for hours. No surprise that Bazzana reluctantly recalls a game for the St. Ives Cricket Club in which he recorded a “golden duck” – cricket slang for scoring zero runs on the very first bowl. “You have to be able to lock in perfectly and have a plan for every ball,” he says now. “If you mess up, you’re done.”

The correlation is not accidental. “The hundreds of thousands of reps of more hand-eye coordination is directly applicable to being a great hitter in baseball,” says Oregon State assistant coach Joey Wong, who played overseas in Australia. “It’s really helped him become an elite manager of the strike zone. Being able to recognize pitches and where they start, where they’re going to end up. He’s become probably the best in the country at swing decisions.”

Bazzana was no remedial hitter when he set foot in a new country – he hit .429 with an OPS of 1.064 in 45 games with the Corvallis Knights of the collegiate West Coast League the summer before his freshman season – but neither was he fully formed in the box. “He hadn’t even learned to hit homers yet,” Oregon State head coach Mitch Canham says. (Bazzana hit one in 189 at-bats in that stretch.) Resources, though, would no longer be a problem at a program with 26 conference championships and three College World Series titles. And a glut of information and technology fed a baseball brain like a firehose filling a balloon that never pops.

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Bazzana slugged .478 as a freshman and struck out 62 times in 302 plate appearances – neither a satisfactory figure – and then dove into 10 weeks of swing work and data analysis via motion capture and other tools at a Driveline Baseball facility in Seattle. He added 5 miles per hour to his bat speed, per Driveline, and created a flatter swing plane to better match pitches in the zone. The dingers went up (11 as a sophomore, 28 as a junior) and the whiffs went down (47 as a sophomore, 37 as a junior). “I think he actually keeps notes in his phone of how many times he chases out of the zone,” says Oregon State outfielder Micah McDowell, one of Bazzana’s roommates. “That day-to-day process with him is unbelievable, when a lot of guys get gooned out looking at that stuff.”

Canham describes Bazzana as “a walking TrackMan,” referencing the widely used program that measures ball trajectory, spin rates, release points and more. During a series at Washington State late in the 2024 season, Bazzana shook the weight off his bat in the on-deck circle and turned to the Oregon State dugout for a reminder. “Hey, what’s the horizontal break on his slider?” he yelled. There was a brief pause for incredulousness – the Beavers’ best hitter wanted that information now? – before someone barked out, “Fourteen!”

Bazzana shook his head and made his way to the box.

It’s not data. Not anymore. As Canham puts it, it’s his former star’s language. “I go up there with a clear, confident mind,” Bazzana says, “and a plan to battle that pitcher, whoever it is, every single time.” The capacity to process information with remarkable fluency has created what those around him consider to be Bazzana’s separating factor as a hitter: an ability to make swing adjustments in the sliver of time between pitches.

“Some guys it’s weekend-to-weekend or game-to-game,” Canham says. “I always thought the good ones are at-bat-to-at-bat, getting back in it. But he’s very much so pitch-to-pitch. He’s always going to hit.”

Meanwhile, the consumption became all-consuming. Anyone in Bazzana’s orbit felt the pull of his research, insights and innovations. “The running joke is, if you’re his roommate, your OPS is going to go up 200 points,” Gipson says. It was after that summer at Driveline that Bazzana made the PowerPoint presentation on induced vertical break to the rest of the Oregon State squad. During workouts, Bazzana would catch sight of pitchers working in the bullpen and drift off to discuss what he sees. In-depth discussions about pitch shape or usage or defensive alignments behind the mound were basically a weekly occurrence, at least, per Oregon State starter Aiden May. “There are a lot of talented guys, there’s a lot of focused guys, there’s a lot of people who are very naturally skilled,” May says. “But not a lot of guys who are that can affect the rest of the people around them quite like Travis can.”

There was also Bazzana’s pursuit of a cold tub to install in the garage of his off-campus residence – rendered moot when Oregon State added one to its facility. Or the steaks and fish he’ll prepare for himself and his roommates, in alignment with best nutritional practices. Or the presentation he delivered to the team last fall entitled “Champion Habits,” focused on sleep and recovery and general discipline. Hence the nasal strip and taped-shut mouth and white noise machine in bed at night … and why McDowell, his roommate, picked up the practices. “It’s super contagious,” McDowell says. “I’ve never played with anyone in any sport that just is so driven and is constantly thinking about how to better himself.”

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When Bazzana arrived at Oregon State, fully invested in creating the best opportunity to reach the majors, he thought kinesiology would be a worthy major. Learn about the body and how and why it moves like it does, and all that. Then he discovered he’d be sidetracked by requirements such as a chemistry course he had no use for, so he made another adjustment. He chose psychology. Learning about the brain and relationships and people, he figured, would bring out more in himself and everyone around him.

There have been no false steps to this coming Sunday, which is remarkable given how long the path has been. But then there’s only ever been one thought behind every one of those steps.

“Someone’s gotta be the best,” Bazzana says. “Why are they the best? And how can I do that?”


Travis Bazzana’s capacity to process information has created what many consider to be his separating factor as a hitter: an ability to make swing adjustments between pitches. (Jeff Moreland / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
In five World Baseball Classics, Australia has won five games. Its last run was a minor breakthrough: three victories and a quarterfinal appearance in 2023. It took home an Olympic silver medal two decades ago – the only time Australia left the Summer Games with a winning record – and then failed to qualify for the next two before the sport was entirely removed from the event slate.

A country that takes up 5.2 percent of the earth’s landmass is, in this specific context, not overly noticeable.

The best baseball prospect Australia has produced thinks about everything, but maybe the future of the game in his home country most deeply. Bazzana envisions medaling in international competitions to confirm Australia’s place as a power in the sport. On a smaller scale, it’s spearheading efforts to improve the training environments and coaching to bring them up to standard, so those who want the resources will have them. He doesn’t know exactly how it will work, being in the United States and affecting change 16 hours away. He just says he’ll find a way to figure it out.

But the want-to is not as powerful without credibility behind it. That’s the meaning of Sunday, whenever his name is called.

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Travis Bazzana, the baseball kid from Australia, will be one of the first of more than 600 prospects selected by major league franchises. It could be anyone else in the world, and it’s one of their own. And what comes next could be anything.

“At the stem of it,” Bazzana says, “it’s belief.”

— The Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly contributed to this report.

Will the Guardians draft Travis Bazzana, Charlie Condon or someone else? The week in baseball Updated: Jul. 13, 2024, 10:42 p.m.|Published: Jul. 13, 2024, 4:53 p.m.

By Paul Hoynes, cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The No. 1 pick in Sunday’s MLB draft fell into the Guardians’ lap. They had a 2% chance of winning the draft lottery at the winter meetings in December and they rolled a seven.

Sunday at about 7:10 p.m., they get to throw the dice again in Fort Worth, Texas, where the draft is being held in conjunction with the All-Star Game at Globe Life Field in Arlington.

There will be no organizational shock factor this time when Commissioner Rob Manfred announces the Guardians’ No. 1 pick. The choice will be backed by thousands of man hours of research and scouting.

No one can guarantee that the No.1 overall pick in the draft is going to be a star, much less make the big leagues. Make no mistake, though, the player the Guardians take with the first No. 1 overall pick in franchise history will be part of the legacy of this front office.

The three top choices seem to be Oregon State second baseman Travis Bazzana, Georgia outfielder-infielder Charlie Condon and Florida’s first baseman/left-handed pitcher Jac Caglianone.

This close to the draft, however, there is always subterfuge. More on that in a bit.

Now it’s a matter of negotiation. How can the Guardians put a record $18,334,000 bonus pool to the best use to sign the 11 players they’ll take in the first 10 rounds of the draft? That includes a record slot value for the No.1 pick of $10.57 million.

The idea is to get the No. 1 pick of their choice signed for less than that $10.57 million and use the savings to acquire other hard-to-sign draft picks for above slot value. The main target here is usually high school seniors who have a scholarship in their back pocket.

There are rumblings that Condon, who led the nation in homers this season, wants as close to his full slot value as he can get. The Reds with the second pick have let it be known that they want Condon and are willing to bump up against their first-round slot value of $9,785,000 million to get the right-handed slugger.

If the Guardians don’t pick Condon, they could go with Bazzana. A few weeks ago the Guards were having a hard time determining which player had more value -- Bazzana or Condon. Many draft experts say it’s a no-lose choice between the two players.

Should the Guardians pass on Bazzana, it’s unclear if they’ll go for Caglianone, but they may try to sign University of West Virginia shortstop J.J. Wetherholt for an under-slot deal. Wake Forest right-hander Chase Burns and University of Arkansas lefty Hagen Smith could fit into that same category.

No doubt the Guardians need help in their big-league rotation, but teams rarely draft for need at that level because even fast-tracked pitchers can take between two and three years to develop in the minors. PIttsburgh’s Paul Skenes, the No. 1 pick last year and National League All-Star starter this year, notwithstanding.

Still, the Guardians have a reputation for turning pitchers into big-league success stories. Plus it would give them more money to spend throughout the next nine rounds.

“First and foremost, the thing we are trying to solve organizationally is to use the resources and draft capital we have available to us to bring the most talented group possible to the organization,” Chris Antonetti, president of baseball operations, said recently. “Whether that’s high school players, college players, pitchers, position players, we’re really open-minded.”

Here are the slot values attached to the Guardians’ 11 picks in the first 10 rounds of the draft:

No. 1: $10.57 million.

No. 36. (Competitive Balance Round A) $2,569,200.

No. 48. (Second round) $1,938,800.

No. 84. (Third round) $966,800.

No. 113. (Fourth round) $643,500.

No. 146 (Fifth round) $466,900.

No. 175. (Sixth round) $357,000.

No. 205. (Seventh round) $279,100.

No. 255. (Eighth round) $222,800.

No. 265. (Ninth round) $195,700.

No. 295. (10th round) $183,600.

The first two rounds of the draft will be completed Sunday. The rest of the 20-round draft runs through Tuesday. That means the Guardians will have made three picks by the end of Sunday night.

The draft order of the first round goes like this: 1. Guardians. 2. Reds. 3. Rockies. 4. A’s 5. White Sox. 6. Royals. 7. Cardinals. 8. Angels. 9. Pirates. 10. Nationals. 11. Tigers. 12. Red Sox. 13. Giants. 14. Cubs. 15. Mariners. 16. Marlins. 17. Brewers. 18. Rays. 19. Mets. 20. Blue Jays. 21. Twins. 22. Orioles. 23. Dodgers. 24. Braves. 25. Padres. 26. Yankees. 27. Phillies. 28. Astros. 29. Diamondbacks and 30. Rangers.

The draft began in 1965. The closest the Guardians have come to a No. 1 overall pick is five No. 2 picks: right-hander Steve Dunning, 1970; shortstop Rick Manning 1972; left-hander Greg Swindell 1986; shortstop Mark Lewis 1988; and right-hander Paul Shuey 1992.

This is not supposed to be an especially deep draft, especially on the high school side of things. The Guardians, who started Saturday with the best record in the American League despite a three-game losing streak, know how to squeeze the most out of a draft regardless of what it looks like at first or second blush.

Their 26-man opening day roster included 13 of their own draft picks: Steven Kwan, Will Brennan, Tyler Freeman, Shane Bieber, Triston McKenzie, Tanner Bibee, Logan Allen, Nick Sandlin, Tim Herrin, Hunter Gaddis, Eli Morgan, Cade Smith and Bo Naylor.

“I think one of the things we’re excited about within this draft class is there’s a number of good high-quality players available to us with the first pick, and we think that’ll be the case actually with the subsequent picks we have after the first pick,” said Antonetti.

Players drafted after the 10th round do not count against the bonus pool unless they sign for more than $150,000. Many teams, including the Guardians, exceed their bonus pool. By doing so they expose themselves to penalties.

If they go 5% over the bonus pool they are taxed 75% on the overage. If they exceed the pool by more than 5%, they can lose draft picks along with being fined at a higher percentage.

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You got the guy you wanted.

How about signing him over the break and adding to the roster when they return. They can use Bazzama's bat rightnow.
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Weatherholt has not by the way gone through the first picks. Rockies took Condon, his power and their home park make an interesting combination.

Roger that on the new guy, Civ. Bring him up. Can/t do any worse

Guardians 2nd pick is Braylon Doughty. Right handed high school pitcher. Known for spin rate.

Guardians 3rd pick is Jacob Cozart Catcher from North Carolina State and High Point NC !

Keith Law:

Cleveland Guardians: They had the first pick and took one of the only two valid options in my opinion, Oregon State second baseman Travis Bazzana.

The Guardians then turned around and took a high school pitcher, Braylon Doughty, with their Competitive Balance Round A (CBA) pick at 36, which I assume will absorb much of the savings from what will probably be an under-slot deal with Bazzana.

They followed up with NC State catcher Jacob Cozart, who quietly had a tremendous year at the plate for the Wolfpack, with their second-round pick (No. 48).

I feel like they landed two everyday players at positions up the middle, and then took a sensible flier on a very good high school arm.

Cleveland Guardians and No. 1 pick Travis Bazzana seem like a perfect match Oregon State&#039;s Travis Bazzana (37) celebrates after hitting the team&#039;s second solo home run during an NCAA college baseball game against Oregon at Goss Stadium on Friday, April 26, 2024, in Corvallis, Ore.
By Zack Meisel


CLEVELAND — They flew for an entire day across the Pacific Ocean for the occasion. They gathered in the Omaha Room, overlooking the baseball field at Oregon State’s Goss Stadium. They made sure they were on the scene for history.

Travis Bazzana, the first Australia native to be selected in the first round of the MLB Draft.

Travis Bazzana, the No. 1 pick by the Cleveland Guardians.

It’s a perfect match. Bazzana is the sort of player the Guardians would create in a lab, with team president Chris Antonetti ditching his navy quarter-zip for a mad scientist’s white coat while mixing the formula just right so it spits out a middle infielder with uncanny contact ability and unparalleled swing decisions.

It’s the intangible quality, though, that helped him evolve from a baseball-and-cricket-crazed teen into the top pick in the draft. It’s the way Bazzana is wired that had the Guardians fawning over him. It’s that internal makeup that had Bazzana’s closest supporters traveling from Sydney to Corvallis, Ore., just to sit beside him because they knew it would be a momentous day.

More than the bat-to-ball skill, the resistance to chase pitches out of the zone and the athleticism, it’s how Bazzana cultivated those traits. It’s his relentless pursuit of answers to help him comprehend what makes the best athletes so prolific and what he needs to do to be considered one of them.

It’s that drive that paved the way for a standout junior season at Oregon State and landed him with the Guardians. It landed him in an organization that somehow stumbled onto the first pick and a World Series-contending season all at once.

Before long, it figures to land him in Cleveland.

“I’m just trying to give myself the best shot to go do great things,” Bazzana said.
go-deeper

GO DEEPER

Travis Bazzana's an Aussie schooled in cricket. Now he's the top pick in the 2024 MLB Draft

In Australia, where baseball games are played only once or twice a week, an 0-for-4 showing stings a bit deeper.

“You have to sit on it for a couple days,” Bazzana said.

When Bazzana relocated to the United States, he had to learn to flush things more rapidly. It helped that there wasn’t much pressure on him, even as an incoming freshman at a powerhouse college program.

“No one really expected anything from the Australian kid,” he said.

So, no, blossoming into the No. 1 pick didn’t cross his mind. At least, not until he played in the Cape Cod League last summer. Like other teams, the Guardians have closely monitored the action at the Cape for a long time. It’s where they became enamored with a right-handed strike-thrower named Shane Bieber, for instance.

Bazzana’s performance earned him league MVP honors and earned him more attention from scouts and recognition from pundits. Of course, the Guardians at that point wouldn’t have thought he’d be in the picture — their picture, that is, even as their 2023 season crumbled. To draft where Bazzana would likely fall, the Guardians would need some fortunate ping-pong ball bounces. They had a 2 percent chance of capturing the top pick. Eight teams had better odds.

Cleveland had owned the No. 2 pick on five occasions, but never the top choice until the draft lottery that fateful afternoon in early December. Antonetti bear-hugged draft representative John McDonald and then the real scouting and strategizing commenced.

Upon landing the top selection, the Guardians narrowed their focus to about a dozen players. They then trimmed that group to a handful. But with draft pool allotment considerations at play, there was no final decision until the end.

“We didn’t know exactly who our selection would be until within a couple hours of the draft starting,” Antonetti said.

They could have cut a deal with another player to save money on the top pick to then sweeten the offer for a later pick. The Guardians held three of the first 48 selections.

From a player fit standpoint, however, Bazzana always made sense. He’s the prototype Cleveland covets.

He’ll start out as a second baseman (at a to-be-determined affiliate), and Antonetti suggested he can stick at that position, though he added Bazzana has the athleticism to shift to other spots if need be.

Offensively, Bazzana’s power numbers spiked this season, as he boosted his home run total (to 28 from 11) and his slugging percentage (to .911 from .622). His swing-decision acumen is reflected in his sky-high walk rate (76 walks to 37 strikeouts in 296 plate appearances). Some of those traits might sound reminiscent of another Oregon State product, Steven Kwan.

“We see him having a totality of ingredients to be a really successful hitter,” Antonetti said.

One of those ingredients is the willingness to seek answers. The Guardians have leaned more into video and data as scouting tools in recent years, but it requires that in-person connection to identify a prospect’s work ethic, openness to instruction and information, and ability to handle adversity. That’s a primary task for their scouts, unearthing those qualities that don’t show up on film.

Antonetti praised the way Bazzana “taps into every resource available to him to get the most out of his ability,” whether it’s analytical data, strength and conditioning resources, mental coaching or direction on sleep and nutrition. Antonetti said Bazzana has been “relentless.”

“I always wanted to understand things a little bit deeper and never miss on having that edge,” Bazzana said.

It all began when Bazzana played 6-and-under T-ball when he was 3. A couple of years later, he said, baseball became his chief interest. He eventually followed that passion to the U.S., with guidance from Ryan Rowland-Smith and Trent Oeltjen, a pair of fellow Australians who pitched in the majors.

Now he hopes the next 15-year-old Australians pondering their next move can “set their standards a little higher and see that it’s possible.” Bazzana “never really knew” if being the No. 1 pick was realistic. But he used every resource at his fingertips to play his way to the top.

“I don’t remember ever putting a different answer,” he said, “to ‘What’s your dream job?’ or ‘What do you want to do in the future?’ other than ‘Major League Baseball player.’”

Bazzana has yet to put on a Guardians uniform, but he already has a pretty good understanding of what makes the organization so special. Bazzana also revealed what he already knows about the team and why he's so excited to join them.

"I know how consistently successful the organization has been over the years. I know how smart and in depth, and well-resourced the organization is from the top. I know the identity and culture of the big league team, I don't know it to that extent. I mean, I haven't been in the clubhouse. But I know that it's a quality environment. I know that they're young, they play the game with fire. Like, it's a lot of these things that tick boxes in my head and make me really excited to be a Guardian."

Cardinals took him at 7

he Cleveland Guardians have selected high school pitcher Braylon Doughty out of Chaparral High School in California with the No. 36 overall pick of the 2024 MLB Draft. MLB Pipeline had him ranked the No. 36 prospect in the draft.

Here’s what MLB Pipeline had to say about him:

Doughty wasn’t on the radar much, and wasn’t at all of the high profile showcase events over the summer, but came on the scene in a big way at the Area Code Games with some serious swing-and-miss stuff. He didn’t pitch in the fall for Chaparral High School in California, but the scouting industry was buzzing this spring when he came out of the gate showing that what he did late in the summer appears to be for real.

While Doughty isn’t all that big at 6-foot-1, he is compact, strong and extremely athletic on the mound. He has a quick arm that fires fastballs up to 96-97 mph with life and solid command. He misses bats with it and even more so with his power low-80s curve, that tops 3,000 rpm and features tight break. He has an 83-85 mph slider with two-plane late lateral movement, and some think both breaking pitches could be plus in time. He has some feel for a changeup, but he doesn’t throw it much.

Doughty’s athleticism helps him find the strike zone very consistently, especially given his power repertoire. Those who were around him at the Area Code Games also saw plus makeup, a kid who was a sponge for pitching knowledge, something he would take to Oklahoma State should the Draft not go his way. Since he’s come out and shown he can dominate like he did late last summer, he may never make it to campus, with his name coming up in early-round discussions.

MLB Pipeline grades Doughty with a 55 fastball, 55 curveball, 55 slider, 45 changeup and 50 control for an overall grade of 50.

Here’s some video of Doughty that I was able to find right after he was drafted:

Of course Bazzana should be a terrific addititon to the team. but I'm also excited about draft picks in round 1A and 3-7 a solid collection of pitchers which we really neeed to add the system's depth

Here are short comments on today's 5 picks as last posted. I will expect that the high school picks will require overslot bonuses to sign which I hope the Guardians have available. I'll find predraft ratings on these guys later

Round 3 (No. 83 overall)
Joey Oakie, RHP, Ankeny Centennial High School (Iowa)
Notable Skill: His slider. He’s only 18-years-old but Oakie already has a plus-pitch in his slider. It sits in the mid-80s with a two-plane depth as well as horizontal movement. MLB Pipeline predicts that it could become a legitimate plus-plus weapon as he develops.
Fun Fact: Oakie is the highest Iowa high school pitcher to be drafted since Mitch Keller (64th overall to Pittsburgh) out of Xavier High School in 2014. He’s also Cleveland’s first selection of an Iowa prep player since Quinn Murphy (10th round) in 1994.


Round 4 (No. 113 overall)
Rafe Schlesinger, LHP, University of Miami
Notable Skill: His fastball. Schlesinger gained velocity in his heater this past year, as it jumped from averaging 88 mph in 2023 to a tick over 92 mph in ‘24. He’s touched 97 mph with the fastball and with the touch of Cleveland’s pitching development team, it could turn into quite the weapon, especially if he moves to the bullpen.
Fun Fact: When Schlesinger was younger, he was cut from a youth travel team. He ended up using that as motivation to turn himself into a top pitcher in high school, which he did, as he received an invite to head south to pitch at Miami.
Quotable: “I could see Rafe as a very strong left-handed reliever with an uncomfortable release angle that is very tough on left-handed hitters.” -- Miami coach J.D. Arteaga, to the South Florida Sun Sentinel


Round 5 (No. 146 overall)
Aidan Major, RHP, University of West Virginia
Notable Skill: The heater. When he’s healthy, Major’s fastball can hit 96 mph and the offering helped him set up his three breaking pitches that led to a 10.5 strikeout per nine innings ratio in 2024. The concern though, is his health, considering he needed surgery on his throwing elbow.
Fun Fact: In high school, Major threw four no-hit innings and combined with one other hurler to throw a combined no-hitter that sent his team, Central Mountain High School, into the quarterfinals of the PIAA Class 5A baseball playoffs.
Quotable: “Even when I was starting as a freshman, I mean, it wasn’t uncharacteristic to see me go out and I might go five innings, but I would go five innings with five walks. Command has always kind of been an issue for me. Even last year, I had times where I would get a little wild and spray the ball. That’s kind of been this biggest step forward this year.” --Major said of his improvement in his command to WBOY.com earlier this year.


Round 6 (No. 175 overall)
Caden Favors, LHP, Wichita State University
Notable Skill: Command. The Guardians love hurlers who can pound the zone and Favors does that as well as anyone. He struck out 107 batters in his senior season while issuing only 20 walks (his strikeout-to-walk ratio led the American Athletic Conference). Plus, he’s an innings-eater, tossing 106 2/3 frames this season, seventh-most in the country.
Fun Fact: Favors was the first Wichita State pitcher to have at least 100 strikeouts in a single season since 2011 (Charlie Lowell).
Quotable: “The intangibles of his demeanor when he gets on the mound, competing at a high level and being consistent with that is something that separates himself from other pitchers.” --Wichita State pitching coach Anthony Claggett told The Sunflower earlier this year

Round 7 (No. 205 overall)
Cameron Sullivan, RHP, Mount Vernon High School (Ind.)
Notable Skill: His fastball. Imagine facing a pitcher in high school who can touch 97 mph. Last summer, he sat around 88-92 mph but he has since focused on getting stronger and it’s paid off. His heater operates at 92-95 mph and tops out at 97. If he can learn to command the pitch better, he can certainly solidify himself as a starter moving forward.
Fun Fact: Sullivan told Baseball Prospect Journal that he owes a lot of credit for his recent development to his pitching coach, Anthony Gomez, who is currently the bullpen coach for the Blue Jays' Triple-A affiliate in Buffalo.

molb.com highlights a dozen or so of today's picks including 2 of our

3rd round Pick 10 (84th overall), Guardians: Joey Oakie, RHP, Ankeny Centennial (IA) HS (No. 46)
Oakie was one of the top prospects remaining entering Day 2, and the 6-foot-3 right-hander heads to Cleveland, giving the Guardians four Top 50 prospects through three rounds. His mid-80s slider has plus-plus potential with wicked two-plane break, and he might be a candidate to take on a four-seam fastball because of the flat vertical approach of his pitches from a low three-quarters slot.

7th round Pick 10 (205th overall), Guardians: Cameron Sullivan, RHP, Mt. Vernon (IN) HS (No. 118)
Sullivan is capable of ramping his fastball up to 97 out of a 6-foot-2 frame, and he’ll show two versions of a slider: an upper-80s cutter and an 82-85 mph sweeping breaker. He’ll fall in love with those sliders at times, causing his fastball command to waver, so Cleveland might focus on that heater (and improving his changeup) if it can sign Sullivan away from a Notre Dame commitment.