McGeary Mashing

THE CHICAGO CUBS 15TH ROUND PICK FROM LAST YEAR'S MLB DRAFT IS FLOURISHING EARLY IN HIS CAREER

By: Max Thoma

There’s a baseball essay titled “The Green Fields of the Mind” by former MLB Commissioner Bartlett

Giamatti (who is in fact Paul Giammati’s dad, for what it’s worth). It’s an incredible piece about baseball, but there’s a sentence that when I read it, or hear it aloud, I can’t help but picture what I see from Haydn McGeary daily in batting practice…

“Now he looks over some low stuff unworthy of him and then, uncoiling, sends one out, straight on a rising line, over the centerfield wall, no cheap Fenway shot, but all of it, the physics as elegant as the arc the ball describes.”

Bartlett was not only the seventh Commissioner of Baseball but also the 19th President of Yale University and waxes poetically, while romanticizing about baseball. Every year after the final out of the Red Sox season their broadcaster Joe Castiglione actually reads a portion of this essay.

Well McGeary's story is one that isn't quite as romantic, but a story still that truly makes you want to believe in the power of persistence. You can't help but pull for a guy who has perhaps his whole life been undervalued.

Now there are a myriad of paths to becoming a professional baseball player. For players born in the United States that path to being selected in the MLB Draft is often one of these four: drafted straight out of high school, drafted after three years at a Division I school, drafted out of Junior College, or drafted after going to Junior College and then transferring to a DI program.

High school kids come less developed physically, with boundless potential, but with often more questions than answers. With JUCO college kids and DI athletes you get a more finished product, a more mature player whose played at a higher level, but guys that generally don’t have the same type of robust room for growth.

Then there are the Haydn McGeary’s of the world.

McGeary grew up in Phoenix and in his final year of high school baseball put up some incredibly gaudy numbers. At 6-foot-4 and 225 pounds, the burly right-handed hitter raked to the tune of a .522 batting average, while finishing top-10 in the nation in homers, and being named the Arizona 4A Player of the Year.

The intangibles seemed to be there and the numbers catapulted off the page, but despite the lofty accolades, the college offers did not roll in.

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McGeary found himself at Colorado Mesa University in 2019, a DII school in Grand Junction, Colorado.

In year one he helped guide the Mavs to the National Championship game. In 36 games McGeary hit .347 and launched 11 home runs. Impressive as that may sound, it would be by far his worst season in college.

In the shortened Covid season that followed the Arizona product hit .471 with nine homers in a mere 18 games.

As a junior he blasted a career-best 20 homers and slugged .973, which is almost unfathomable. While McGeary’s numbers obviously came at the DII level, just for reference sake, the highest slugging percentage in the MLB last year was produced by Aaron Judge, who broke the AL home run record; he slugged .709.

In his senior season McGeary, who had developed a knack for topping himself year after year, just kept getting better. For the whopping .579.

Colorado Mesa University often turns high school kids into MLB Draft picks, they’re no slouch despite their DII status.

From 2000 through 2021 the Mavs had produced 19 players that had been selected in the MLB Draft, though 18 of those were chosen in the 14th round or later.

In 2022 they added three more draft picks, tied for the second most they’d had in a single year in the program’s history.

But McGeary’s path to the pros wasn’t yet complete. He’d try to boost his draft stock second year in a row he hit exactly .481 (consistency you say?!), and this time he crushed 35 homers.

In 2022 he actually slugged 1.061, which if it was an OPS would be dominant, but as a slugging percentage it’s much closer to say, other worldly. That’s without even mentioning the 43 walks he drew in 57 games, helping him to produce an on-base percentage of a one final time with a summer playing in the Appalachian League, a collegiate wooden bat summer league.

The powerful slugger showed up and dominated with the Bluefield Ridge Runners: that summer he batted .403 with a 1.104 OPS and 17 extra-base hits in 30 games.

The DII National player of the year would hear his name called by the Chicago Cubs in the 15th round of the MLB Draft.

“He’s accumulated some off-the-charts, Nintendo-type numbers,” Cubs Vice President of Scouting Dan Kantrovitz told the Chicago Tribune last year. “It’s backed up by some context-neutral data points as well when we’re talking about the exit [velocity] and how the ball just flies off his bat.”

Watching McGeary and reading about past spring and last year led the entire Cubs system in walk rate.

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McGeary, I'm telling you it's easy to picture the majestic arcing homer you read at the beginning.

McGeary didn’t debut at the pro level until he was 22, and in his rookie season he only appeared in 18 games total after being drafted. In 18 games he drove in 11 runs, homered once, and batted .273.

But most importantly, he got his feet went before entering his first full season of pro ball, similar to what we saw the Cubs do with Jordan Wicks in 2021.

The Cubs have seemingly developed a knack for spotting underrated talent in the 15th round.

In 2017 the North Siders selected Jared Young, an infielder from Old Dominion. By 2018 Young was named the Chicago Cubs Minor League Player of the Year after hitting .300 between his time in Myrtle Beach and South Bend.

Last fall Young made it up to the big leagues and tallied five hits in six games, batting .263 across three series in the middle of September.

Two years prior Chicago picked Scott Effross in the 15th round of the 2015 Draft. The right-handed reliever came onto the scene in 2021 with 14 solid appearances out of the bullpen and in 2022 twirled a stellar season between the Cubs and Yankees, ultimately finishing with a 2.54 ERA in 60 appearances.

Effross was so highly valued the Cubs were able to trade him for a Yankees super talented starting pitcher in Hayden Wesneski. Even in 2021 the Cubs selected B.J. Murray, whose incredible eye at the plate has mightily impressed throughout his short time in the farm system. Murray played with Great Britain in the World Baseball Classic this

Wicks was selected in the first round in 2021 and joined South Bend for the final three series of the season to get a taste of the minors before a full offseason of working to improve.

In a day and age where you can’t read about baseball or watch analysts talk about the game without hearing references to launch angle, exit velocity, spin rate, induced vertical break, and more, McGeary is producing numbers every baseball fan and expert, both young and old, can appreciate. There aren’t many players of his size that have such prolific bat-to-ball skills, consistently putting up .300 average seasons year, after year, after year. But nowadays there’s almost more jaws dropping at the raw metrics prospects produce than their individual stat lines do.

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And in batting practice, there just simply aren’t many that can impress like McGeary can.

In his first week at Four Winds Field he hit a ball out to left field that left the park in a blur, whizzing through the air like a jet bound for a faraway destination. It left the bat at 114 MPH and traveled 458 feet.

Anyone who has been fortunate enough to watch McGeary play knows how powerful his bat is and how much potential he possesses. When he took batting practice on Opening Night in South Bend, reporters kept asking us if they could talk with the brawny first baseman, before they'd ever even seen him play in person.

It's a small sample certainly, but here's what McGeary has produced in his first 2.5 weeks in South Bend, 2.5 weeks in which he's the only player who has started in each and every game.

McGeary in 15 games is batting .373 with nine extra-base hits, two homers, and 12 RBIs. He's already drawn 10 walks and has posted a .464 on-base percentage to this point in April.

Compared with the rest of the Midwest League he's second in batting average, second in RBIs, second in OPS, third in slugging percentage, and fifth in on-base percentage.

Plus he leads the whole league in hits, doubles, and extra-base hits.

Every year there are a few players that shoot through a given farm system, sometimes out of seemingly nowhere like with Matt Mervis in 2022.

Mervis started the year in South Bend, destroyed Midwest League pitching, and got promoted twice during the season. Mervis finished the year in AAA-Iowa and simply never slowed down all season long. He possesses an incredible amount of power yet hits super well in terms of his average as well.

Sound familiar?

If I was a betting man, Haydn McGeary would be near the top of my list of position players who could move up multiple levels. He’s got the power, the discipline, the intangibles and sometimes just blows you away with a single swing.

It's easy to pull for a guy that just kept on grinding, a player who was incredible in high school but never got the chance to play at a big college. A guy who played four years at the Division II level, then played a summer of collegiate ball after graduating, and wasn't drafted until the 15th round.

Fans in South Bend are going to love McGeary, he's a clutch hitter oozing with potential who works his darn tail off. But that said, they shouldn’t get too accustomed to seeing his name on the videoboard, for it feels like his flight to Tennessee isn’t too far way.