ARLINGTON, Texas — A deep flyout to center field told Randy Mazey everything he needed to know about JJ Wetherholt.
It was the summer of 2019, and Mazey, the longtime head coach at West Virginia University, was overseeing a prospect camp in Morgantown. Wetherholt, now a likely top-10 pick in Sunday’s 2024 MLB Draft, was then just a high school sophomore, one who was struggling mightily with pulling the baseball.
Wetherholt’s contact quality was spectacular, Mazey remembers, but none of the batted balls from the left-handed-hitting shortstop was heading to right field. So the head ball coach, who retired last month after a 12-year run leading the Mountaineers, called the youngster over.
“I said, you don’t have to pull the ball,” the skipper told Yahoo Sports. “But you have to be able to pull the ball. Because there’s gonna come a time where you need to do that.”
In his next at-bat, Wetherholt drove a ball to the warning track in dead center field. Not a pulled baseball, not even a hit, but in Mazey’s mind, Wetherholt’s ability to make an immediate adjustment showed a rare level of aptitude that would prove prescient.
“He’s just always been a sponge for learning, wanting to get better,” Mazey said. “You know, he just values everything you say to him and takes it to heart.”
Fast-forward five years, and Wetherholt is set to matriculate from West Virginia as the best player in program history. In 145 career games, the Mars Area (PA) High School product cranked 29 home runs with a .370 batting average, a 1.092 OPS and 57 stolen bases. Wetherholt will hear his name called early during the first round of the draft, and there’s a legitimate chance he’ll be the Cleveland Guardians’ choice at No. 1 overall.
For a 5-foot-10 kid raised in a small-town exurb of cold-weather Pittsburgh, that would be quite the accomplishment.
Andy Bednar was an assistant coach at Mars Area High School (their mascot is the Fightin’ Planets) for Wetherholt’s first two seasons there. Bednar, who happens to be the father of David and Will Bednar — the former a two-time All-Star closer for the Pittsburgh Pirates, the latter a first-round pick by the Giants in 2021 — vividly remembers seeing Wetherholt play as a youngster.
“He would come to our youth baseball camps all the time,” Bednar recalled. “He had these big glasses, reading glasses, but he could swing it like no other. A sweet, lefty swing. It was unbelievable.”
That same beautiful hack has helped turn Wetherholt from a bespectacled preteen into a phenomenal pro prospect. He starts his stance extremely upright, his front foot slightly open toward the first baseline, his hands hovering high up by his head. Then, with the smooth effortlessness of a jungle cat, Wetherholt explodes the bat head forward as he leans back onto a bent rear leg. It is a very pretty swing, one that allows Wetherholt to generate an impressive amount of raw power from a relatively small frame.
“There are some guys that need our help [with their swing],” Bednar said. “He did not need our help.”
Perhaps more enticing is that of the top college hitters available in this year’s draft, Wetherholt is the one most likely to play a premium defensive position. However, his future at shortstop is no sure thing; some teams worry that a move to second base is likely, given his lack of arm strength. Indeed, during his breakout sophomore season in 2023, Wetherholt played second. Then, as a junior playing shortstop, he suffered a serious hamstring injury that shelved him for nearly seven weeks and increased doubts about his defensive chops.
But Wetherholt is determined to prove that he can stick at the position as a pro.
“I believe I can play shortstop, just based off the toolset that I have,” he told Yahoo Sports in June at the MLB Draft Combine in Phoenix.
Notably, Wetherholt admitted that before this most recent season, he didn’t have anything resembling an infield practice routine. “I was always good enough to play second sleeping,” he joked.
Less up for debate is Wetherholt’s reputation as a winning presence. Although he’s not a vocal leader, his confident and steady demeanor raised the level of play at West Virginia during his three seasons there, as evidenced by the Mountaineers’ winning the first regional in program history earlier this year.
“He could have easily just been arrogant and selfish,” Mazey said. “Be like, ‘Hey, I’m the shortstop here, I need to play shortstop,’ but it wasn’t like that. He did whatever he could for the benefit of the Mountaineers. And that’s why as a program, we did things that have never been done before — because of his unselfishness.”
If Wetherholt’s plus makeup is enough to convince the Guardians to make him the first overall pick remains to be seen. There are a multitude of other factors. For one, the degree to which Wetherholt is willing to accept an under-slot signing bonus, one that would allow Cleveland to spread money around elsewhere in the draft, is arguably more determinative than his actual profile. Such is life in the bizarro world of the MLB Draft.
Whatever happens Sunday, Wetherholt is raring to go out and begin his professional career.
“[I’m most excited about] the developmental side,” he said at the Combine. “It’ll be sweet having access to so many resources and being around people who are elite-level athletes, seeing their mindsets and learning from them.
“I’m just excited to learn and grow my game.”
Growth will come, as will bumps in the road, but Wetherholt is starting from a pretty solid place.
Source Agencies
