JJ Wetherholt is in an uncommon place. A 3rd-year finance scholar at West Virginia College with an curiosity in math who as soon as thought-about going to legislation college, Wetherholt is leaving faculty early, and says his dad and mom couldn’t be extra proud.
As prestigious and profitable as a profession in legislation or finance will be, neither holds a candle to skilled baseball, and Wetherholt is likely one of the main candidates for the highest choose on this yr’s draft.
Along with educational All-Large 12 and All-American honors, Wetherholt hit .373/.471/.632 with 29 homers, 56 stolen bases, and extra walks than strikeouts in 143 profession faculty video games. A compact, sinewy 5-foot-10, 190-pound second baseman with nice bat velocity from an open, left-handed stance, he’s a lock to change into WVU’s highest draft choose ever. (The document is at present eleventh general, shared by Alek Manoah in 2019 and right-hander Chris Enochs in 1997.)
JJ Wetherholt (SS/2B, @WVUBaseball) received all of this one and he knew it. Introduced at 460 ft. Hope you admire it as a lot as he did. ? pic.twitter.com/ZsuRV3O0bN
— Burke Granger (@burkegranger) Could 12, 2024
When he’s on, Wetherholt’s easy swing permits him to hit the ball laborious each to the pull aspect and the other subject. He’s received good plate self-discipline and fast palms; his leg kick makes it appear like he’s going to place his entrance foot down too early, however he at all times appears to make a easy weight switch.
Wetherholt says he realized an important deal from his hitting coaches and his older brother, however: “My best swing inspiration that I had rising up was Robinson Canó. He was my favourite participant.”
Canó performed 17 years within the huge leagues, made eight All-Star groups, and hit 335 dwelling runs. If he hadn’t taken two prolonged PED suspensions (and suffered the commensurate reputational penalty along with lacking greater than 200 video games), Canó would’ve made a run at 3,000 hits and had a strong Corridor of Fame case. So I need to make it clear off the proverbial bat that I’m not making that comparability to any newbie participant.
However a bat-first left-handed second baseman with plus hit, plus plate self-discipline, and common or higher energy shouldn’t be an unreasonable expectation for Wetherholt. Like Canó, Wetherholt leaves one thing to be desired defensively at second, although the West Virginia star is quicker now than Canó ever was. He’s adamant that he can play shortstop, and it’s a superb wager that whoever picks him will no less than give him an opportunity to fail there. You possibly can say no matter you need from the draft podium, however Wetherholt is extra a shortstop than Spencer Torkelson was a 3rd baseman when the Tigers introduced him as such within the 2020 draft.
In a draft class like final yr’s, positional considerations like which may have relegated Wetherholt to the again half of the highest 10, however within the absence of a Paul Skenes or Dylan Crews on the prime of this yr’s board, the 2024 class is a bit more open. Wetherholt is certainly one of no less than 5 faculty gamers with a non-zero probability of going first general.
Wetherholt had the chance to cement himself as the most effective participant on this class — he was no. 1 on The Board heading into this season — however he’s had an eventful 2024: A hamstring harm suffered the primary week of the yr value him 24 video games, or 40% of the Mountaineers’ season. And as soon as he returned, he didn’t exhibit fairly the identical pull energy he confirmed when he hit .449/.517/.787 as a sophomore.
Nonetheless, the ‘Eers not solely made the NCAA match however gained the Tucson Regional because the no. 3 seed earlier than falling within the Tremendous Regional to North Carolina, which additionally introduced an finish to the 12-year tenure of retiring head coach Randy Mazey.
“After the final recreation was over, that’s an evening you don’t actually sleep,” Wetherholt says. “So, yeah. It was… it was powerful. Dang, faculty ball’s achieved. No extra enjoying with my teammates, Skip, all of the coaches there for certain. It’s powerful, however it’s part of life… I might’ve liked to go to Omaha. That may’ve been wonderful, however typically it’s not written in your plan, so that you’ve simply received to move with it.”
So as an alternative of going to Omaha, Wetherholt went to Phoenix for per week of staff interviews — although not as many as you’d suppose, he says — and media commitments as he prepares for the subsequent step in his profession.
Wetherholt’s journey begins in Mars, Pennsylvania, a tiny suburb of Pittsburgh that unexpectedly grew to become a little bit of a baseball hotbed. Wetherholt performed journey ball with Drake LaRoche and 2023 no. 6 general choose Jacob Wilson when the latter two’s fathers performed for the Pirates, and his highschool coach, Andy Bednar, is the daddy of Pirates nearer David Bednar and 2021 first-rounder Will Bednar. (That prime college staff: the Mars Space Excessive Faculty Figthin’ Planets. I checked; it’s a coed establishment, and never an all-boys’ campus with a sister college referred to as Venus Space Excessive Faculty.)
It’s there that Wetherholt received his nickname; his full title is Jonathan David however a youth coach began calling him JJ, after the youngsters’s cartoon character Jay-Jay the Jet Airplane, and the moniker caught. He additionally realized easy methods to hit left-handed from his brother, Brandon, who performed Division II baseball at Gannon College.
“I realized a lot from him: easy methods to be a child, easy methods to be a person, easy methods to play ball, easy methods to work,” Wetherholt says. “So, yeah, I modeled a ton of my recreation after him. And simply being round him on a regular basis, I wished to play like an older child.”
Talking from private expertise, I additionally taught my way more gifted youthful brother easy methods to play baseball and keep in mind vividly the second when he was capable of beat me constantly. I requested Wetherholt when that second got here for him and Brandon, and his admiration continued to shine by way of in his reply.
“I believe it was final yr,” Wetherholt says. “Freshman yr I used to be fairly good, however he was hitting .330 with double-digit homers in D-II ball. Final yr, he and I each had huge years, however that was the place he gave me the crown. He was like, ‘Dang, bro, how are you doing this?’”
Speaking to Wetherholt, it’s clear he understands that producing a giant league ballplayer is a collaborative effort. Not solely does the participant himself must have the expertise and drive, he must be surrounded by individuals who put him ready to succeed, which is what Wetherholt had in his little baseball hotbed exterior of Pittsburgh. He says he performed with the identical group of youngsters in journey ball from age 10 to 18, and by the top of that point, the staff had change into like a household.
“Individuals cared. They actually cared about me as a participant and my growth, they usually cared in regards to the staff, the world simply making children higher,” he says. “And that was a cool scene. You had dad and mom that had been working 9-to-5, some would take outing of their day not solely to work with their very own children, however work with me and the opposite children, take time to verify the youth applications are operating properly and that we have now sources to coach and change into higher gamers… They wished to set us as much as play faculty ball. That was candy, and I’m tremendous, tremendous fortunate to have that.”
That features Wetherholt’s personal dad and mom. He says they, “made a superb dwelling, however among the cash that they spent on me to play ball, they’d have favored to have been capable of preserve.”
He says it’s solely since he received to school that he’s come to understand how a lot his dad and mom’ help has helped him.
“You at all times need your dad and mom to do extra for you. Give me this, give me that, why aren’t you right here, blah, blah, blah,” he says. “As I’ve gotten older and my duties have gone up, and I see how busy persons are and the way blessed I’m for them to be in my life, that’s once I realized, like, dang, they actually put up with a lot… I at all times apologize for being a bit rugrat rising up and placing my dad and mom by way of so much. However that’s a part of being a child — you’re studying and also you don’t know you’re doing dumb stuff.”
I requested Wetherholt how his dad and mom are whereas watching him play, having invested a lot in his baseball schooling. And whereas he stresses that they’re extremely pleased with him, it looks as if there are in all probability moments once they want he’d gone to legislation college in any case.
“My mother freaks out,” he says. “And my dad does too, a bit bit. He doesn’t actually perceive the sport utterly. He performed faculty soccer, and each recreation of soccer you’re getting the prospect to indicate that you just’re the alpha athlete. However in baseball, you might be the most effective participant on the sector, and you might simply have a nasty day and go 0-for-4 with three Ks, no matter… However my mother, she will get like a nervous wreck. Once I get two strikes on me, she closes her eyes. She simply needs me to do good.”
Having gotten that help rising up, Wetherholt appears to search out group wherever he goes.
It was attention-grabbing to listen to Griffin Burkholder, a speedy highschool outfield prospect from Northern Virginia, discuss Wetherholt. Burkholder is a possible Day Two draft choose who’s dedicated to WVU, the place — if he doesn’t go professional this yr — he’ll be Wetherholt’s inheritor presumptive because the Mountaineers’ subsequent star.
The mix isn’t the glitzy high-profile occasion that MLB may maybe need it to be, however it’s nonetheless the most important assortment of newbie baseball expertise within the nation this time of yr, with the doable exception of the School World Sequence. Each staff despatched entrance workplace representatives, and several other notable ex-big leaguers — Nick Swisher, Nelson Cruz, Harold Reynolds — had been in attendance to participate in TV protection. So I requested the 18-year-old Burkholder who he’d been most excited to see, and he stated Wetherholt.
“I’ve met him earlier than, once I was committing to West Virginia. We additionally share an adviser, in order that’s how we met,” Burkholder says. “We labored out collectively as soon as in Philly, and I received to hang around with him a bit bit again on the lodge right here in between interviews. I received to select his mind a bit bit about the entire course of he’s going by way of, and simply his, clearly, his nice final couple years at West Virginia.”
The outgoing Mountaineers star is in an unusually fortuitous place. He’s a contender for the no. 1 choose within the draft in a yr through which his father’s favourite staff — the Cleveland Guardians — are choosing first.
What occurs if that falls by way of? I joked. Would his dad pin up a photograph of Charlie Condon on the dartboard within the storage? Wetherholt was fast to say no, as a result of he’d come to love and respect Condon a lot when the 2 performed collectively on the collegiate nationwide staff final summer season. He rattled off an inventory of half a dozen names, lots of them prime prospects on this yr’s draft, who he was completely happy to reconnect with as they head towards draft day.
“You might say it’s competitors, however God, I’m rooting for these children simply as a lot as I’m rooting for me,” he says. “They’re such good folks, and we had such an important expertise enjoying collectively that I couldn’t sit right here and be like, ‘Don’t take them, take me.’”
In about three weeks, the wait will likely be over and the thriller settled: Wetherholt will know the place he’s going. Within the meantime, there are extra conferences, extra coaching, and a possibility to take a breath earlier than setting off on what he hopes is a prolonged skilled profession.
I ask each prospect what they’re planning to splurge on as soon as they get their signing bonus. (As an apart, Burkholder gave my favourite reply of the week: The motive force’s aspect air-con on his 15-year-old pickup truck has stopped working, so if he goes professional, a part of his signing bonus is earmarked for getting that fastened.)
“Possibly a brand new putter. I want a brand new putter,” Wetherholt says. “May take a golf journey or one thing… I’m fairly boring. I don’t dwell a loopy life. It’s like fishing, golf, baseball, some video video games.”
He ought to get pleasure from that boring life whereas he can. If he will get his want and has his title referred to as first on July 14, Wetherholt’s life goes to get very attention-grabbing. Nonetheless, it’s what he — alongside along with his household and buddies — has labored for years to attain. And it beats cramming for the LSAT.
