<
        >

          Brady House 'made some money tonight': How one high school game could change the MLB draft

          Tim Morse/Georgia Dugout Preview Magazine
          • Kiley McDanielApr 16, 2021, 07:00 AM ET
            Close
            • ESPN MLB Insider
            • Kiley McDaniel covers MLB prospects, the MLB Draft and more, including trades and free agency.
            • Has worked for three MLB teams.
              • Co-author of Author of 'Future Value'
            Follow on X

          Scouting amateur baseball players is tricky because an extra blooper every other week can make a solidly below average hitter into a solidly above average one. Spotting a subtle mechanical difference, a slightly better batting eye, or marginally better coachability when a player is 18 years old that will then lead to that extra bloop every other week at age 26 and cause him to go from a bench player to a starter seems almost impossible, especially judging from just one high school game.

          On Monday, I went to what I think will be the most important single high school game in this calendar year for impact on this summer's 2021 MLB draft.

          Hitters typically improve linearly, because they have to adjust to pitchers of various types, so a scout would need to see a hitter succeed against some different types of pitchers, get a decent sample size of performance and a sense of the raw tools to really tell whether the player has improved in a meaningful way.

          A pitcher will throw close to 100 pitches per outing, and you can usually tell after about 50 pitches what he is. Half a game from a starting pitcher can give you a pretty good signal, whereas you could watch three games of a hitter and barely even see them swing, leaving you to make decisions based on batting practice and only swing decisions in the game.

          It seems almost impossible for a single regular-season game for a high school hitter to be the most important prep game of the year. It would almost certainly have to be a late-rising pitcher who has one pivotal game against a good lineup with a ton of scouts in attendance, right?

          Enter Brady House

          Brady House first came to my attention when, in late 2018, I was doing some work on the top prep prospects in the 2021 draft class, asking around about the top name or two and one source's response was just this video, where a 15-year-old House got jammed and hit a ball about 400 feet.

          I've seen House a good bit over the years in showcases and travel ball tournaments. The scouting report has always been pretty similar since I live in Atlanta and he lives about an hour outside the city. He has huge raw power that's been a 70 on the 20-80 scouting scale (roughly 30+ homers a year in the big leagues) for at least a year, at least plus bat speed from a broad-shouldered 6-foot-3 frame and an arm that's at least plus (into the mid-90s on the mound). He is also a deceptively good athlete who is at least an average runner and solid at shortstop but should be above average defensively at third base if he needs to slide over down the road.

          The only real quibbles scouts could come up with after a full summer of House being scouted intensely is related to how much contact he made. He hit for power, but had some associated strikeouts and had a bad event at the Area Code Games last August with lots of swing and miss. He focused since then on getting less physically stiff, as he lifted a lot during the shutdown. He has a quirk to his swing where his hand path is sometimes longer to the ball than ideal, so there's also a mechanical reason to think he may have trouble with mid-90s velocity as his performance also sometimes shows. Even teams that were down relative to consensus on House still were sure he'd go in the top 15 picks, but didn't think he could crack the top five to seven.

          And his opponent, Dylan Lesko

          Lesko is a 2022 draft prospect, a current high school junior. Lesko is committed to Vanderbilt and also attends a big powerhouse school in the Atlanta suburbs, Buford High, which has produced current top-50 prospects in baseball in Angels OF Brandon Marsh and Giants C Joey Bart.

          As you've probably noticed, velocity and data-driven training has exploded in recent years and it's reaching deep into the amateur ranks as well. Lesko exploded onto the national scene when he was hitting the mid-90s while also showing a plus changeup, advanced feel to pitch and a projectable 6-foot-3 frame in the summer after his freshman year at Buford. He's now sitting in the mid-90s, throwing solid strikes with a four-pitch mix and reminds scouts of Walker Buehler with his vertically-oriented, aggressive style and delivery. He's generally seen as the best prep pitching prospect in at least five years, maybe more, and at the top of a 2022 prep pitching class that may be an all-time group.

          The stakes

          You can see the two trains heading toward each other here, with House needing to show he can make hard contact against an advanced arm with multiple above-average pitches and premium velocity. Normally, that would come a couple times in rookie ball after signing and happen more often in the low minors the next season to help reveal if House is more of a .240 with 20 homers or .270 with 30+ homers player.

          Obviously it's rare that one of the top couple of hitters in the country happens to face the best prep pitcher in some time. You don't want to take too much from one game, it's possible House only swings a few times, or the duel ends in a draw and nothing really changes. But what if House has three strikeouts, or hits two homers? It could be the rare chance for a glimpse a couple years into the future for a top-10 pick who ranked seventh on my initial 2021 list six weeks ago.

          The attendance

          To me, seeing who was there to watch was just as intriguing as the game itself. I've been going to games like this for more than 10 years and make a point about writing down which scouts are attending every game I go to. I don't always recognize them all, but asking a couple rival scouts will always help me suss out all of the high-level scouts, at least.

          I deem anyone with the title GM, assistant GM, VP, special assistant, scouting director, or national crosschecker to be a "heavy hitter." At this juncture of the spring, those evaluators don't show up to games for no reason, and if they just happen to be in the area, they probably aren't coming with two other scouts from their department.

          The heavy hitters at the House/Lesko matchup were from the Tigers (picking third overall), Orioles (fifth), Royals (seventh), Rockies (eighth), Angels (ninth), Mariners (12th), Phillies (13th), Giants (14th), Cardinals (18th), Twins (26th) and Padres (27th). One of those teams in the top 10 had their GM there. That gives you a good sense of what teams are still heavily considering House and what his range likely is. This game was also easy to get to, being on a Monday with few notable games around the country, an hour from a major airport; if you wanted to be here, you were here.

          The matchup

          Lesko came out throwing 94-97 and hit 98 mph once in the first inning, mixing a four-seamer, slider, curveball and changeup that all flashed at least solid average quality a number of times.

          In the first inning, House worked a 3-2 count then hit Lesko's changeup for a groundball single up the middle. He got ahead, then took two big swings on balls that went foul, got something he could handle and did a nice job, when Lesko was showing his full repertoire.

          You can see the swing getting a little big in the freeze frame at the very end of the clip. That's the mechanical thing I was referring to that most scouts don't like, with his hands getting that high and far from the ball. That's why some think House could struggle with mid-90s stuff because there aren't really any examples of hitters in the big leagues that do this specifically, but it's also common for high schoolers with unusual swing characteristics to slowly tone them down as they advance through the minors. That's also about as extreme as his hand load gets; there's been plenty of hard hit balls and homers this spring with a more manageable version of that hand load.

          In the third inning, House attacked a first pitch fastball, hitting a hard grounder past the third baseman for a double. You can see in the freeze frame at the end that his hands were in a better position this time, tucked in enough to get around on a mid-90s heater.

          In the fifth inning, House again attacked on a first pitch slider on the inner half, hitting a hard ground ball double down the line. I broke out the high-speed mode on the camera, so I won't slow it down to show you where his hands are, but I'd say it's between the hand location on the first two at bats.

          At that point he had swung five times in the last six pitches against Lesko, so there's a clear strategy and I paused at this point to consider if he was being too aggressive -- but you can't ignore the results. The hand load never got so big that he missed a pitch, he didn't swing at anything he couldn't hit, he got the best of the best high school pitching prospect in the country on three of his four different pitches. It wasn't always pretty, but pretty is almost irrelevant when facing this sort of competition and getting results.

          The best scouts I know will look beyond the performance and focus on the repeatable elements they saw. In a game like this, that means looking for swing decisions, comfort in the box and ability to execute the swing well by being on time at key points. House passed the first two and the swing was good enough for today and probably the low minors, with potential to improve.

          It's also worth noting that the big hand load, like the Gary Sheffield bat waggle, are bad ideas for normal hitters but doable or even good for those with elite hitting tools. House doesn't have 80 bat speed like Sheffield or Javier Baez, but he's got enough bat speed (at least 60-grade) to make a bigger hand load work.

          In the seventh inning, a lefty reliever sitting in the upper-80s -- normally the best pitcher a high school hitter would face all year -- came in to close out the win for Buford and got House to pop up to the second baseman after he fouled two balls off.

          The conclusion

          I wouldn't have labeled this the most impactful single prep game if House had gone 1-for-2 with a flyout, walk and strikeout looking on a borderline call, but this performance was enough that one scouting director who was skeptical of House told me he now had to dive back in to reevaluate. A scout whose boss was at the game texted me "heard House made some money tonight."

          This was an ideal scenario for me: a loud performance that puts House in a new light with additional information on the teams that are most interested. I'd guess about two-thirds of matchups I anticipate as much as this one are total letdowns where you don't really learn much about any of the key players. I pitched this matchup as a full article to my editors because it encapsulated so many different elements of what a scout does at the park, with a rich history on the player, modern evaluation and top-of-the-draft intrigue.

          The narrative is certainly easier to construct now, as an up-and-down summer being tied to growing pains, lifting too much during the shutdown and scouts being too picky about hitting mechanics given the raw hitting tools. Combine that with a loud spring (.594 average on 41 hits in 69 at-bats over 22 games, 8 HRs, 12 2Bs, 20 BBs, 4 K's, 4 HBPs, 15/15 SBs) and this game pointing to the trajectory that began with that homer when House was 15 and the projection becomes much rosier, whether or not 10 years from now that rosier narrative ends up being the correct one. We obviously still don't know the future, but the odds are a little more in our favor with this piece of key information, and I'd venture to say there's a little more interest in House in the top five picks than there was before this game.