Mlodzinski’s path from USC to top MLB Draft pick unique from start to finish
When South Carolina baseball pitchers Adam Hill and Cody Morris were taken early in the 2018 MLB Draft, all their Gamecock teammates, including a freshman right-hander named Carmen Mlodzinski, were there to celebrate with them as the team prepared for an NCAA Super Regional.
On Wednesday, Mlodzinski has a shot to join them in the pro ranks, but the circumstances are far different.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mlodzinski hasn’t seen his USC teammates in months. The 2020 season was abruptly canceled and the dream of a College World Series was lost. And the pandemic has also dramatically impacted the draft, which has been shortened from 40 rounds to five.
That last part is unlikely to impact Mlodzinski — the Gamecocks’ ace this past year is considered a top prospect in the draft with a strong chance at going in the first round, which kicks off at 7 p.m. Wednesday (ESPN and MLB Network).
But whether he goes that early or not, Mlodzinski (pronounced “ma-Jinsk-ee”) said he wouldn’t be particularly happy or upset about his draft position.
“I didn’t even get drafted out of high school and I didn’t really even have a picture in my mind about getting drafted out of high school, so I’m happy where I’m at after just three years at Carolina and what they’ve done for me,” Mlodzinski said.
The South Carolina program all time has 14 first round draft picks. Mlodzinski could be next.
Not being able to share the moment with his teammates, though, will be a disappointment, Mlodzinski said, especially as both his last two seasons in college were cut short — a broken foot ended his 2019 campaign before the pandemic this year.
“You could definitely say that it feels incomplete,” Mlodzinski said of his career at USC. “It sucks to have two seasons taken away from you in which you really want to go out there and perform to the best of your ability around the best friends that you can build in the past three years at the school that you’ve been at. And I mean, that’s just something that I’ve had to deal with and I’m trying to treat it as positive, be optimistic about it all. But it’s definitely tough.”
If there’s any benefit, Mlodzinski noted, it’s that the innings he never threw over the past two years might add on to the back end of his career. In that regard, the former high school shortstop is also fortunate to have only thrown “50 career innings” prior to his time at USC, he estimated.
That lack of experience also meant he had a lot of room to grow, Mlodzinski admitted — “Not just on the physical side or the pitching side, but a lot with the mental side that (pitching coach Skylar Meade) has helped me out with,” he said.
“He’s been huge on that for me and that’s kind of where I felt like my career took off, was when I really grasped some of the stuff he was showing me.”
In the past few months, Mlodzinski said he’s relied on strength coach Billy Anderson to help him through some “tricky” workouts. With gyms closed for several weeks, he had to get creative.
“We’ve been sneaking out on the golf course with my younger brothers and a couple of my buddies from my high school team, doing some throwing stuff and some bullpen stuff out there,” Mlodzinski said. “But it’s been real fun getting out there. It’s wide open out there, and they probably have to shoo us off and get us off there a couple days a week, but it’s for sure fun.”
Now that Mlodzinski’s hometown gym has reopened in Hilton Head, he’s back to an offseason program he and Anderson developed together, albeit with a few quirks. Because he doesn’t know when he’ll be pitching competitively again, Mlodzinski is trying to stay relatively primed and ready to go. At the same time, he’s also taking advantage of the uncertainty.
“With no baseball and really no near future with it all, I’m definitely doing some experimental stuff in there, trying some new stuff out and just seeing what works,” he said.
This story was originally published June 10, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
