‘Born into baseball,’ Hammond’s Tucker Toman relishes senior year as pro draft looms
Tucker Toman puts his batting helmet down, holds a bat in one hand and drops to one knee in the on-deck batting circle just before his first at-bat during a game at the Forest Acres Classic.
Toman says a short prayer, hops back up and heads to the plate. It’s a routine he does before almost every at-bat. It gives the Hammond senior infielder a bit of normalcy in a crazy senior season.
About 10 feet behind the netted fence at A.C. Flora’s Falcon Field, there are more than 20 Major League Baseball scouts and personnel holding cell phones, Ipads and video cameras waiting to film Toman’s first at-bat against River Bluff. It’s a common sight this season at Skyhawks games and practices.
Toman is the top hitter in South Carolina for Class of 2022. He and Boiling Springs High School pitcher Tristan Smith, a Clemson signee, are likely to be high picks in the 2022 MLB Draft.
Toman, who is signed to play college baseball at LSU, has done his part to balance his final year of high school with all the attention comes with being a top pro prospect. He’ll have a big decision to make about his baseball future, but that’s still two months away.
Hammond coach Chris Braciszewski sends out weekly messages Sundays to scouts with game and batting practice times. Toman, on several occasions, has taken batting practice for the scouts after games.
After a Forest Acres Classic game last month, 15 scouts went back to Hammond’s campus to watch Toman take batting practice.
“He turned on the lights & hit tanks. Felt like (Kevin) Costner would narrate it,” ESPN insider Kiley McDaniel posted on Twitter with a video of Toman’s hitting session.
It will be the second straight year a Midlands high school player will be drafted. Dutch Fork’s Will Taylor was selected by the Texas Rangers last year but opted to play football and baseball at Clemson.
Toman told The State he has talked to about every MLB team and had some in-person workouts. He’ll do more of those workouts once his high school season ends.
“You take a glance and see all the scouts and everything, it is pretty cool,” Toman said last month “But I am focused right now on what is inside of the lines. I’m just focused on everything between the lines and my teammates.”
‘He is having fun with it’
After last month’s Forest Acres Classic game against River Bluff, Toman lamented about his team’s second straight loss. There was more concern with helping his team get better as they chase a second straight SCISA Class 3A title. His mind wasn’t on what round he might be selected in the MLB Draft or any bonus money he might get.
Hammond won its last two games at the Forest Acres Classic and defeated Cardinal Newman to win the 3A region championship April 26. The Skyhawks began the playoffs on Tuesday against Trinity Collegiate, and Toman’s solo homer was the difference in the 1-0 win over the Titans.
Toman is trying to stay grounded and humble amid all the outside attention, something passed on to him by mother Ashley and father Jim.
Jim Toman is a former South Carolina assistant coach under Ray Tanner and has been head coach at Liberty and now at Middle Tennessee. He won his 400th career game Sunday. He drove to Columbia to see his son play during the Forest Acres Classic before driving right back to Tennessee before his team’s game the next day.
“All the scouts being there haven’t affected him,” Jim Toman told The State. “He is having fun with it. Some kids get scared and uptight. But I think he is locked in and having a blast, playing the game he loves.
“It is unusual to have an 18-year-old that acts like a 25-year-old sometimes. I don’t know where he got that from. It must be from his mom. He is a good teammate and works very hard.”
Tucker grew up playing baseball at a young age alongside brother Charlie Mac, who plays for his dad at MTSU. Jim Toman joked there are probably not many fields in South Carolina or Virginia that they haven’t played in or taken batting practice.
Jim Toman said Tucker started switch-hitting at about 5 or 6 years old. By the time he was 9 or 10, it was evident Tucker had a chance to be pretty special.
“I was basically born into baseball, and there is nothing that is going to separate me from it. I’m a baseball rat and I love to play,” Tucker said.
Pros or college? Big decision looms
Tucker and his mother moved back to South Carolina before his eighth grade year and enrolled at Hammond. Braciszewski, who was an assistant at Hammond at the time, had him in his class. He was aware of his father being a college coach but wasn’t fully clued in on Tucker’s ability.
That changed after he watched Toman take batting practice one day.
“He was hitting the ball out of the yard as an eighth-grader,” Braciszewski said. “So, I text our head coach and said we just won the lottery, I think.
“He always has been one of our hardest workers, if not the hardest one. … He brings a lot more to the team than just his ability.”
Toman has been a five-year player on the Skyhawks varsity team and hit .502 with eight homers and 25 RBIs last season. Going into last week, he was hitting. 471 with six homers, 22 RBIs and has a .912 slugging percentage.
Toman has been walked 17 times in 70 plate appearances.
Toman committed to play at Oregon before playing his first varsity game but decommitted after Ducks coach George Horton was fired in 2019. He committed to LSU shortly after and signed with the Tigers in November as part of a nationally ranked recruiting class. November. Perfect Game ranks LSU’s 2022 class as No. 1 in the nation.
Toman still hears from LSU coach Jay Johnson regularly and will sit down with his parents and his adviser, Adam Rosenthal from Octagon Sports, after the season to talk more about whether he will head to Louisiana or start his professional career.
The draft will be July 17-19 in Los Angeles, and MLB.com has him ranked as the 51th best prospect for this year’s draft. Slot values for MLB Draft picks from last year in the top 50 picks range from $8.4 million at No. 1 to $1.46 million at No. 50. Teams can pay above or below slot values if they choose.
“It will be Tucker’s decision,” Jim Toman said. “He loves LSU, but if he gets a chance to play pro ball, that is on the table, too. You never know what is going to happen in the draft until it happens.
“Tucker is pretty mature and will make the right decision. He will either have a blast at LSU or go into pro ball. But right now, we are worried about the next game, so he is going to keep working and get after it.”
This story was originally published May 3, 2022 at 10:35 AM.
