18-Year-Old Daniel Espino Dreams His 100 MPH Heat Can Make Mariano Rivera Proud

Espino recently graduated from Bulloch Academy, where he attended classes every morning before training and playing in the afternoons at Georgia Premier in Statesboro.While his parents were debating whether he was ready to live abroad, Espino emerged from his bedroom with his bag packed and said he was ready."For me, it was for baseball," he said, "but for my parents, it was for education."The right-hander's fastball sits between 94 and 96 mph but hurries up against the best competition. PitchingNinja, a popular aggregator of pitching dominance, tweeted video of Espino's fastball-slider combo with the reminder that high school kids are trying to hit that.Espino won all nine of his senior season starts at Georgia Premier, throwing 44 innings and allowing only two runs for a 0.41 ERA. Espino faced top-300 high school draft prospects 27 times; those hitters went 1-for-25 with 17 strikeouts and two walks."I've been around a lot of good high school baseball players," said Georgia Premier head coach Gene Reynolds, a 2003 ninth-round draft pick by the Rockies, "and he's the best I've seen."The sight of 40 big league scouts crowding around one of his bullpen sessions wasn't uncommon, but for games, organizations often sent two evaluators apiece—for a total of 60—and there wasn't sufficient seating behind home plate."They brought in bleachers for the scouts to be able to watch him behind the plate," said Eddie Phelps, Espino's summer league coach with the GBSA Rays. (He nevertheless ranked 23rd on that list, and Baseball America placed him 26th.) Velocity is the prime currency of 21st-century baseball, yet some predecessors who threw hard early in their careers had trouble sustaining success.MLB draft expert Jim Callis noted a longstanding bias against right-handed high school pitchers and said Espino's command is inconsistent, as is typical for a young pitcher."There isn't much projection, but at the same time, he's a guy you don't need to project on because his stuff's already good," Callis said. And, even if his delivery is a little unorthodox, plenty of big leaguers with unique aspects to their games have had great careers."I don't think everything has to be a cookie-cutter way for somebody to be successful," Cates said.Espino only competed for Georgia Premier and never Bulloch, but the assistant head of school at Bulloch, Holly Greeson, and another teacher drove to see their pupil play a game in the fall.