In the months following his junior season with the Baldwinsville baseball team, pitcher Jason Savacool would test himself against national and international competition, earning plenty of accolades along the way.
And those accolades continued even though Savacool never had a chance to take to the mound this spring.
It was announced on Thursday, May 21 that Savacool was chosen as Gatorade’s New York Baseball Player of the Year, weeks before he finds out if he will get chosen in the Major League Baseball Draft.
A true student-athlete, Savacool earned a 4.0 grade point average during his senior year at C.W. Baker High School while also scoring a 1,500 on his SATs.
And all this came despite Savacool missing the beginning of the school year, for he was in Gijang, South Korea, competing with USA Baseball’s 18-and-under national team at the World Baseball/Softball Confederation World Cup. Savacool helped Team USA to a second-place finish.
He had earned his spot on the team through a summer of 2019 spent in Major League Baseball’s Prospect Development Pipeline League, where he stood out during camps in Florida and California and, in between, traveled to Cleveland for a prospects game during MLB’s All-Star festivities.
Savacool was the top returning senior in Section III baseball going into 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools in mid-March and for the rest of the academic year.
Having signed his letter of intent to attend the University of Maryland, Savacool might still go to College Park, but those plans could change on June 10-11, when MLB holds its draft.
If it were a typical year, Savacool would expect to be drafted in one of 40 rounds. However, in a cost-cutting move related to the COVID-19 pandemic, MLB shortened the draft to five rounds.
Savacool said that, were he to be drafted, it would take a specific signing bonus for him to alter his plans of going to Maryland. Once in college, he would have to wait three years before getting another chance at the draft in 2023.
