Head Coach John Savage and the UCLA Bruins finally catch a break.
If you pay attention to the MLB Draft, you’ve gotta feel for the baby blue and gold. It seems year in and year out, the Bruins program is absolutely gutted of talent. Not only does the school usually lose a handful of good players off its current roster, but many of their prep commits are generally poached by big league organizations. That has especially been the case the last two summers.
2019 started a two-year tumble where the Bruins were purged of talent.
Now, granted, UCLA lost some really good talent this year too. They lost a lot of players in their second year of eligibility, as well as several lineup staples. But many expected some of the seasoned vets to move on after this season. The loss of veterans Zach Pettway, Jesse Bergin and Adrian Chaidez hurts, but it was expected. Losing a younger arm like Nick Nastrini especially stings. These, coupled with the losses of Matt McLain, JT Schwartz, Noah Cardenas and Mikey Perez, there’s a lot to replace. But all that said, most of this was expected.
What wasn’t expected was the Bruins holding on to essentially its entire recruiting class.
We had four UCLA commits ranked inside our Top 100 prospects for the 2021 MLB Draft. LHP Gage Jump (no. 40), OF Malakhi Knight (no. 65), SS Cody Schrier (no. 70) and RHP Thatcher Hurd (no. 75) were all considered premier draft prospects by our evaluators. They’re all heading to Los Angeles.
These guys, joined by RHP Alonzo Tredwell (no. 354) and 3B Bryce Martin-Grudzielanek (no. 410) represent the future of UCLA Baseball.
It should be noted, they did a lose highly-touted talent in RHP Eric Silva.
The Bruins are now well-positioned to put a really strong product on the field in 2022, with 2023 being a potential national championship quality team if it all clicks.