BEREA, Ohio — Cleveland Indians starting pitcher Trevor Bauer had some high praise for the team’s first-round pick in the 2019 MLB First-Year Player Draft, hard-throwing right hander Daniel Espino.
The Indians selected the 18-year-old Espino with a first-round pick after a standout senior season at Georgia Premier Academy in Statesboro, Georgia, and Bauer had some rave reviews of him prior to the 2019 MLB Draft.
“Man, does this kid have some electric stuff. He’s comfortably in the mid-90s,” Bauer said in comments taped on the Indians’ recent road trip to Fenway Park in Boston.
“He’s already touched triple digits with his fastball, a couple power breaking balls, and he reminds me of Tyler Glasnow. He’s got that high heat, that nasty breaking ball. If you have those two things, you don’t need a whole lot else.”
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Espino finished his senior season with a 0.32 earned run average after allowing just two earned runs and 10 hits in 44 innings of work. Additionally, Espino allowed only 10 walks and registered 106 strikeouts, nearly 2.5 per inning.
During his sophomore year of high school, the 6-foot-2, 200-pound Espino and his family relocated from Panama to Georgia.
Committed to play at LSU, Espino was clocked at 99 miles per hour during the Under Armour All-America Game and pitched for Team Panama in the Under-18 2018 COPABE Games in Chitré, Panama.
“The craziest thing for me with this kid is for how good he is already, I still see areas he can improve on a little bit,” Bauer said. “On his release, you can see him dumping his posture off a little bit toward the first-base dugout. There’s a little curvature of the spine. He runs away from his arm a little bit.
“He actually reminds me a little bit of a young me in that position. He tightens up that arm action a little bit, solidifies that posture, he’s going to throw even harder with better command than he has right now, and I’ve got to tell you, that’s a very scary thought for all of the hitters who are going to have to face him.”