Blake Wolters named Gatorade Illinois Baseball Player of the Year
By FRED KRONER
The list is long.
And impressive.
It’s a veritable list of major league all-stars and World Series champions, recognizing the skills they displayed as high school students.
There’s Kris Bryant (2010, from a high school in Nevada),
Mike Trout (2009 from New Jersey),
Clayton Kershaw (2006, from Texas),
Dexter Fowler (2004, from Georgia),
Adam Wainwright (2000, from Georgia),
Alex Rodriguez (1993, from Florida),
Derek Jeter (1992, from Michigan),
Chipper Jones (1990, from Florida),
Ken Griffey Jr. (1987, from Ohio),
Gary Sheffield (1986, from Florida).
For 38 years, Gatorade has been recognizing its choice as the top prep baseball in each state, along with the District of Columbia. (The company also honors athletes in 11 other sports.)
Another baseball list was released on Friday.
Among the news names: Blake Wolters (2023, from Illinois).
The recent Mahomet-Seymour graduate, who is projected as an early-round choice in the July major league draft, has been scrutinized multiple times by every major league club as he pitched for the Bulldogs this spring.
“This (Gatorade recognition) was one of my goals before the year,” Wolters said. “It’s awesome. It’s cool to see my hard work pay off.
“I’m really thankful.”
In a press release, Gatorade said the award was not only based on “athletic excellence,” but also on “high standards of academic achievement.”
Wolters finished high school with a 3.96 grade-point average. His workload as a senior included Advanced Placement classes in both Spanish and Calculus as well as a dual-credit English course through Parkland College.
M-S baseball coach Nic DiFilippo has had a view from the dugout of Wolters’ games since junior high.
“When he was in seventh grade, there was no question he’d be good,” DiFilippo said, “but none of us knew how special he would be.
“This is an unbelievable accomplishment.”
Unbelievable is among the superlatives that can be used to describe Wolters’ final high school season:
–He pitched in nine games for the Bulldogs and threw no-hitters in three of them;
–In those nine games, covering 48 2/3 innings, he allowed 13 total hits and walked 11 batters. No opposing school managed more than three hits against the 6-foot-4, 215-pound right-hander;
–With a fast ball that was continually clocked at between 96 and 99 mph, Wolters struck out 108 batters in 48 2/3 innings;
–His season earned run average was 0.43 and he had a 7-1 won-loss record.
He started the year with recognition from Rawlings/Perfect Game as an All-American Preseason second-team selection.
After an offseason where his pitches were clocked at 98 mph on consecutive pitches in a February Super Sixty event, sponsored by Prep Baseball Report, at suburban Chicago in LaGrange (setting the all-time record for velocity at that 21-year-old showcase), interest mushroomed in Wolters.
He was the day’s second-to-last pitcher to throw.
Scouts not only flocked to his games to see him pitch for the Bulldogs starting in March, they also came early to watch – and videotape – his warmups.
For a teen-ager who is 18 years old, that can be intimidating.
Wolters handled it well.
“It was a little nerve-wracking at first,” he said, “But in the most honest way I can say it, it become second nature.
“I zone it out and do my own thing.”
While Wolters was able to combat the season-long attention, it was a challenge for some teammates.
“Some of the kids felt nervous,” DiFilippo said, “because they wanted to perform behind him and make him look good.”
DiFilippo didn’t have to spend much time schooling Wolters on how to deal with the barrage of attention.
“His parents (Doug and Angie) got in touch with an advisor (Xavier Nady from the Scott Boras Corporation) and they were able to help,” DiFilippo said. “One of the things they did was cut off access to the media so he wasn’t dealing with answering questions.”
It was all part of a team-first attitude that Wolters carried into the season.
“I didn’t want to get caught up in what I was saying, and have it on social media, and have little distractions,” he said.
In retrospect, DiFilippo said the decision was a good one.
“He didn’t have to deal with that craziness,” DiFilippo said. “They would deal with me or the advisor.”
Four years ago, DiFilippo faced an issue that he wound up not needing to address: Should Wolters be promoted to the varsity as a freshman?
Thanks to COVID-19, neither Wolters nor any other baseball players in the state had a spring high school season in 2020.
The veteran M-S coach also had questions for Wolters – who signed a letter of intent to attend the University of Arizona – prior to the 2023 season.
“He’s going to be a pitcher at the next level,” DiFilippo said. “Trying to be a two-way player is difficult when pitching is the priority.
“I talked with him and his parents and asked, ‘Should he be a pitcher only?’ My concern was, will another pitcher hit him (possibly causing an injury)?”
The question didn’t require much contemplation.
“They said, ‘Absolutely not. We’re here to play and we’ll trust the process,’” DiFilippo said.
Blake Wolters was all-in on the call.
“It was an easy decision,” he said. “It was my senior year and my last opportunity to hit. I wanted to be in the lineup.
“I grew up always hitting and pitching.”
Besides the work he did on the mound as a senior, Wolters led the Bulldogs with a .433 batting average, nine home runs and 25 stolen bases. He was second on the team in runs batted in with 38.
DiFilippo, however, didn’t always honor Wolters’ wishes.
“There was a game, he was on third and wanted to steal home,” DiFilippo said. “I said there are things we will do, but that’s not one of them.”
As his baserunning indicated, Wolters retained his aggressiveness on the field.
“There was some risk,” he said. “I’ve gotten injured before sliding (broken ulna and radius in the fall of 2020), but I wanted to go all out this year.”
For the most part, DiFilippo took a hands-off approach when Wolters was on the mound. He rarely called a pitch.
Wolters and senior catcher Carter Johnson have formed a battery together for most of a decade and the coach trusted their judgment.
“Carter is a great catcher,” Wolters said, although there were times in a game when it appeared they weren’t on the same page.
Wolters would shake off a signal and, then, shake off another.
“It was a fake shake,” Wolters said. “We did it to mess with a hitter’s mind. He would give me something (a sign) maybe on an 0-2 count and I would shake it off.
“It was a good way to get hitters thinking a little bit.”
They might have originally been expecting a fast ball, but perhaps had some doubts as the batterymates played their special game.
And then – usually – it was a fast ball that was delivered.
Wolters met virtually all of his individual goals this spring, including an important one that wasn’t based on performance.
“I wanted to enjoy my senior season with my friends,” he said.
M-S finished with a school-record 31 wins in 37 games and a third consecutive Class 3A regional championship.
Wolters has been a fan of baseball for years, but said he never really developed an alliance with a particular major league team.
With one exception.
“In the 2016 World Series, I was rooting for the Cubs (who beat Cleveland in seven games),” he said.
In early July, he will be rooting for a team to call his name when the major league draft takes place.
Through trades, extra awarded picks and a compensatory round, there will be more first-round picks – about 39 – than there are actual teams.
Some teams will have the chance to select more than one player in the first round. Seattle, for example, has three first-round picks, all between 22 and 30.
According to a website post from Jim Callis at MLB.com, the value for picks in early rounds has increased this year by about 9.9 percent from 2022.
Pittsburgh has the No. 1 pick in 2023. The signing bonus is listed at a record $9,721,000. The value decreases as the draft continues. The Cubs, for instance, with the No. 13 pick, have a value listed at $4,848,000. The 28th pick in the first round belongs to Houston and was assigned a value of $2,880,770.
Will Wolters forego the chance to play in college? Will he opt to sign and start his professional journey this summer with a minor league team? Or will he head to the University of Arizona – where his sister is a student – and further refine his talents?
Those questions are ones to be answered another day, he said.
“It will take a lot of discussion with family and people around me,” Wolters said. “It will take a lot of talking.”
In the Prospect Rankings at MLB.com, Wolters is currently listed as the 35th best prospect nation-wide. Of those 35, he is one of 18 coming out of high school.
Of the top 40 prospects listed, 12 are pitchers.
The major league baseball draft will take place in Seattle, starting on July 8.
***
Wolters’ baseball career started as a 5-year-old when he played for the Mahomet Parks and Rec Department Red Team for two years.
“Trent and Becky Severns were the coaches,” recalled his mom, Angie Wolters.
In 2012, he progressed to the Champaign Express, where he was on an 8-and-under team as a 7-year-old. Steve Hall was the coach.
“Blake was about the smallest and the youngest,” Angie Wolters said. “He wasn’t pitching. He was an outfielder.
“That group was instrumental in getting him started with his love for baseball.”
The Wolters’ family had nothing against travel teams made up of top players from a variety of communities, but they had a different mindset as their son prepared for his 2014 baseball season as a 9-year-old.
“So many travel teams are focused on getting the best players in an area, and we thought let’s put the kids together who will be on the same team in junior high,” Angie Wolters said.
For three years, Blake Wolters was a member of the Diamond Dogs. Scott Day and Brendan McHale were among the coaches.
Blake Wolters, who will turn 19 in October, first started pitching in 2014.
Three years later, he joined the Mahomet Bulldog Baseball Club. He played for that summer team until the 2020 season was canceled by COVID-19.
He then played with the Yard Goats in the summers of 2021 and 2022.
Angie Wolters realized what baseball meant to her son during the layoff imposed by COVID.
“It became apparent he really missed getting to play,” she said.
He had an auspicious start to his high school varsity career as a sophomore.
“At the beginning of the season, he was getting rocked,” recalled Doug Wolters, the director of operations for the College of ACES at the University of Illinois. “By the end of the season, he pitched in the regional championship game, and they won.”
In Wolters’ varsity debut on the mound in 2021, he allowed six runs (five earned) in two innings and suffered a loss. He had a complete-game, seven-inning outing in the regional finals, pitching M-S past Centennial, 2-1. He yielded just three hits.
That spring served as a wakeup call for his parents.
“That’s when we realized his pitching talents,” Angie Wolters said.
M-S coaches DiFilippo and Brian Bajer were instrumental in young Wolters’ committing himself to baseball.
“They told him, ‘You have talent if you work on honing it,’” Angie Wolters said. “That was all Blake needed to hear.
“He started pouring himself into baseball.”
When he got hooked up with the Yard Goats as a 16-year-old, he came under the tutelage of Anthony Silkwood.
“Anthony taught him the slider,” Angie Wolters said.
By January of 2023, Wolters was being asked to fill out information forms on a major league draft portal.
“It was like an online job application,” Angie Wolters said. “It was a general questionnaire.”
More than a dozen teams – starting with the Boston Red Sox – requested more information.
“We were getting texts and questions and spent time navigating that,” Angie Wolters said.
A Teutopolis native, Angie Wolters grew up as a Cardinals’ fan. Doug Wolters, from nearby Effingham, was also a Cardinals’ fan.
“I was into it,” he said.
Their children – daughter Ella and son Blake – were not particular.
“They never had an allegiance,” Angie Wolters said. “Blake became a baseball fan.
“He went to see the Cubs in spring training and he saw the Cardinals in spring training. He was a big Bryce Harper fan and he got a Max Scherzer autograph.”
The Wolters’ family moved from Tolono to Mahomet in 2006, six years after Doug and Angie were married. Blake was 1-year-old.
The Wolters’ appreciated the efforts of DiFilippo and Nady to allow their son to focus on baseball as a senior.
“He (Nady) told Blake to shut out the noise,” Angie Wolters said. “He just needed to play ball.”
That advice included time at home.
“We made a rule, if you want to talk (about baseball), let us know,” Angie Wolters said. “We kept (baseball) conversations to a minimum. Blake doesn’t talk about it very much.”
His parents are taking a positive approach to the future. They view the options – college or professional ball – as a win-win situation.
“Whatever works out he has a great outcome ahead of him,” Angie Wolters said. “The decision is his.
“We’ll focus on helping him understand the pros and cons of either decision, the implications of what a signing bonus looks like and the tax implications.
“Our advisor has done a good job of talking through the pieces with Blake.”
There will not only be changes for Blake Wolters on the baseball scene soon, but also for Doug and Angie Wolters.
“Baseball for us has always been about the community,” Angie Wolters said, “boys playing with others they’ve grown up with, and families traveling and watching the games together.
“Now there’s a shift and it becomes more of a business.”
Blake Wolters’ numbers were mind-boggling as a Bulldog senior. So, too, are the signing bonus numbers. The value placed on draft picks in baseball isn’t an anomaly.
According to Spotrac, the projected value for the No. 1 pick in the recent NFL draft was $41.2 million and the signing bonus for the 31st pick was $12.75 million.
