Canadian hitting crossroads
Under-18 worlds in Thunder Bay on deck for Mississauga’s Naylor with MLB flight path accelerating
Noah Naylor’s friends and family call him “Bo,” but he’s not named after two-sport all-star and transcendent athlete Bo Jackson.
Instead, the 17-year-old baseball star picked up the nickname as an infant in Mississauga, where older brother Josh, himself just a toddler, used to call him “Boah” because he couldn’t pronounce “Noah.”
But like Jackson, who chose MLB over the NFL upon finishing at Auburn University, Naylor will have to make a decision about turning pro.
Last month, Naylor, a lefty-hitting catcher, played in the Under Armour All-America Game, a showcase for the continent’s top teenage players at Chicago’s Wrigley Field. Next month, he’ll play at the under-18 World Cup in Thunder Bay, where Canada expects a top-five finish.
Naylor, who graduates from high school next spring, is one of several Team Canada members who have accepted scholarship offers from NCAA Division I schools. But if he keeps developing the way coaches think he can, Naylor could be selected early in the 2018 draft, forcing him to decide between enrolling at Texas A&M and turning pro immediately.
Whether he goes college or pro, Naylor prefers to do it at catcher among the several defensive positions he can play. It’s the role he sees as his best route to the majors.
“It’s better to get drafted at a premium position,” says Naylor, who went 1-for-5 in the Under Armour game. “There’s no path I’d prefer over the other, because (NCAA and the minors) both lead me to my main goal.”
For older brother Josh, the choice wasn’t complicated.
The Miami Marlins drafted him 12th overall in 2015, and he accepted a $2.25-million signing bonus. Miami then traded him to San Diego at the 2016 deadline and, through Wednesday, he had hit .290 this season with 10 home runs and a .795 OPS in 95 games split between two Padres affiliates.
The older Naylor’s play earned him a spot in the MLB Futures Game at Miami’s Marlins Park during the allstar break, and gave him a chance to catch up with Noah, in town for the High School Home Run Derby.
Noah reached the semifinal of that event, but Baseball Canada national team head coach Greg Hamilton stresses that power is only one component of Naylor’s skill set.
“He’s not a slugger, he’s a hitter,” Hamilton said. “He has the ability to go gap to gap and control the ballpark with his bat. It’s not a one-dimensional bat, where he’s just an all-or-nothing home run hitter. He’s a contact guy. I call him a hitter with power as opposed to a power guy.”
With two high-achieving baseball sons, dad Chris Naylor is used to people assuming he forced his kids to play. And the Naylor patriarch, who played rep baseball growing up in Mississauga, acknowledges the sport is his passion. But he says his sons grew to love baseball on their own; he simply enrolled them as soon as they were old enough to play.
Still, he says the standard Josh and Noah have set affects youngest son Myles, who is 12.
“When I had to be the one pushing, it’s time to let go, (but) there’s been no problem on that end. They’re driven,” Chris Naylor said.
“When Myles was 8, we were eating dinner and baseball topics came up and he said out loud, ‘There’s a lot of pressure playing baseball in this family.’ ”
But if being a Naylor has intensified the spotlight on Noah, Hamilton says he has the skills to justify the extra attention.
Last March, Naylor was part of the junior national team that played a Jays split squad in spring training, losing 16-0 to a crew including top prospects Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. That day, Blue Jays minor leaguers stole three bases off Naylor, but Hamilton says he has the arm to keep baserunners his own age in check.
Whether Naylor plays as a catcher long term is a different issue, and when discussing the player’s future Hamilton compares him to a couple of major-leaguers.
He could see Naylor developing like Russell Martin, who was agile and versatile enough to make the majors as an infielder but became a fourtime all-star as a catcher.
Or if Naylor winds up in an organization that’s loaded at catcher, Hamilton could see a team using him like Houston did with hall of famer Craig Biggio, moving him from catcher to take advantage of his speed and avoid injuries that could hurt his offence. But he’s still a catcher first. “His hands work really well; they’re nice and soft, he receives well and he’s got arm strength,” Hamilton said. “You put all that together and factor in the bat, which is a separator (between Naylor and other prospects).”
But before any of that happens, Naylor has to tackle the world juniors, then a fall tour against NCAA programs with his club team, a chance to measure himself against older players and assess his readiness for the next level, whether it’s college or the minor leagues.
“There’s always room to improve in anything,” Naylor says. “I don’t like to settle. I always feel like I can do better.”
“He’s not a slugger, he’s a hitter . . . a hitter with power as opposed to a power guy.” CANADIAN COACH GREG HAMILTON ON NOAH NAYLOR