Keeping his options open
Shortstop-pitcher is committed to Texas but expects to be among those selected
Episcopal star Tanner Witt has signed with UT but awaits a shortened draft.
Episcopal faced rival Kinkaid in the 2017 Southwest Preparatory Conference championship game.Tanner Witt, a freshman who had mostly been a reliever, was given the start on the mound.
Heckling ensued. Kinkaid’s lineup wouldn’t take it easy on a freshman at the plate. Episcopal head coach Matt Fox felt compelled to remind Tanner of what was coming.
“He just smiled and said, ‘I know,’ ” Fox said.
Witt’s professional demeanor flashed early and often. He didn’t get the win on the mound that day, allowing three runs on four hits with five strikeouts and four walks in five innings. Still, the effort steadied Episcopal in a 5-4 victory in extra innings, and Fox knew he had someone who didn’t just thrive in pressure but embraced it.
Now, Witt expects to be a selection in an altered 2020 MLB draft on June 10-11. The coronavirus pandemic shortened the draft from 40 rounds to five this year.
Witt might find a niche as a two-way player in the big leagues one day. He’s a 6-6, 205-pound shortstop sporting raw power at the plate as a hitter first but in the middle of a seamless transition to pitching. Witt enjoys watching Houston Astros ace Justin Verlander on the mound and Chicago Cubs star Kris Bryant at the plate, learning something from both.
The righthanded Witt reached 94 mph on MLB scouts’ radars this season and hit .512 in just 14 games in a year shortened by COVID-19. Fox said Witt’s curveball is major-league ready, too, and “he was playing the best baseball I had ever seen him play,” believing a full season would’ve yielded even more impressive results.
On the other side of being drafted is becoming a fourth-generation Longhorn. Witt is signed to play at the University of Texas, where his mother Lori played softball. Witt has the option to don burnt orange and re-enter the draft in three years.
Almost every corner of Witt’s life involves baseball.
The winning hit in the 2017 SPC title game came from Trei Cruz, which is poetic considering who started the game on the mound and who finished it with a home run to left field.
Trei’s father, Jose Cruz Jr., and Witt’s father, Kevin, spent time as teammates for the Toronto Blue Jays in the late 1990s.
Kevin was a 1994 first-round draft pick by the Blue Jays and spent five seasons in the major leagues, also for the San Diego Padres, Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay Rays. Kevin also played in Japan for two seasons and later
coached in the Miami Marlins organization.
Tanner said Trei, also a highly touted draft prospect this summer from Rice, was a great mentor to him. The Cruz and Witt families are close on and off the diamond. Cruz Jr. introduced Tanner’s parents.
Tanner’s grandfather, Mike Rutledge, runs area select team Kyle Chapman and is also a UT graduate. There might even be some indirect lessons from longtime and revered Bellaire coach Rocky Manuel, whom Fox and Cruz Jr. played for in high school.
Being surrounded by high levels of the game is where Tanner’s professional approach stems from.
“Just being able to know the mental side of the game,” Tanner said. “Knowing it’s a game of failure. You’re going to fail seven out of 10 times and be considered great. Using that and all the great advice I’ve gotten over the years to my advantage and applying that to my game to be the best player I can be on and off the field.”
Kevin said Tanner always possessed leadership qualities and noticed his maturity once again during in-home visits from scouts.
“The proud moment for us as parents was just watching him and how he handled himself during those interviews,” said Kevin, who added his son has been interviewed by some of the same scouts that interviewed him leading up to the 1994 draft. “He’d answer questions, and my wife and I would look at each other like ‘OK, good answer.’ ”
Tanner went head-to-head with top-ranked public school Cypress Ranch in 2018 when it featured a trio of future MLB draft picks in Matt Thompson, J.J. Goss and Ty Madden. Thompson and Goss were holdovers in the 2019 rematch between the schools.
Episcopal won the 2018 game 6-3, but the 3-1 loss when Tanner pitched against Goss in 2019 stands out. Tanner had the flu the night before but insisted to Fox he could pitch the next day, which Fox allowed as long as Tanner felt up to the task.
Tanner struck out 11.
“I knew that game was one of the games I was looking forward to that season,” Tanner said. “I wanted to get up there and show them what I got.”