Is Jason Groome a ‘once-ina-generation’ prep lefty?
High school pitchers rarely selected at top
A box of baseballs waited for Jason Groome’s signature after one of his recent starts for Barnegat High School, but there was a small hitch. The man seeking Groome’s autograph a dozen times over had only a blue permanent marker.
Groome, 17, doesn’t sign in anything except black as he has heard it’s easier to lift signatures signed in blue. On the verge of going early in the 2016 draft and receiving the multimillion-dollar bonus that goes with it, he must protect himself.
Luckily, a bystander had an appropriately colored pen. Signatures complete, Groome posed for several photographs with opposing players, parents and small children before he could reach the parking lot.
Baseball evaluators think he’s ready to start a pro career on the field. He might be ready to be a big deal off of it, too.
Groome is committed to Vanderbilt but is deemed at least a top-10 pick in the draft and possibly one of the first few players to come off the board. He’ll never set foot in Nashville.
“I just want to play professional baseball,” Groome says. “I don’t really like school too much. I figure why not start a career earlier than go three years in college.”
There’s no denying Groome’s talent. He had 90 strikeouts in 39 2⁄3 innings this season with a 1.13 ERA. (A 30-game suspension for transferring wiped out a bad start as well as a 19-strikeout no-hitter.)
At 6-6 and about 235 pounds, he has a frame ready for professional baseball.
Groome’s fastball has touched 97 mph and sits regularly in the 93 to 94 range, and he has a kneebuckling spiked curveball to pair with it. Recently, he has made strides with a changeup, though he hasn’t really needed it against overmatched high school hitters.
“To me, he’s a once-in-a-generation-type pitcher,” says Todd Rizzo, his travel ball coach for the last few summers and who reached the major leagues as a pitcher with the Chicago White Sox in the late 1990s. “I’ve seen a ton of pitchers in my lifetime. I swear I’ve never seen anybody with the natural, raw ability of Jason Groome.”
Barnegat is an hour-and-a-half drive from Philadelphia, and the Philadelphia Phillies, who have the No. 1 pick in the draft, have taken advantage of that proximity to scout him heavily.
If Groome goes that early, he’ll be in rare company. High school pitchers are some of the riskiest players to take early in drafts.
Only three high school lefties have been taken first overall. Three more have gone second. Only one of those six has been drafted since 1991.
That was Brady Aiken, who went first overall to the Houston Astros in 2014. Aiken did not sign over medical concerns and attended IMG Academy in Florida before requiring Tommy John elbow surgery. He went 17th overall to the Cleveland Indians last year.
Groome and Aiken, another high-impact young lefty, were at IMG Academy at the same time. To Dan Simonds, IMG’s baseball director and former farmhand of the Chicago Cubs and Baltimore Orioles, they compare favorably.
“I would say he’s very much at the top,” Simonds says of Groome. “He’s one of the best I’ve ever seen.”
Groome remembers throwing a perfect game when he was 11 and estimates he’s tossed eight or nine no-hitters. His dad taught him his clean delivery, and he taught himself his curveball after being shown the grip by a teammate when he was 14.
When Groome was in middle school, his parents sent him for private instruction with former big-league pitcher Rich Scheid.
“There wasn’t a whole lot that had to be done, maybe a couple tweaks with his delivery here and there,” Scheid says.
The biggest step in Groome’s development came when he attended IMG for his junior year. The decision split the family — Groome and his dad, also named Jason, vs. his mother, Danielle.
“He had it dead-set in his head that he was going,” Danielle says. “I said, ‘Jay, this is the year to stay home with the Barnegat team. This is your year. This is the year that records could be broken with the team that they have.’ ”
At IMG, Groome worked on transforming his body and refin- ing his changeup. The differences in the former have been more noticeable than the latter since he hasn’t needed the off-speed pitch much. Simonds and his coaches trained Groome in proper nutrition and put him on a weightlifting program focused on increasing his lower body and core strength.
His velocity had jumped from 87 mph as a freshman to a regular 94 that season, but Simonds saw him maintaining that heat later into games. Groome arrived at IMG weighing 198 pounds and left it at 225. He has added about 10 more pounds of muscle since.
“I definitely got how to work out, how to push my body to the limit and eat right,” Groome says. “They did a great job with strength and conditioning. The baseball, I thought it was kind of the same.”
By the end of that season, mother and son had flipped stances. Groome felt he had gotten what he wanted out of IMG and wanted to come home. His mother saw the difference it made and wanted him to stay.
Dad provided the tiebreaking vote. Groome would get to be closer to his two older sisters, his young twin brothers and his hometown friends.
Groome has enjoyed a standout senior season with Barnegat, though his 30-game suspension cut into his ability to showcase his talents for scouts.
How a player moving back into his childhood home with his parents is considered a transferring violation, according to state rules, has baffled more than just a few.
“I thought I was given what I had to sign and everything was taken care of,” Danielle says.
Now teams have to figure out how much they’re willing to bet their future on a kid who won’t turn 18 until August.
Nebulous maturity concerns have popped up in various scouting reports of Groome, and several who have coached him seemed to respond to them unprompted.
They all stressed he’s a 17-yearold dealing with an incredible amount of scrutiny.
“He’s a teenager,” Rizzo says. “Sometimes people put too much pressure on him like, ‘Hey, you’ve got to grow up.’ Well wait a minute, ‘I’m only 17 years old.’ I think he’s gotten a lot better. He’s only going to get better in time, and he’ll get more mature.”