FORT MYERS, Fla. – Baseball has opened the world to Mack Anglin, a big, strong kid from small-town Ohio who continues to take advantage of every opportunity the sport he loves has offered him.
Anglin is a 6-foot-5, 185-pound hard-throwing right-hander from Marengo, Ohio (pop. 350). Just this summer alone he has toed the rubber on major league-quality mounds in St. Petersburg, Fla., Emerson, Ga, and Fort Myers, Fla., while performing in Perfect Game national championship tournaments and one very prominent showcase.
He’ll be in Hoover, Ala., Aug. 1-4 for the East Coast Pro Showcase before leaving the next week for the West Coast and a date with destiny. That’s when Anglin will arrive in San Diego as Ohio’s lone representative at the 16th annual Perfect Game All-American Classic, set to take the big stage Aug. 12 at Petco Park when he'll perform with 51 of the other top prospects from the national high school class of 2019; he is on the East roster
“It’s a huge honor to be able to go out there and compete with the best from across the country,” Anglin told PG while playing at the PG 17u BCS National Championship the second week of July. “It was my main (mission) this summer so to reach that goal, it means a lot.”
And what a summer’s it been. Anglin pitched so well at a trio of Perfect Game’s biggest events that he has risen to No. 15 overall in PG’s class of 2019 national prospect rankings. He’s ranked the No. 7 right-handed pitcher in his class behind only fellow PG All-Americans Daniel Espino (Statesboro, Ga., East team), Brennan Malone (Matthews, N.C., East), Quinn Priester (Cary, Ill., West), Matthew Allan (Stanford, Fla., East), Matthew Thompson (Cypress, Texas, West) and Bryce Osmond (Tulsa, Okla., West).
This summer was Anglin’s first as a pitcher-only, having also spent time as an outfielder and corner-infielder early in his career. The Clemson commit has been pleased with the way he’s progressed as a pitcher – he’s seen an increase in his velocity from year-to-year – yet he knows he has to continue to treat each outing as a learning experience while also avoiding the evils of complacency.
“That’s the most important thing,” Anglin said. “You just always have to have the mindset that you can get better, and that’s the mindset that I have – go out there and get better every day.”
Anglin pitched at the 2016 PG WWBA Underclass World Championship with the Central Ohio-based Triple Crown Royals and was rostered with the Royals at two PG Super25 and one PG Baseball Association (PGBA) tournaments in 2016-17.
He turned in an all-tournament team performance pitching for the third-place East Cobb Astros 16u at the 2017 PG World Series, going 2-0 in two starts covering 9 1/3 innings, and allowing two earned runs (1.50 ERA) on six hits with six strikeouts and two walks.
Everything really came together for Anglin this summer while pitching for Team Elite 17u Prime on two of PG’s biggest national championship tournament stages.
He threw three innings at the PG 17u WWBA National Championship in the north-Atlanta suburbs without giving up a hit or run, striking out five and walking run. And then, a week later at the PG 17u BCS National Championship, he threw five hitless, scoreless innings, striking out six and walking one; he was named to that event’s all-tournament team.
“This is my first season with (Team Elite),” Anglin said. “I used to play with the Triple Crown Royals, which is a first-class organization as well, but being able to (go out) on the national stage with a lot of other guys in the same shoes as you, it’s been amazing.”
2018 PG All-Americans Landon Sims and Nasim Nunez were also rostered with Team Elite 17u Prime this summer.
In mid-June, before enjoying all that tournament success with Team Elite 17u Prime, Anglin was at the PG National Showcase at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla., his first experience at a PG showcase. Hey, if you’re going to jump in the showcase pool for the first time, you might as well jump in big-time.
“It was awesome,” Anglin said of the National. “It was very organized; first-class. Getting to play (at The Trop) was just so cool, and the competition there was the best that I’ve seen.”
He said he just wanted to go out on that major league mound and do what he normally does, which is to trust his stuff and put forth his best effort. He was able to treat it like a normal outing, even though hundreds of scouts were taking notes on his every move. One PG scout was particularly impressed, reporting:
“(Anglin has) an outstanding young pitcher’s build, has strength in his lower half, very projectable physically. Good rhythm in his delivery, very long arm action in back, shows the ball to hitters … with a quick and whippy arm. Low-90s fastball, topped out at 93 … plenty more velocity there with physical maturity.”
Marengo, Ohio, sits about 35 miles north and a little east of Columbus, the home of Ohio State University; it’s also about 115 miles southeast of Cleveland and about 145 miles northeast of Cincinnati.
“We’re a small community and baseball is our sport at (Highland HS); it’s a family atmosphere,” Anglin said. “I also play basketball and with baseball and basketball everyone’s close, and it’s a community (thing); everyone’s there to support it.”
Anglin said he’s not really a Cleveland Indians or Cincinnati Reds fan but might lean a little towards the Indians right now because, “I just like good baseball.”
Anglin is the son of Bob and Amy Anglin – Bob works in the HVAC industry and Amy is a school teacher – and he said his dad has had the biggest impact on his baseball career, while also acknowledging he has been tutored by some very good coaches throughout his career.
“Whenever I need someone to throw with me (my dad’s) there, or throw me BP, he’s there,” Anglin said, noting that Bob was a four-sport athlete in high school who played a year of D-III football at Muskingum University in Ohio.
With Ohio State literally sitting in his backyard, it may have surprised some folks when Anglin committed to Clemson during his sophomore year in high school (it has been reported that Ohio State did recruit Anglin).
But he called Clemson his “dream school” and after he took his visit he said he knew it was “the one.” So, how did a prominent Southeastern Conference university in South Carolina become the dream school for a kid in small-town Ohio?
“I always watch college baseball on TV and I just always loved (the Clemson Tigers),” Anglin said. “When they gave me the opportunity to play for them, I just couldn’t pass that up.”
With the 2019 MLB June Amateur Draft still more than 10 months in the offing, the thought of playing professionally isn’t really registering on Anglin’s radar as the summer of 2018 starts to wind down.
“Right now the mindset’s on college and whatever happens next year, happens,” he said. “Right now I just try to go out every day and get better and see where that takes me.”
While Anglin is not looking past the four days he’ll spend in Hoover, Ala., at the end of this week he can’t help peaking ahead and setting his gaze on the PG All-American Classic and everything that four-day weekend in San Diego has to offer.
There’s the baseball side of it, of course, with the practices, scrimmage and the nationally televised (MLB Network) Classic itself at the Padres’ Petco Park, but there’s more to it than that.
Never underestimate how popular the annual visit to PGAAC Honorary Chairman and newly inducted Baseball Hall of Fame member Trevor Hoffman’s Pacific Ocean beach house for some fun in the sun, sand and surf has become, for instance.
The most important stop, however, is the one the PG All-Americans will make at Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego. All proceeds from the Classic go directly to RCH’s Peckham Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders, and the players themselves have been involved in fund-raising efforts since receiving their coveted invitation to the PGAAC.
“It’s going to be an amazing four days,” Anglin said. “Getting to go to (Rady) and spend time with those kids, and then getting out on that big stage for the game.”
From Marengo, Ohio, to San Diego, Calif., and every place in between, baseball has opened the world for Mack Anglin, who celebrated his 18th birthday on July 5 while playing at the PG 17u WWBA National Championship; he couldn’t be happier.
“Everything is playing out really well and gone accordingly,” he concluded. “I’ve loved it.”