Day Two of the MLB draft sees two Sun Devils selected

As day two of the 2024 MLB Draft commences, the Sun Devils have already left their mark on this year’s draft. ASU had two of the top 250 prospects in the draft in junior catcher Ryan Campos and redshirt sophomore outfielder Nick McLain, who had their big league dreams come true on Monday.

McLain was the first Sun Devil to be selected today at pick number 78 in the third round by the Chicago White Sox. McLain goes to a team that is widely known as one of the best farm systems in the league but also has six of their top 30 MLB prospects playing in the outfield, according to MLB.com.

The redshirt sophomore started the season slow after missing the first eight games of the year recovering from a broken hamate, a hand injury that tends to linger for hitters. After his first month of being back on the field, McLain hit a stride to drive his draft stock back up. He hit for a .342 average in 2024 with 12 home runs and 54 RBIs and was the second-best starter in both slugging percentage (.663) and OPS (1.103).

McLain put up great numbers for the Devils last year, primarily playing in right field and batting towards the top of the order. He was one of the players who helped spark ASU’s emergence in the last month of the season and helped them win 17 of their last 24 games.

He won Pac-12 Player of the Week and National Player of the Week from D1 Baseball, the NCAA, and the NWCA in the first week of May after batting a combined 8-for-16 in three games against Washington with 10 RBIs and three homers. The week after, he defended his Pac-12 player of the week belt, going 11-for-18 with eight RBIs and three more home runs, sweeping Stanford in three games and losing to Arizona. Those two weeks alone made up for half of his home runs and a third of his RBIs.

Nick joins his two brothers, Matt and Sean, in the MLB after getting drafted to Chicago. Matt, the oldest, is an infielder for the Cincinnati Reds, and the middle brother Sean is in the Los Angeles Dodgers systems as an infielder.

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Campos was taken in the fourth round with the 109th pick by the St. Louis Cardinals. Campos was known as a leader in the locker room and on the field for the Devils, never shying away from the bright lights.

The Arizona native, who grew up a fan of the Sun Devils, lived out his dream playing for his hometown school. Campos headed into his junior year already a prestigious player and a highly ranked MLB prospect as a catcher. He earned an All-American nod his freshman year and was named to the Pac-12 first team as a sophomore.

He finished his junior year with the best hitting splits in his college career, hitting .364 with 11 home runs and driving in 56 runs, including a .610 slugging percentage and 1.071 OPS. Campos spent his last year showing how dependable he was at the plate, accomplishing the highest active career batting average among D1 catchers and reaching base in 137 of his 147 career games.

Campos was also selected as a Buster Posey Award semi-finalist in both his sophomore and junior seasons, and he is recognized as one of the premier catchers in the country.

In related MLB draft news, ASU’s top commit in the 2024 class, catcher Nick Montgomery, ranked No. 196 on the Top 250 Draft Prospects list, was selected by the Atlanta Braves in the fifth round and No. 161 overall.

The Devils brought in some new faces this summer with freshman shortstop Matt King and signed a new pitching coach in Jeremy Accardo. The Mesa native has spent the last eight years coaching professionally, most recently as a pitching coach for the Milwaukee Brewers’ Triple-A team affiliate, Nashville Sounds. Before that, he spent several seasons in the Mets organization, getting as high as an assistant pitching coach.

The month of May may have shown glimpses of hope in the Sun Devils’ future, but they fell short in the last-ever Pac-12 tournament, eliminated after losing their first two games. ASU lost one of their best locker room presences in Campos, but that also gives plenty of other veterans the opportunity to step up in his place to try and continue the way they played in the last month of the 2024 season.

Still, they are slated to be a competitive team in a powerful Big 12 league that features teams such as Kansas State, Oklahoma State, and West Virginia, who all finished the 2024 season ranked in the top 25.

With Texas and Oklahoma leaving that conference for the SEC after finishing first and third, respectively, in the Big 12 last year, the door is wide open for a number of teams to slide into one of those positions. Oklahoma State is thought to be the team to do so after earning second place in the conference last season, but after the stretch of baseball the Devils displayed in the later half of the 2024 season, they can confidently put themselves into that conversation of having a realistic chance to be an upper echelon team in their new conference.

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