Brady House is one of the top 2021MLB draft prospects
Depending on your preferred Major League Baseball mock draft, and there’s many out there, Winder-Barrow’s Brady House figures to be taken somewhere within the top 15 selections of this July’s draft.
But House has financial leverage.
The 17-year-old third baseman and University of Tennessee signee can join the Vols next season and spend three years in Knoxville to prepare for a future draft, a strategy used by high school players and their families to force MLB teams to meet their ideal monetary figure.
“I’m not leaning one type of way, I’m basically dead stuck in the middle right now,” said House, who’s batting .660 with seven home runs through the Bulldoggs’ first 17 games. “I have no idea what I’m going to do now. It’s just going to take a lot of prayer, thought, talks with coaches and others who have been in that situation before.”
Whichever direction he chooses, he’ll be prepared.
House has become routine oriented.
From when he wakes up to the time he lays down at night, his jam-packed days involve eating healthy, weight workouts, hours at the baseball field and meetings with MLB scouts, general managers and others within baseball’s largest organizations.
When he arrives at Winder-Barrow’s baseball field around 1:30 p.m., there’s usually a scout ready to ask questions and find out everything they can about their possible investment.
If they’re not meeting in person, House sets aside time for Zoom meetings. A 2-hour interview where the Marlins asked several tough life questions made a succinct 45-minute interview with the Diamondbacks a bit of a relief.
“They ask tough questions and they try to find out how he’s going to respond,” said House’s high school coach, Brian Smith. “Is he going to do well when the microphone is in his face later? They want to poke at you a little bit to figure out if you’re going to get rattled. They just want to see what you’re made of.”
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House’s manners and attention to detail with answering their questions is impressive for a young athlete, Smith said.
For House, he views the meetings as his opportunity to establish a relationship with an organization and intrigue them enough to want to take him with one of the draft’s highest picks.
“Other players may look at it as exhausting, but I look at it as a blessing,” House said. “I have worked this hard to get to where I’m at and these people are interested in me and talking to me, so I love taking the time to talk to all of these people about baseball.”
House has also taken a recent interest in nutrition. Beginning last spring, around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine, House wasn’t pleased with what he was putting in his body.
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He cut out fried foods, hamburgers, breads and pasta. He wanted to get leaner while putting on more muscle, so he challenged himself to do away with the junk food and turn to a healthier lifestyle.
“How many days can I do this?,” House asked himself. “Then I got to a number of days where I started liking it. I don’t have the drive to eat that bad food anymore. It’s built in me. I like what I’m on and I like how this diet makes me feel instead of eating junk 24/7.”
Each Winder-Barrow game is a bit of a circus, with as many as 40 MLB scouts sitting around the backstop to document every move that House makes.
They film every at-bat and make quick phone calls to people in their organizations to persuade general managers that House would be a smart pick in the draft. They document his batting practice and effort fielding ground balls.
And House handles every step with maturity.
“He has been level, even-keeled and just continues to know that he’s on his way to his goals,” Smith said. “You can kind of tell that he’s taken it in stride. He knows that there’s a lot of attention. But the big thing that we’re trying to preach out there is to just play like you’re 12 and just let it all go. He’s done really good with it.”
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When the game is over and the scouts talk to him one final time, House heads home to eat some dinner, take care of some final school work and he makes sure to get a full night of sleep to maintain his healthy lifestyle.
“Then,” House said, “I’ll get up and do it all over again.”
