Local players taken in the 2023 Amateur MLB Draft

JP Raineri

Sports Editor

SEATTLE – The 2023 Major League Baseball Amateur Draft wrapped up Tuesday, July 11, coinciding with All-Star week in Seattle this year, where a total of 614 selections were made over a three-day process.

The Pittsburgh Pirates selected LSU’s Paul Skenes as the No. 1 overall pick, a slot worth $9.7 million, but as of Monday, July 17, of the top five picks, only one player had actually agreed to terms with the club that chose them. Max Clark’s slot value was worth $8.3 million, but the high schooler from Indiana signed for $7.7 million to the Detroit Tigers.

As mentioned last week, one never knows what will happen in the war rooms (aka draft rooms), and while we noted there may be some semi-local players that could have heard their names called, we also cited there was no one from the immediate Valley News coverage area that we thought was on the radar to be picked. Boy, were we wrong! Our list included Grant Grey and Cameron Kim of Norco High School, as well as Eric Bitonti of Aquinas, and Luke Scherrer of

Yucaipa. Of the four, we know they all received phone calls during the draft, and we know in all but three of the cases, the slot money, or lack thereof, seemed to make sense, in their own right. Bitonti was picked in the third round by the Milwaukee Brewers, a slot value worth almost $800,000. The other three want to hopefully increase their draft stock by playing in college.

Our list did not include former Great Oak standout Zach Arnold, who was drafted out of high school in 2019 to the Baltimore Orioles in the 34th round (back when the draft was forty rounds, prior to COVID). Arnold Chose to go to LSU, before transferring to Houston two years ago and was picked up this year in the 14th