Catching Up With Adley Rutschman

Adley Rutschman, the No. 1 overall selection in the 2019 First-Year Player Draft, and the number two prospect in Major League Baseball according to Baseball America and MLB.com, is off to a stellar start in his first full year of professional baseball with Double-A Bowie.

In this week’s episode of “Inside the Yard,” Rutschman takes a break from hitting home runs off his face to sit down with Geoff Arnold and Brett Hollander to talk about his adjustment to Double-A ball, how the pressure of being a number one draft pick affects him, how he fell in love with baseball, and whether or not he would be able to kick a 50-yard field goal.

“As you go up, the baseball just gets better,” said Rutschman. “Everything becomes finer and there’s less room for error. So I guess just keep elevating your game, that’s the biggest thing. And you have to keep playing better. You get fewer pitches to hit, everything just becomes a little bit tougher. I feel like that’s just an overall sense of what’s going on and like I said, it’s been fun. I’m looking forward to the rest of the year.”

Even though his name is at the top of the list, Rutschman tells Arnold and Hollander that he does not look at the prospect rankings. He is just focused on getting better every day.

“The expectations have always been there, they’re always going to be there,” said Rutschman. “But I feel the expectations I put on myself are always going to be more than anyone can put on me. So I feel like that makes it a little bit easier from that standpoint."

Baseball was not always Rutschman’s first love. When he was three or four years old, he spent his time exploring the wetlands in his back yard, catching snakes. But he eventually started hanging out with his dad’s baseball team, and everything changed.

“Being surrounded with baseball at a young age because my dad coached, I think the love of baseball kind of came with that,” said Rutschman. “As soon as I picked up a bat when I was four, it was over from there. I was just baseball, baseball, baseball.”

The trio also discusses Rutschman’s journey to becoming a switch hitter.

“In third and fourth grade until eighth grade, I would do 10 at-bats a year left-handed because I was a natural righty and wasn’t as good left-handed, so I didn’t want to do it,” said Rutschman. “But my freshman year of high school I made the full-time commitment to going left on right and right on left. Since there are so many righties, especially at the high school level, you’re batting left-handed much more often than you are right-handed, so I got a lot of work in left-handed.”

After the COVID-19 pandemic took away what would have been his first full year of professional baseball, Rutschman talks about what he is most looking forward to this season.

“One of the cool parts of Minor League Baseball is that you get to travel to cities you’ve never been to before and you get to explore the country in kind of a different way,” said Rutschman. “I think just the journey of this year and playing 120 games straight is such a cool thing and it’s a learning opportunity and something I’ve never done before. So getting that time to spend with the guys and create those relationships and go through it together as a team, I think that’s the most exciting thing.”

They end with their “Fun Five,” asking Rutschman his favorite baseball movie, his high school senior year batting average, the most influential baseball person in his life, one talent or hobby outside of baseball, and what his first grade teacher would say about him.

“Out of control,” said Rutschman. “Unpredictable.”

You can listen to the full podcast episode here or wherever you stream podcasts.