CIF Week 12 Scout Blog

Stockdale vs. Liberty (Bakersfield)

Steven Hardesty, Assistant Director

2027 C/RHP Brogan Witcher, Liberty

Witcher recently made the move from the 2028 class into the 2027 class, and in my 20+ years traveling to recruit/evaluate players, the uber-talented two-way from Bakersfield has comfortably put himself amongst the best I’ve seen in high school. Witcher possesses a trio of desirable traits in an up-and-coming baseball prospect: his natural ability, physical frame with projection, and projection to improve on an already sterling skillset. What Witcher does on a baseball field requires less of a mechanical or action-based breakdown, but more of a focus on the present polish he possesses in each area. At the plate, the RHH has natural strength in how he moves, the barrel path is geared to hit the ball in the air and combines with an approach/timing to make contact out front with authority. In three at-bats, Witcher reached base two times, highlighted by a HR to straightaway CF in a 3-2 counts on the seventh pitch of the AB, which would prove to be the true “winning-run” as Liberty posted a combined shutout (Witcher played a role in this as well). Taking six swings across those three at-bats Brogan crushed the homer, flew out to CF on a low offspeed which he used his lower ½ to go down and elevate the pitch, launched a pair of foul drives deep to LF foul territory, lofted a high fly ball foul to RF foul territory and capped a hanging breaking ball foul to the 1B side, every swing resulted in a ball in the air with five of the six being barreled. Behind the plate, Brogan displays one of the purest catch/throw skillsets I’ve seen in my career. His glove moves smoothly with strength at receive, but ever more so his awareness of how to receive the pitch sticks out compared to most young backstops, as he sticks and holds borderline pitches for umpires to get a good look at them, receives and returns clear cut strikes without a need for moving them, and does the same on clear cut balls without trying to frame a ball that doesn’t have a chance of being called a strike. The receiving skill alone would make him a top-of-the-scale backstop presently, but his arm is additionally a top of the scale tool with explosive easy arm strength that has both accuracy and low carry to the bag with in between inning & pre game pop times in the 1.8-1.85 pop times and the lone runner who tried to steal on him in game was thrown out by 10+ feet with a 1.9 pop right above the bag in the tag zone, where the middle infielder had to await the runners arrival vs. place a quick tag. While Witcher as a position player is an elite talent, that does not take into account what may be amongst the best pitching profiles in the state/country. He took the mound with a 3-0 lead after six innings behind the dish ala Buster Posey style at Florida State to pick up the save. The right-hander employs a low effort, clean delivery where his elite arm strength shows up in an arsenal that has natural present power, including a FB which ranged 96-98 over four hitters, and backing it up with a sharp 83-85 MPH SLD. Witcher attacked the heart of the plate in this outing to get contact with a comfortable lead, picking up a soft grounder to third that resulted in an E-5, a soft grounder up the middle for a 4-6-3 double play, a soft INF single that didn’t leave the dirt up the middle before retiring the final hitter on a 97 MPH FB that floated into RF for an F-9. It was an impressive display of nearly everything that Witcher can do on a baseball field as one of the elite talents in the state/country, but what impresses even more is that it’s easy to project even more in the tank across the board for Witcher in everything he does on a baseball field. Uncommitted because of his reclass recently it’s obvious that every power program in the country will likely make a run at his potential services if his next step takes him to college baseball, but come the 2027 draft cycle there should be extensive heat in the Bakersfield area beyond just the temperatures as MLB scouts and decision makers will be booking trips into the region to get their eyes on the talented Witcher.