Improved Mona One Of The Winter Surprises

Avery Mona RHP / 3B / U of D Jesuit, MI / 2021

BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP - The desire to play college baseball was not a consideration for Avery Mona … until last year.

“I never wanted to play,” Mona admitted. “I never thought I was good enough.”

But when the U of D Jesuit junior began pitching that changed.

“Aaron (Wilson) asked me to play fall ball,” Mona said in reference to the PBR Michigan Director of Scouting, who coaches Arsenal Baseball in the summer. “It was a bit of a surprise to me. I knew Owen (Carapellotti) was on the team and I talked to him about it. He said they were all good guys on the team.”

It transformed Mona’s outlook as well.

“That’s when I realized I wanted to play college baseball,” the 25th-rated 2021 in Michigan said.

Improvement on the mound has prompted schools to reach out.

“I just started getting into pitching my freshman year,” Mona noted. “I did a velocity training program in the offseason and it helped with my mechanics and I’m throwing harder now.”

Wilson is more than impressed with the pitcher Mona has become.

“Avery is one of the biggest surprises of the winter,” Wilson said of the 6-3 205-pound right-hander. “He is a guy that has fallen in love with the process of improving and displayed a big-time performance amongst the top guys in the state at the Preseason All-State. He was always a strike thrower, but now he has increased his velocity to 90 and spin on his breaking ball.”

Colleges have taken notice.

“A day after the Preseason, Eastern Michigan said ‘we heard good things about you,’” Mona related. “They said they’d stay in contact.”