PHOENIX — No one — save the man himself — will ever know what it felt like to be Barry Bonds at the height of his dominance, but prospect PJ Morlando has some idea of what it was like for Bonds to come to the plate and watch teams take the bat out of his hands game after game. At one point this season, opponents walked Morlando intentionally in consecutive plate appearances. Advertisement For the season, Morlando walked 44 times (and was hit four times) in just 34 games, leading to a Bondsian on-base percentage of .
629. He was a big reason the Summerville (S.C.
) High School Green Wave reached their state championship game and he walked away from the season as the Gatorade South Carolina Player of the Year. But all those free passes didn’t come without a cost. Fresh off a 2023 summer in which Morlando gained national attention for at the MLB All-Star Game, the 6-foot-3, 200-pound outfielder entered the season as .
His draft stock slipped during the spring, however, as the South Carolina commit hit just two home runs, although his other numbers remained strong. As one of the most high-profile draft prospects in the class, Morlando was keenly aware of the questions scouts were posing about his in-game power potential even as he had to battle the daily reality that he wasn’t getting challenged by his opponents. He worked with his hitting coaches to make mechanical adjustments to generate more in-game power, but when the time would come to implement those changes, he was.
