After emerging as a gem at catcher for Haddon Heights High, Caden Bodine is really to shine for the Orioles organization.
Caden Bodine found out like the rest of the MLB Draft viewing audience where his professional baseball career was going to begin.
A 2022 graduate of Haddon Heights High Scholl and recent standout catcher at Coastal Carolina, Bodine was attending a draft party at the Pennsauken Country Club on draft night, when the television commentators said that he was a supplemental first round pick of the Baltimore Orioles, the 30th overall selection.
The pick caught him off-guard for only one reason.
“It was a surprise because the pick was put in late, so I didn’t really get a call from my agent before,” Bodine said on Saturday during a Zoom call with reporters. “So, I kind of like looked up from my phone and then it was on TV.”
Nothing else about the draft process took Bodine, a switch-hitting catcher. by surprise. On Friday, Bodine signed for $3,113,300, the full slot value for the 30th pick, according to Jim Callis of MLB.com.
Bodine will begin his professional career by reporting to the Orioles minor league complex in Sarasota, Florida on Sunday.
It is certainly not a surprise to Bodine that he is now a professional baseball player. When asked when he first thought it was possible to be in this situation, Bodine, who displays quiet confidence, didn’t hesitate.
“I think ever since I was a little kid, I’ve always believed in myself, and confidence is awesome,” he said.
So are his bat-to-ball skills. In these days of free-swinging players, Bodine walked almost twice as much as he struck out this past season, with 47 walks and 24 K’s.
“He’s got the combination of contact, but also being able to walk and that’s a pretty exciting combination,” Orioles Vice President, Player Development and Scouting Matt Blood said in an earlier zoom call interview. “And he’s also just a really hard-working kid. He was great with pitchers and has a really high makeup and aptitude.”
Want another story about Bodine’s ability to make contact?
As a senior in Haddon Heights in 2022, when the Garnets won the South Jersey Group 2 title, Bodine had 93 at-bats and he struck out once.
“In all honesty, the pitch he struck out on was a ball,” said Eric Newell, who was the coach then and is still guiding the Garnets. “His hand-eye bat skills were incredible, and I can still see it, the pitch was down way below the knee, and he was mad, he took it personally.”
Moving forward, when talking about Bodine’s potential, Blood, was effusive in his evaluation.
“He’s one of the better receivers in the country, he’s a very accurate thrower and just a very effective catcher,” Blood said. “And when you think about him being a switch hitter and having really high contact rates and just hitting line drives and being a guy who is going to be productive, you start to add all that up and think, yeah, this is a guy who is going to be a major leaguer and has a chance to be a real impact player.”
Ending a career in the College World Series
This past season, Bodine was a driving force for a Coastal Carolina team that advanced to the championship of the College World Series before losing to LSU in two games during the best-of-three final.
“There was no better way to go out,” Bodine said. “Obviously, we didn’t come out on top, but I couldn’t be more proud of them, and it was the experience of lifetime playing in front of 28,000 people like that in the college setting and it was awesome.”
In 67 games last spring, Bodine hit .318 with five home runs and 42 RBIs and a .454 on-base percentage. During his three seasons at Coastal Carolina, he batted .337 in 183 games with 25 home runs, 160 RBIs and a .968 OPS.
This past season Bodine won the Buster Posey Award, given to college baseball’s top catcher.
“It’s awesome, I grew up watching him (Posey) my whole life and he’s always been a role model for me, and I just love catching,” Bodine said.
A different position to start in high school
What many forget is that Bodine played shortstop as a freshman at Haddon Heights, because the Garnets had a veteran receiver behind the plate. Bodine was supposed to catch some during his sophomore season, but the 2020 campaign was wiped out due to the pandemic.
During his junior and senior seasons, Bodine did indeed catch for the Garnets.
He has continued to improve each year from the day he stepped on the field at Haddon Heights, to his time at Coastal Carolina.
“It’s a dream for so many kids to play professionally, but he was the kid who had the dream, the ability, the work ethic, the mental toughness to really be able to do it,” Newell said. “He has a lot of God-given ability and a tremendous work ethic and a great head on his shoulders and he deserves it all and he has really earned it.”
Bodine had high praise for Newell and his staff at Haddon Heights for helping put him in this position,
“They teach baseball the right way and they just love it,” Bodine said. “You can tell the way we practiced in high school, they were there for several hours and just the attention to details is awesome.”
He has been on quite a ride since high school and now it’s time for Bodine to take that next step, and he’s anxious to get started. Bodine feels he can bring a great deal to the Orioles organization.
“I think just the winning mentality, the blue-collar mentality,” he said. “Coastal is a big advocate of that, and I am just really looking forward to fine-tuning some more thing and helping the team win.”
Marc Narducci is a freelance reporter for the Courier-Post. He can be reached by email at [email protected]
This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: One of the nation's best collegiate catchers, Caden Bodine signs with Orioles,
Category: General Sports
