Angelo DiSpigna won’t be watching every single pick of the 2023 MLB draft. He’s done that the past two years when he was eligible to be selected in 2021 and 2022. It was too stressful, he said. And, in the end, it was pretty disappointing.
Besides, this week DiSpigna will be helping run the Danny Hall Baseball Camps on Georgia Tech’s campus, and he’ll be too busy to be checking his phone anyway.
“I’m hopeful. I’m obviously confident with the year I just had, but with the draft you just truly never know,” he said. “You would think with the year I just had, my size, my athleticism, versatility to play different positions, you’d think it would work out. You just truly never know.
“Regardless of how much work I’ve put in, how much work I’m going to put in, if God has it written in his plan for me, then it’ll work out. If not, then I’m OK with that.”
DiSpigna is coming off an All-American season at Tech, his one and only campaign with the Yellow Jackets. The Brookwood High and Mercer graduate took a chance at playing a final season of college ball after he wasn’t selected in the MLB draft the past two years.
A 6-foot-6, 227-pound first baseman turned left fielder, DiSpigna is one of several Jackets who could be selected during the draft, which runs Sunday-Tuesday in Seattle. That would be a crowning moment for DiSpigna considering he wasn’t sure this time last summer where he would be playing baseball, or if he’d be playing at all.
When Mercer lost to UNC Greensboro in the 2022 Southern Conference tournament, DiSpigna knew his career in Macon had come to an end. But it was a career DiSpigna could be proud of despite his offensive numbers tapering off by the end of his run with the Bears.
DiSpigna was an All-American as a freshman thanks to hitting .289, slugging .509, belting 13 home runs and driving in 43 runs. After the shortened 2020 season, DiSpigna came back and hit a respectable .266 to go with 15 homers as a junior. His average slipped to .252 in 2022, although his 10th homer of that season gave him 40 for his college career.
So DiSpigna knew going into the 2022 draft that his prospects perhaps weren’t as strong as they could have been or once were. He put his name in the NCAA’s transfer portal as sort of a fall-back plan and estimates he sent emails to nearly 100 college programs letting them know that he was looking for a change of scenery.
“I put so much pressure on myself the year I became draft eligible that I was trying to do too much that I lost sight of enjoying the game,” DiSpigna said. “I went through such a dark place the last two years (at Mercer), and I literally lost the love for the game and being happy and playing it as a kid. All I wanted was something new and for that to change and to find that again. That was one of reasons why I entered the portal is because I wanted to try to find that joy again.”
After the 2022 draft came and went without DiSpigna seeing his name called, finding a new collegiate team wasn’t as easy as DiSpigna may have first thought.
One program said they would love to have him and asked for his transcript. It never followed up. Another program said it was very interested and someone would give him a call. No one ever rang.
DiSpigna said his decision eventually came down to an opportunity with Tech or UC Irvine. But Tech had to wait to sort out its incoming signees, current players who had been drafted and its scholarship numbers before it officially could give DiSpigna the green light for a roster spot.
In early August, while DiSpigna was on a beach trip, Tech called and offered him an opportunity to walk on to the 2023 squad. Classes started Aug. 22.
“The resources available at Georgia Tech were night and day,” DiSpigna said of joining the ACC program. “That’s just from the way we eat here, the way we’re taken care of, the facilities, the equipment, the coaching, from head to toe just everything.”
In 57 games with the Jackets this past season, DiSpigna led Tech with a .393 average. He hit 16 home runs to go along with 58 RBIs while slugging .667.
Behind the scenes, DiSpigna, from Lawrenceville, would work with his father (a former baseball player at Alabama) in a continuing effort to find his love for the game again.
“The dark place I was at, I tried to idolize and emulate so many big leaguers, and I think that put me in a bad head space of trying to be someone I wasn’t,” DiSpigna said. “Coming back to being a kid, working with my dad, training with him in the cage, he has always motivated me and inspired me to do better and has always pushed me. Each year as I’ve gotten older I’ve learned to appreciate that.”
Tech associate head coach James Ramsey said DiSpigna’s success had more to do with simplifying the process than with any sort of technical or mechanical adjustment. And because DiSpigna has so many impressive tools at his disposal, Ramsey said, he often tried to do too much.
On May 24, DiSpigna hit his final home run in a Tech uniform, the lone tally in a 15-1, season-ending loss to Virginia in the ACC tournament. A bittersweet moment and ending for Ramsey, DiSpigna and the Yellow Jackets.
“The kid is one of my favorite kids you could ever coach. Unanimous teammate of the year,” Ramsey said. “He just worked and worked. He just about brought his sleeping bag to the batting cages every day and just bought in to, ‘I don’t care if I hit ninth, I don’t care if I play the outfield, the infield, I just want to win and I want to develop and I want to accomplish my dream of playing professional baseball.’
“Now I feel super-confident in talking to scouts or hitting coordinators in pro ball, like, ‘This dude is ready, man.’ He knows what he needs to do. He’s in there working, he’s in there lifting, he’s doing everything he needs to do and he knows what his routine needs to be. I’m extremely proud of the work and the body of work he put in and leaving a legacy here in a short amount of time.”
DiSpigna said he heard from the Boston Red Sox when he was a high school senior at Brookwood. It was then that he was considered the No. 1 third baseman prospect in Georgia after a prep career that included three all-region selections and record-setting nights as the Broncos’ quarterback on the football field. He chose to go the college baseball route instead.
Five years later he’s still clinging to that dream of becoming a professional baseball player. How he will have arrived at that dream, if it indeed comes to fruition, won’t matter too much in the end.
“God has a weird way of putting things together,” DiSpigna said. “I think what you expect might not be his plan, and I’m a firm believer in that.”
Credit: Jason Getz
Credit: Jason Getz
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