$2M arm? Puyallup’s Mason Pike could be early pick in MLB Draft this summer
There were upwards of 60 Major League Baseball scouts in attendance when Puyallup High School played Mount Vernon in the season-opening game in early March at Everett’s Funko Field.
National scouts flew in from all over the country and joined local scouts from most, if not all of MLB’s teams to watch and evaluate two players: Mount Vernon’s Xavier Neyens, the No. 1 rated prospect in the state and Puyallup’s Mason Pike, the No. 2 rated prospect in Washington.
Most years, Pike would be the top-ranked prospect in Washington, but Neyens — a chiseled, 6-foot-4 lefty with plus power — is projected as a first-round, top 20 pick in this year’s MLB Draft. Pike could hear his name called shortly thereafter.
“He’s got a shot to be in the first round, second round,” longtime Puyallup coach Marc Wiese said.
That would make Pike the highest player ever drafted from Puyallup. It’s easy to see why teams like Pike, who was The News Tribune’s 2024 All-Area player of the year. His fastball sits in the mid-90s, sometimes touching 97 miles per hour. He throws a nasty slider, a curveball and a changeup — all for strikes. In the past couple of years, he has been virtually unhittable at the high school level, compiling a 0.95 earned run average last spring with 95 strikeouts in 66 2/3 innings.
In a home start against Curtis on Wednesday night, Pike threw a complete game shutout, going seven innings, allowing one hit, walking two and striking out eight — the latest dominant effort in a high school career chock-full of them.
“It’s extremely rare,” Wiese said. “He’s a bulldog.”
Joe Doyle (@JoeDoyleMiLB on X) grew up in the South Sound. He attended Bethel High School and went to college at WSU before returning to the west side. In his free time, he hosts Over-Slot, an MLB Draft focused podcast he founded. He has written for Baseball America and Fox Sports in the past.
Doyle, who has taken MLB scouting courses, spends a lot of time in the weeds of amateur baseball talent evaluation, both at the high school and college level. He sees something special in Pike, who pitches and plays shortstop for Puyallup.
“As far as the Pacific Northwest goes, he’s one of the most impressive pure athletes I’ve evaluated in seven or eight years up here,” Doyle said. “Really twitchy, really explosive. He’s really good with the bat in his hands and on the mound. He can do it all. … He has the ability to throw five pitches and can throw them all for strikes.”
AN ELITE FOUNDATION
Doyle can get technical, too. He likes Pike’s arm slot and arm extension and thinks it’ll translate to the professional level. He’s particularly intrigued by Pike’s fastball spin rate, which has been measured at over 2,800 revolutions per minute (RPM). The average spin rate for a four-seam fastball for a Major League pitcher is around 2,300 RPM.
But what exactly does that mean in tangible terms, how does it translate into effective pitching and why does it have scouts interested? In a word: movement.
“His fastball (spin rate) is truly absurd,” Doyle said. “You put that into a professional development system, that input is something that can translate enormously into fastball shapes. RPM’s don’t mean much in and of itself, but if you give a pitching coach, a player development person that player and they can get his spin efficiency optimized, he can do some explosive things with the fastball that other guys cannot.
“The spin is the clay to a bigger picture. Mason’s got some of the best baseball clay, from a spin perspective, of anybody in the country, regardless of amateur, professional. He has the foundation to build a special fastball.”
Doyle thinks Pike has a legitimate shot to be an MLB starter one day and predicts he will be drafted in the second round and will command somewhere in the neighborhood of a $2 million signing bonus — a figure more in line with a first-round signing — because of his leverage as a high school player.
Pike, who has long been committed to Oregon State, will have a decision to make: turn pro straight out of high school or play college ball.
“I try not to think about it,” Pike told The News Tribune after a Puyallup game against Curtis on Tuesday afternoon. “I just try to think that I’m playing at the next level and it doesn’t matter to me.”
There’s question as to whether his professional future is at pitcher or as a position player. Pike, who is batting .409 with eight doubles midway through the season, said he still wants to play in the infield and hit, too.
“I want to do both,” he said. “That’s a big goal for me.”
The 2025 MLB Draft will be held July 13-15 in Atlanta, Georgia.
First, he has the remainder of his spring high school baseball season at Puyallup. Puyallup is 15-0 and is ranked the No. 5 team in the nation this spring by MaxPreps. After falling to Richland in last year’s Class 4A state championship game, Pike and the Vikings are looking to win it all in Yakima this year.
“We’re always trying to get to the state championship every year,” Pike said. “Kind of the same routine as always, get there and try to win it this year.”
This story was originally published April 18, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "$2M arm? Puyallup’s Mason Pike could be early pick in MLB Draft this summer."
