MLB Draft

One of the top N.J. natives in this year’s Major League Baseball Draft class is now on track to play with the best N.J. native playing the sport right now. The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim selected University Virginia catcher Matt Thaiss – a graduate of Jackson Memorial High School – with the No...

After some anxious moments over the last two weeks, the wait is over for Jason Groome and it ended with his favorite team picking him in the first round of the MLB First-Year Player Draft. The Boston Red Sox selected the Barnegat High School senior with the 12th pick of the 2016 MLB Draft, making him the highest ever Shore Conference draft pick straight out of high school...

It is hard to pinpoint the exact moment that Jason Groome transformed from talented high school pitcher to one of the best amateur prospects in the country, but J.M. Gold recalls the day it dawned on him. A 15-year-old sophomore at the time, Groome carved up Jackson Memorial High School – one of the perennial powers in the Shore Conference and the program for which Gold is the pitching coach – in

In June of 2009, Major League Baseball staged its First-Year Player Draft from the studio of the newly-launched MLB Network for the first time ever in hopes that its event would build toward becoming what the NFL and NBA had developed in their respective versions of the draft...

The 2016 season has not gone according to the script that Jason Groome or any of those around him and supporting him would have drawn up in an ideal world. There was the ineligibility ruling on April 14 that kept him out for 19 days, the loss to Toms River North in which he allowed seven runs (four earned) and the first home run ever hit against him at the high school level, and a sub-... Read Mor

Barnegat senior left-hander and top MLB Draft prospect Jason Groome was ruled ineligible by the NJSIAA Wednesday, first reported by NJ.com. According to the report, Groome's transfer from IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla. did not constitute a bona fide address change because his parents did not move with him, and therefore, he is subject to the NJSIAA's transfer requirement that he sit 30 days or hal

MIDDLETOWN - When Christian Brothers Academy senior catcher Brandon Martorano crushed a go-ahead home run in the top of the eighth inning Wednesday against Shore Conference Class A North rival Middletown South, senior teammate Luca Dalatri fell in line to win his 23rd straight decision as a varsity pitcher...

On a picturesque, sunny, 70-plus degree afternoon in South Jersey during the second week of March, Barnegat High School senior Jared Kacso had every reason to smile. Helmet on head and batting gloves strapped, he slammed the knob of his bat on the ground to dislodge it from the grasp of the donut weight wrapped around the barrel, which in baseball-gesture-speak means “I’m ready to hit...

Three Shore Conference baseball standouts - both past and present - heard their names called on the final day of the Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft on Saturday. Figuratively speaking, anyway. "I was listening to all of the picks (on the MLB...