Always learning, MLB's No. 4 Draft prospect is next potential ace out of Santa Barbara

It might surprise you to know that before Jackson Flora was honored as National Pitcher of the Year, before he was considered the top pitching prospect in the 2026 Draft, he wasn't that big of a name in scouting circles.

In fact, he wasn't a big player at all. Flora was just 5-foot-4, 100 pounds soaking wet, when he entered high school.

The Bay Area native is a prime example of how growth isn't linear for all prospects. Still, the great ones find edges and improve one step at a time, and today Flora stands tall at 6-foot-5, 205 pounds and ranks as the No. 4 prospect in the Draft.

Flora garnered some Draft attention in high school -- he had an 8-inch growth spurt while learning from home during the coronavirus pandemic -- but the decision to go to college was easy since he wasn't likely to go in the top five rounds or get a big signing bonus. Having only begun pitching at 16 and not yet lighting up radar guns, his choice of UC Santa Barbara and its famous pitching factory, he'll readily tell you, was the best decision he ever made.

For a mid-major program, the Gauchos have certainly produced a lot of top-end talent. Dillon Tate was the fourth overall Draft pick in 2015, and Shane Bieber led UCSB to the Men's College World Series the next year before going on to win the Cy Young Award in the Majors. More recently, Tyler Bremner went second overall in the 2025 Draft.

Flora was drawn to head coach Andrew Checketts and his approach to developing players. The coaching staff could show him what he needed to work on, back it up with data and help him implement the changes.

"They're taking guys that have good stuff and don't have a lot of feel, or guys that have really good feel and not that good of stuff, and they're personalizing the development to each pitcher," Flora said last month on the MLB Pipeline Podcast. "So it's taking guys that are good at something and making them really good at what they're already good at, and then helping them improve on the things that they're not good at."

When Flora got to campus, his biggest task was putting on weight to get stronger. From there, he was able to throw harder and grew more confident in his fastball-slider combination. Then they worked on developing his feel for pitching and strike-throwing. All the while, Flora threw out of the bullpen as a reliever with a 3.83 ERA and 40 strikeouts to 25 walks across 47 innings.

Honing in on his command as a sophomore paid immediate dividends as the right-hander formed a dynamic duo in the weekend rotation with Bremner. Flora improved his strikeout-to-walk ratio to 86/17 across 75 innings with a 3.60 ERA. Still, there was work to be done and much he could learn from teammates like Bremner.

"He has such a good baseball mind and a lot of baseball IQ, and he really understands the game and really the mental side of pitching," Flora said of Bremner. "It was fun to talk with him and make each other better. He was always good at throwing changeups and I had a good slider, so we could kind of feed off each other a little bit, talk to each other and make each other better."

Even in his successful sophomore season, Flora threw his fastball or gyro slider 94 percent of the time, per Synergy, which left him vulnerable to left-handed hitters (.795 OPS against, with as many walks as strikeouts). So he went to work on adding to his repertoire.

During fall camp, Flora was throwing a kick-change 50 percent of the time to make himself comfortable with the offering, also mixing in a sweeper and the occasional curve. He used a changeup 17 times as a sophomore and didn't pick up a single swing-and-miss, but just a few starts into his junior year, he was throwing the pitch 34 times in an outing with flashes of it becoming a plus pitch.

With a far more complete arsenal and one of the quickest arms in college, Flora tore through the Big West and set a school record of 133 strikeouts while holding a 1.06 ERA across 102 innings.

Even if he's a little raw having pitched only for six years, Flora has the makings of a complete pitching prospect. He pairs prototypical size with the confidence to throw any of his pitches in any count, leaving hitters quite off balance. But learning never ends.

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He stays in touch with Bremner, now ranked as MLB's No. 45 prospect, who has given him plenty of advice on how to handle the transition to pro ball. Flora knows he needs to continue getting bigger and stronger to withstand the 162-game Major League schedule and has an ever-evolving checklist of things to accomplish.

"Just got to keep working on my consistency," he said. "Being able to go in there week in and week out and put up quality starts and help my team win. That's something that's important to me. Just keep polishing my pitches. It's something that I've always worked on. Just focusing on the stuff that you're good at and just working on it and making it better. Just raising the floor. There's always room to improve."