Angels 6-foot-11 prospect Olejnik looking to reach new heights in Arizona Fall League

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Peyton Olejnik knows what you’re thinking.

How in the world did a 6-foot-11 kid -- 7 feet in cleats! -- from basketball-mad Indiana become a full-time baseball player, forgoing the hardwood for the pitching rubber?

The rest of the Olejnik clan is vertically inclined, but Peyton’s growth spurt came late. He played basketball in middle school but was mostly a point and shooting guard during his early teenage years. By the time he finished eighth grade, he had decided to take this pitching thing seriously, hanging up his sneakers in favor of cleats.

It helped that his father, Tom, was a former standout hurler at Michigan State in the 1990s who had his career cut short by Tommy John surgery. Dad is 6-foot-9, which meant that -- at some point -- Peyton would sprout up. Once he did, he just kept going.

Olejnik was about 6 feet tall as a sophomore in high school. He was 6-foot-4 as a junior, 6-foot-7 as a senior. By the time he took a college mound, he was checking in around 6-foot-10, and now 6-foot-11 as a professional. His physical growth has conveniently matched the strides he’s made as a pitcher over the same period.

But despite that stature, Olejnik was lightly recruited out of Hanover Central (Cedar Lake, Ind.) High School, beginning his collegiate career at Triton College in Illinois. He spent one year there before making the leap to Oklahoma.

After Olejnik got his “teeth kicked in a little bit” in limited action, he knew he had to go somewhere to get innings. He linked up with Miami (Ohio), where he struck out 84 batters in 64 1/3 innings. But things didn’t really pop until his second turn through the MLB Draft League.

In five starts for the Mahoning Valley Scrappers, Olejnik posted a 2.08 ERA with a 13.3 K/9 rate. More importantly, he spent time around former big leaguers, including southpaw Ron Mahay, the club’s pitching coach with 14 Major League seasons under his belt.

“He just kind of told me what to look for and what to do,” Olejnik said. “I've always been a guy that just put my head down and started working, and I think he saw that in me. I always talked to him, asked him questions, trying to hopefully get drafted at that time and just go play pro ball.”

Pro ball wasn’t far off. Soon after his Draft League stint, the Angels took Olejnik in the sixth round of the 2024 Draft. He got his career started with Single-A Inland Empire and returned there for his first full season before spending this year with High-A Tri-City.

Even with two healthy campaigns under his belt, the Halos wanted to bolster the 23-year-old's development. Olejnik -- whose 241 strikeouts rank him among the 96th percentile of qualified Minor League hurlers over the past two seasons -- was sent to the Arizona Fall League in an effort to springboard him toward the upper Minors. The circuit also offers him an opportunity to hone his arsenal before getting there with a new-look cutter part of his mix.

“Having that height out there kind of puts a presence on the mound,” said Mesa pitching coach Bo Martino, who serves as the Angels’ coordinator of pitcher performance and analysis. “Just allowing him to continue to go after guys and be aggressive with hitters has been a huge thing for him this year, just helping him build off of that.”

If there’s one standard truth about vertically exceptional hurlers, it’s that repeating their delivery can be difficult. All that height unfurling toward home plate means things can fall out of whack, causing concerns about control and the ability to command the baseball.

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“Growing up, I've always heard, ‘It's hard to repeat your delivery with the long levers.’ I mean, I've heard it all, I've seen it all,” Olejnik said. “So a big focus for me is getting to repeat my delivery, and obviously some days are better than others where some days are just not synced up or some days I just don't have it, but everything's a stepping stone to get into that. 

“You take it with a grain of salt and I try to be the best pitcher I can when I'm out there.”