Former 2-sport star Sam Horn getting first taste of pro ball in Fall League

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Sam Horn had to flip the mental switch immediately. 

A two-sport athlete at the University of Missouri, Horn went to the Dodgers in the 17th round of the 2025 Draft despite pitching only 15 total innings over three seasons in the SEC. Tommy John surgery got in the way of his sophomore spring in 2024, but there was enough in the arsenal and quarterback-level athleticism for Los Angeles to take a shot and sign him for $497,500 with the knowledge that he would head back to Columbia for one more fall on the gridiron.

That shot lasted one play. Horn hurt his right leg on a run play during his lone offensive snap of Mizzou’s season opener against Central Arkansas on Aug. 28, 2025, and was later diagnosed with a broken tibia that required two surgeries that fall.

“Once I got done with football, once I got hurt, I was pretty much like, alright, let's go play baseball,” Horn said. “I’m done with this. Let’s go play baseball.”

More than one year after that injury, Horn is wearing Dodger blue in the Arizona Fall League, where he’s making his official pro debut and thriving out of the Glendale bullpen.

After striking out two in a scoreless frame Monday, the 23-year-old hurler sports a 1.50 ERA over six appearances and has fanned eight and walked four over six frames. His six outings are tied for second-most in a prospect showcase environment in which many pitchers are trying to make up for lost time from the regular season.

Because of the surgeries, Horn didn’t start throwing in the Los Angeles system until just after Spring Training this year and continued to do rehab work through the summer all the way through instructs and bridge-league play before receiving his official Fall League assignment to Glendale.

From an arsenal perspective, the 6-foot-4 righty has retained the stuff that made him intriguing to the Dodgers in the first place. Over his six AFL appearances, his fastball has primarily sat 94-96 mph and occasionally touched 97, as it did Monday, with close to 7 feet of extension that helps it play up. An 82-85 mph sweeper has carried over from college with big horizontal break to the gloveside -- six of the 13 whiffs Horn has generated this fall have come from the sweeper alone.

But it’s a grip alteration on his 88-91 mph changeup, which Horn used for a swing-and-miss on his first strikeout Monday, that could give him a big-time weapon against lefties with negative induced vertical break and about a foot of armside run.

“I've always been like a circle changeup guy in the little bit of time in college I had, and it was it was a good pitch,” Horn said. “But then as I got here, [Andrew] Amato, our rehab pitching coach, was like, ‘Hey, why don't you try the kick [change]?’ I tried it, and at first, I hated it. ‘This is not gonna work. There's no way I'm ever doing this.’ And then he's like, ‘Just trust it.’ So I trusted it, and sure enough, it's been really good, so I love it. Just want to keep doing it.”

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There are a little less than three weeks of Fall League play left. About three more weeks for Horn to continue to hone that arsenal. (He’s also worked on a cutter that he hasn’t needed in his one-inning bullpen stints just yet.) About three more weeks to keep establishing a rhythm as a professional athlete. About three more weeks until he faces something else that will feel new and potentially exciting, so long as he stays healthy.

“That's the main thing -- what am I going to do in the offseason,” Horn said. “My whole life, it's been once I got done with baseball, it's football, and then once I get done with football, it's baseball. What's it going to be like? ‘Alright, now I'm done with baseball. More baseball.’ 

“I’m interested to see what happens.”