The MLB Draft rarely produces a headline outside the first round or two, but the Diamondbacks quietly pulled off one of the more team-friendly signings of the class. Sixth-round pick Micah Worley, a lanky left-hander out of Stony Brook, put pen to paper for $325,000 — a full $52,000 below the $377,000 slot value attached to pick No. 177.
Jim Callis broke the signing news along with Worley's scouting profile.
Worley isn't your typical mid-round senior sign. At 6-foot-5, 220 pounds, he's got the frame teams dream on, and the fastball backs it up — he's touched 99 mph and paired it this spring with a low-80s slider that, per Callis, misses a ton of bats. He also turned heads at the MLB Draft Combine, the kind of platform where a relative unknown from a low-major program can put his stuff on tape in front of every front office in baseball at once.
The Stony Brook numbers back up the arm talent. Worley made 14 starts this past season and posted a 3.12 ERA with 93 strikeouts in 69.1 innings, good for second in the CAA in punchouts. He's the 29th Seawolf ever drafted and the first since 2019 — the highest-drafted Stony Brook player since Travis Jankowski and Pat Cantwell went in the first and third rounds back in 2012, according to the school's athletic department.
For Arizona, the appeal is obvious: a college senior with limited leverage, a legitimate power arm, and a bargain price tag that frees up bonus pool money to spend elsewhere on the draft board. Under-slot deals with hard-throwing senior signs are a well-worn draft strategy, but landing one who was touching 99 with a swing-and-miss slider is a nice bit of value for a 6th-round pick.
Worley now heads into a farm system looking for pitching depth, and given the velocity and the strikeout stuff, it won't take long for evaluators to find out whether the Combine performance was a real signal or just a nice week in front of the right people.