Phillies bet big on Texas senior's redemption season

Every draft has a guy who took the long way to get there, and in this class it's Ruger Riojas. The Texas right-hander went from UTSA transfer to Friday-night starter to a bout of bronchitis so bad it stripped 20 pounds off his frame and gutted his velocity, all before rebuilding himself into one of the best senior arms in the country. The Phillies took him with the 100th overall pick, and now they've got him signed.

Jim Callis

@jimcallisMLB

3rd-rder Ruger Riojas signs w/@Phillies for $622,500 (slot 100 value = $784,400). @TexasBaseball RHP, one of top seniors in @MLBDraft, six different pitches from two different arm slots. Mid-90s fastball, 82-85 mph splitter, upper-80s cutter all can be weapons when on.

The number itself tells the story. Riojas signed for $622,500, a bonus that comes in under the $784,400 slot value for pick 100, per Callis. That's a below-slot deal, the kind of thing teams do when a player is motivated to get a pro deal done and move on rather than squeeze every dollar out of it. For a senior with no more college eligibility to leverage, that checks out.

What makes Riojas interesting isn't just the paycheck, it's the delivery. Callis pegged him as a guy who mixes six different pitches out of two separate arm slots, a mid-90s fastball, an 82-85 mph splitter, and an upper-80s cutter all capable of missing bats when everything's clicking. That's an unusual profile for a college senior, more reliever-deception than prototype starter, but it's exactly the kind of weird, hard-to-square-up mix that gets pro scouts excited late in a season.

And this wasn't a straight-line rise. Riojas came to Texas as a transfer from UTSA and got thrown into the Friday starter role after an injury opened the door, only to catch the flu that turned into bronchitis and torched his stuff down the stretch. Instead of bailing for the draft early, he bet on himself and came back to Austin for one more year to prove the last version of him wasn't the real one.

That bet paid off. Riojas turned in a monster senior season, good enough to shoot him up draft boards and into the third round as one of the top college seniors on the board. Now it's the Phillies' job to figure out whether that six-pitch, two-slot weirdness plays as a starter or a bullpen weapon in pro ball, but either way, Philadelphia just bought low on a guy who's already proven he can rebuild from the bottom.