Carmen Mlodzinski is mysterious.
No Instagram. No Twitter. Limited game tape across 26 games in three seasons at the University of South Carolina.
He says he still uses an iPhone 5 (which dropped in September of 2013, a century ago by technology standards) and is more likely to use it to fire up some Led Zeppelin or Alice in Chains than the current hits of today.
A shortstop throughout high school, Mlodzinski says he only pitched around 50 innings before landing on South Carolina's campus in 2018, where he transitioned to a full-time heat-slinger.
Add it up, and one thing becomes clear: Nobody knows exactly what Mlodzinski can do or what he's all about.
And he's just fine with that.
"'Flying under the radar,' I guess, is a good way to put it," Mlodzinski, whom the Pirates selected with the No. 31 overall pick in the 2020 MLB Draft, said during a Zoom video conference call Thursday. "It's always fun, I guess, being a little bit of an underdog and having to claw through a little bit. But I feel like I improved my position to where I don't have to do that anymore — hopefully — going forward."
Even the footage we do have to work with on Mlodzinski (his three seasons at South Carolina) is littered with question marks. For starters, calling it "three seasons" paints the wrong picture entirely. Mlodzinski appeared in 19 games as a freshman, getting acclimated to the collegiate level en route to a 3-6 record, 5.52 ERA and 1.489 WHIP.
Then, three starts into his sophomore campaign, he planted awkwardly on the mound, breaking his foot and causing him to miss the rest of the regular season. In Mlodzinski's comeback 2020 campaign, the coronavirus pandemic hit, wiping out every season in every sport across the nation. While he looked good early on in four starts — 2-1, 2.84 ERA/1.303 WHIP — Mlodzinski admits the hiccups are frustrating. But they're also rewarding.
"[I learned] a lot — a lot with the foot injury, both on the mental and the physical side," Mlodzinski said. "I've always been somebody who has just worked as hard as I could, but I was definitely overdoing it [trying to push through the injury] ... I'm not just consistently putting pressure on myself to compete. I can get away from the game a little bit [now]."
Sandwiched between that 2019 and 2020 season with the Gamecocks sits Mlodzinski's finest work. In the summer of 2019, Mlodzinski tore up the Cape Cod League on the mound for the Falmouth Commodores, going 2-0 with a 2.15 ERA/0.648 WHIP while striking out 40 batters across 29.1 innings pitched. That mattered — big time — for the Pirates.
“I would say the Cape is always an important factor in evaluations,” Pirates senior director of amateur scouting Joe DelliCarri said on a Zoom conference call after the selection. ” … Carmen had missed some time, so we just started seeing him get a chance to get on the field in the Cape and do the things that we had thought before he had missed some time with a foot the previous spring. So the Cape was a nice platform to see him compete coming off of the downtime.”
To Mlodzinski, that performance up in Massachusetts represented the culmination of two primary factors: One, he was healthy, fully recovered from the foot injury that sidelined him for the 2019 NCAA season. Two: He was confident.
"That was obviously the best I had pitched yet in my career," Mlodzinski said. "But it was one of those things where I just, I felt it was coming. I thought it was going to be my sophomore year, and then obviously figured out that I was overworking my body a little bit and had just like one of those freakish kinds of injuries. So I knew that some good was going to come out of it. I was positive throughout the whole injury and then just had enough confidence going into the summer and trusted the work that I had put in to be able to go out there and pitch pretty good."
As much as the spotty action, the injury history and the lack of experience leave room for discussion and debate, one thing that can't be denied is Mlodzinski's competitive fire. DelliCarri and Pirates general manager Ben Cherington lauded his intensity and his fierceness following the pick Wednesday night, and Mlodzinski took it a step further Thursday when speaking with reporters.
"I'd say that's probably just from the household I grew up in," Mlodzinski said. "We're always competing in this household: Doing the dishes competitive-type stuff. I came up in a household like that with always just being a competitive guy, and then that's kind of just something that leaked onto the field for me. I've definitely learned to harness that the past couple years and have the right moments for it, just how to control it."
Wait, wait ... Competitive dish-washing?!
"Oh, I mean, it's like we have a timer on the microwave going to see if we can freaking beat the clock," Mlodzinski said. "I got two younger brothers and an older sister, and to be honest, my sister might be the most competitive out of all of us, just to put that in perspective."
Now, take a step back from Mlodzinski and look at the Pirates' top pick in the 2020 MLB Draft, Nick Gonzales. He's a 5-foot-10 walk-on at New Mexico State who rocketed up draft boards throughout his three-year collegiate career thanks to his absurd, video-game numbers at the plate.
Notice anything?
Yup.
Gonzales, like Mlodzinski, was an underdog heading into college. He improved the old-fashioned way: By pushing himself to the max and by focusing on optimizing his skill set. By the time Gonzales took home MVP honors in the 2019 Cape Cod League, his trajectory was a wrap. He was going to get drafted in 2020, and he was going to get drafted highly.
Mlodzinski certainly wasn't surprised.
"I'm happy I don't have to face him. That's for sure," Mlodzinski said. "I think he's one of the best players in this year's draft, no question. I was surprised he didn't go first overall, so I think the Pirates definitely got a steal there with him. He just consistently mashed up there in the Cape. He's the reason why we didn't, in my opinion, why we didn't win the championship up there. He hit a two-run home run to give his team the go-ahead lead in the seventh in Game 3, so I mean, yeah. I'm definitely happy I don't have to face that guy."
Now, Mlodzinski joins Gonzales with the Pirates, and both players have real, unexplored upside at the next level. Gonzales' numbers speak loudly, but Mlodzinski's potential is a little more understated. He's 6-foot-2, and he's worked tirelessly to add muscle, becoming more explosive and athletic as his college career progressed. He has a 98-mph fastball to show for that, and he's slowly been rounding out the rest of his repertoire, too.
After coming into college with "mainly a four-seam and a spike-curveball," by his recollection, Mlodzinski now boasts a four-pitch mix that's only getting better by the day.
"Right now, I throw a sinker, essentially," Mlodzinski said. "Some people can call it a two-seam or a sinker. That's my predominant fastball. I also mix in a four-seam fastball, and then my secondary stuff is, I throw a cutter-slash-kinda-slider. It's kind of a morph between a slider and a cutter. I'm actually working on getting that a little more toward a power slider than a cutter right now. And then I throw a curveball on top of that and a changeup ... It should be consistently a four-pitch mix. I don't see myself pulling away from any of those any time soon."
How that mix will translate to the next level remains, for now, a mystery.
Mlodzinski wouldn't have it any other way.
