A condensed, five-round MLB Draft concludes Thursday night, and App State’s Jack Hartman ranks among the top senior pitchers available from the college level.

The 21-year-old Hartman is a 6-foot-3, 210-pound right-hander listed as the No. 231 overall prospect by D1Baseball.com. With a four-seam cutter as a high-spin fastball, a power breaking ball and a sharp slider, Hartman can pitch in the range of 92-96 mph while touching 97.

Hartman arrived in Boone from the junior college ranks before the 2019 season, had a solid debut with the Mountaineers and excelled in an abbreviated senior season, striking out 22 batters in 12.0 innings and posting a 3.00 ERA with a 1-0 record and league-leading four saves for an 11-6 team. His 10 appearances featured a five-out victory in which he struck out four batters, including the final three, from No. 24 Wake Forest.

That’s quite a rise for a player who spent time at three junior colleges and had limited pitching experience before joining head coach Kermit Smith and pitching coach Justin Aspegren at App State. As told to Bret Strelow, here’s the story of Hartman’s improbable, compelling climb:

BY JACK HARTMAN

It’s a simple word, but it’s probably the best way to put it.

Unbelievable.

It's unbelievable because I wouldn't have ever imagined this.

I’ve told people, whether it’s scouts or other players, I had a goal this year of being drafted as a senior, back when the draft was 40 rounds.

Now, with it being five rounds, and they’re only going to sign so many free agents, I would never have imagined to be in this position as a “prospect.”

I mean, two years ago, I almost stopped playing baseball. I wanted to make a Division I team, or Division II, whatever it was going to be.

I wouldn’t be here without my dad or my mom or my family in general. Or my friends, who gave me the confidence to keep going.

Or my coaches over the years, whether it was at the College of Central Florida, where they preached a high ceiling and stressed work ethic, on to App State, where they saw that work ethic and tell me I still have a couple of tiers to go with my ceiling.

Growing up in Georgia, I played shortstop or third base most of my life, and I was recruited pretty highly early on in high school. I hit a growth spurt — I was 5-11, 170 my freshman year of high school, then middle of high school, I hit like 6-2, but I was still around 175 — and kind of slowed down a little bit in the infield and lost some steps in my feet.

I lost some offers and ended up going to junior college in Florida. Then I went to a different junior college in Alabama. For my sophomore year, Central Florida was my third junior college in two years.

I went to a December tryout there because I wanted to keep playing baseball. I had almost quit baseball a month earlier — it just wasn’t going the way I wanted it to. I was trying so many different things, watching a ton of video, doing some hitting things differently, but nothing was working out.

Down in Ocala, Fla., I tried out for head coach Marty Smith, and he’s just a really honest guy. Now I know how he is and I love him for that, but after me and my dad drove eight hours to the tryout, I thought I hit it well. He told me the bat played really well but that my defense stunk.

I’m like, “I hear ya.”

He didn’t really trust me in the infield, so he told me he couldn’t offer me right then, that he might be able to make something happen in two weeks or so because they were looking at somebody else. My dad, who played baseball at Arizona State, he said we needed some kind of answer then to start making our plans and was like, “Well, you saw his arm and saw him throw across the infield. You might not have liked his defensive actions, but did you like his arm?”

Coach said that was probably the best part, so my dad asked him to try me on the mound.

I looked at my dad with this wide-eyed look like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I had pitched maybe a handful of innings in all of high school. I was a shortstop my whole life.

I guess we had nothing to lose.

I went to the mound and just threw as hard as I could to try to impress them some way. I threw like 20 pitches, and my arm was so tired at the end of it. I was throwing maybe 85 to 87 or 88 mph, and the only reason they took me in is because Coach saw my athleticism on the mound and my ball moved like a cutter, which I didn’t know about. It was an unnatural, “natural” cutter.

Coach called Zach Bove, the pitching coach who is now with the Twins, and told him what was happening. I was brought in as a two-way player, but initially, they didn’t need me to pitch anymore and had me play third base.

I started off playing third, but I wasn’t hitting it good. My defense was actually pretty good for me, and I ended up not playing for a stretch of about a week and a half, getting sporadic pinch-hit at-bats. At that point, it wasn’t working in the field, so they figured they’d give me a try on the mound.

I threw one intersquad and pitched in my first game against real competition about a week after that. From a stats perspective, it wasn’t a good season, but it was my first time pitching, and I showed some good stuff and pitched in some pretty big moments.

I helped us get to the state tournament, which is a big deal down there, and I was up in the 88-91 mph range most of the season with a cutter and slider.

After the draft, there were teams looking to pick up some arms, and I got a good number of offers after this video got put out of me working with my pitching coach. Coach Smith called from App State, which had actually signed my roommate, Mark Potter, before he was picked in the first 20 rounds and turned pro.

I had actually met Coach Smith about a year earlier, and we had talked a little bit about App State bringing me on as a position player. I didn’t think that much of it because I wanted to keep playing junior college and progress as a hitter, but it honestly worked out for the best.

I probably would not have succeeded as a hitter seeing the competition that’s in the Sun Belt unless I made some really big changes. I ended up committing to Coach Smith that summer because they had put a lot of time and effort into me. And I really liked the family environment they have — me and my dad went on a visit and loved it from the beginning.

The people were awesome, and I thought they had the best tools to help me progress as a pitcher.

Coach Aspo really laid out a plan for me about what they could do to continue to develop me as a pitcher. I still had a chance to be a two-way player when I came in, but I really just didn’t hit, to be honest, and pitching just took over.

At that point, I didn’t want to hit anymore. I wanted to be a pitcher because I saw what I could do.

The spring of 2019, as a real pitcher for the first time, competing in Division I, I thought it went pretty good, but I knew I wanted to do better.

Last summer, I went down to the Florida Baseball Ranch and made some changes in my body movements and how I threw and just really excelled once I got back to Boone in the fall. I made some other changes with Coach Aspo, and we just kept working on a plan with my pitch mix that we thought would work better.

When I talk about some of the tools at App State, I don’t think I’d be where I am today without some of the technology like Rapsodo, a visual feedback tool. It tells you pretty much every metric that you would want to know, like basic things from velocity to where the ball is crossing the plate, all the way to spin rates and vertical break, how my baseball moves.

I’m a visual learner. I like to see the real versus feel, like if what I’m feeling is different than what the ball is actually showing.

It has accelerated my career faster than I could have imagined if I didn't have tools like that. Coach Aspo was pretty adamant about not using it as much around competition times, that I used it more during training and didn’t try to get too fine on the mound when I was actually competing.

Last summer down in Florida, we also identified some of my movement inefficiencies and how to improve my mobility and stability. I’ve worked on being more mobile in all aspects of my body, from my spine and my hips on down to my ankles. I try to implement that in my lifting as much as I can, and attacking those inefficiencies has helped me progress in my career.

Over the last two years, there’s been a lot of learning, a lot of failing, a lot of adjustments.

Off the field, rooming with guys like Kaleb Bowman in 2019, he helped me with my transition to App State and had a big influence on my religion.

When Jacob Cooper came to App State last year as a sports psychologist, I worked with him several times on mental skills training. It wasn’t a matter of me feeling like I had a problem with that, but more him helping me put another tool in the toolbox. A big part of that was using certain mental cues and getting back in the right mindset instead of getting caught up in the last pitch, getting over things I could not have gotten over in my first year at App State.

Take the game this year at Wake Forest. That’s probably my most memorable personal moment.

They were ranked in the top 25, and we really wanted to be good this year — obviously, who doesn’t want to be, but I think everybody saw our potential, and that was a big game for us just staying with it because there were so many ups and downs.

We started off pretty good, then they took the lead, we fought back to go ahead, they tie it. I wanted to pitch so bad, to come in with a lead and close it out, but it wasn’t looking like I’d get that chance until real late.

It was a chilly, rainy night, and I wasn’t feeling that great in the bullpen, but I just had to go in with the mindset that that didn’t matter. When I got in the game with it tied in the eighth inning and a runner on second, the way everything was coming out of my hand, it felt great, and they really couldn’t touch anything. I was really confident.

They get an infield single and then Bobby Seymour, he has a check-swing bunt on a pitch that actually bounced first in the dirt to score the go-ahead run with two outs.

What just happened?

I struck the next guy out, but I was pretty upset as I walked off the mound.

I’ll never forget what happened next.

With the rain, their pitcher was struggling a little bit, and we take the lead on (Andrew) Greckel’s home run. I just remember looking over at Coach Smith, at almost the same time Greckel hit the homer, maybe when he was rounding second, Coach Smith gave me this head nod.

He looked at me and said, “It’s your time.”

When I went back out to close it out, I started kind of shaky while trying to make adjustments in the rain. I was hiding the ball under my body, trying to keep it dry, but I don’t ever do that. I was trying to do something different, even with my preset, so I had to go back to what I’m used to.

I walked the first guy, then hit the next one. Coach Aspo came out and calmed me down, like, “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” I kind of zoned out because I was in the moment so much.

I took a big breath, said something that would get me back in the zone and tried to be less fine with everything.

I struck out the side.

It was just being aggressive. I knew if I got it just close to where Jack (Lipson) was calling it that it would work out. Getting off the mound, everybody was super excited, and Coach Smith’s postgame speech was awesome. It was just a really big moment for us.

When we found out our season was over, it was a really tough day. It’s been tough on a lot of people in baseball, but it’s been harder on a lot of people — people in healthcare, people who have lost a family member.

My goal is to get drafted, but if it doesn’t happen, I’d look to sign with a team. With the draft down to five rounds, nobody really knows what’s going to happen.

For the teams out there, I have a young arm and a high ceiling. Mentally, I have so many more tiers to reach, and I feel like the mental side of the game is what makes a big leaguer.

If I can continue to progress on both sides, the mental aspect and the physical aspect, I feel like the sky is the limit for me. I’m continually making adjustments and adapting and I’m open to learning.

The support I’ve received from friends and family and teammates and coaches, it just really puts things into perspective. I had always seen myself as an individual who kind of kept to himself, but you have to buy in to the people around you and know it’s not a one-person thing.

It’s a group effort.

And I feel like I can continue to keep going up.