{"id":749146,"date":"2026-07-11T19:30:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T19:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/749146\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T19:30:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T19:30:18","slug":"angels-draft-oc-native-with-no-12-pick-in-mlb-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/749146\/","title":{"rendered":"Angels Draft OC Native With No. 12 Pick in MLB Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Los Angeles Angels drafted left-handed pitcher\/outfielder Jared Grindlinger with the No. 12 overall pick in the 2026 MLB Draft on Saturday. Grindlinger is an Orange County native from Huntington Beach High School.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Grindlinger is committed to Tennessee, where his older brother Trent Grindlinger currently plays. Grindlinger will have to make a decision between joining the Angels or playing college ball with the Vols.<\/p>\n<p>What Does Grindlinger Bring to the Angels?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Going into the draft, Grindlinger was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/milb\/prospects\/draft\/jared-grindlinger-828796\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MLB\u2019s No. 16 overall prospect.<\/a> Perfect Game ranked Grindlinger as the No. 5 overall high school prospect entering the draft. After reclassifying from the 2027 to the 2026 draft class, he also became one of the youngest prospects in the draft. He turned 17 in April.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The two-way player hit .376 with two home runs and 22 RBIs with Huntington Beach this season. Grindlinger posted an 0.85 ERA with 66 strikeouts across 57.1 innings this season. He also has a fastball that can reach up to 95 MPH.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" data-od-removed-fetchpriority=\"high\" data-od-xpath=\"\/HTML\/BODY\/DIV[@class='elementor elementor-246431 elementor-location-single post-256234 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-angels tag-angels tag-jared-grindlinger mv-content-wrapper']\/*[2][self::DIV]\/*[1][self::DIV]\/*[1][self::DIV]\/*[1][self::DIV]\/*[4][self::DIV]\/*[7][self::FIGURE]\/*[1][self::IMG]\" data-dominant-color=\"5b595a\" data-has-transparency=\"false\" style=\"--dominant-color: #5b595a;\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"715\"  src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Jared-Grindlinger-1024x715.webp\" alt=\"Jared Grindlinger of Huntington Beach has now been named to USA Baseball national teams in three different age groups.\" class=\"wp-image-256236 not-transparent\" \/>Jared Grindlinger of Huntington Beach has now been named to USA Baseball national teams in three different age groups. (Photo Credit: Nick Koza)<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Whether or not the Angels use Grindlinger as a two-way player, he is confident he can continue to fulfill both roles at the professional level.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThere is nothing that\u2019s going to get him off of his focus,\u201d Huntington Beach head coach Benji Medure said, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thesportingtribune.com\/2026\/07\/10\/how-jared-grindlinger-took-a-chance-on-himself-to-prepare-for-mlb-draft\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">per The Sporting Tribune<\/a>. \u201cHe is dedicated to his craft. He knows he needs to get better and that\u2019s kind of scary thinking about how good he is and he knows how much he has to improve. He he wants to be the best of the best and I don\u2019t know if they\u2019re gonna let him two-way, wherever he goes, but in his mind he can do it and I won\u2019t count him out on that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Photo Credit: Nick Koza<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Los Angeles Angels drafted left-handed pitcher\/outfielder Jared Grindlinger with the No. 12 overall pick in the 2026&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":749147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2390],"tags":[291,5,89610,1165,446,3223,774,56,3224,3222,4],"class_list":["post-749146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles-angels","tag-angels","tag-baseball","tag-jared-grindlinger","tag-la","tag-la-angels","tag-laangels","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-angels","tag-losangeles","tag-losangelesangels","tag-mlb"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116903007212573407","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}