{"id":750995,"date":"2026-07-13T22:00:29","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T22:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/750995\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T22:00:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T22:00:29","slug":"fairfield-indian-hills-star-nathan-smithburg-drafted-to-tampa-bay-rays-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/750995\/","title":{"rendered":"Fairfield, Indian Hills star Nathan Smithburg drafted to Tampa Bay Rays | Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FairfieldLogowstroke.png\"<\/p>\n

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FAIRFIELD, Iowa \u2014 A Southeast Iowa baseball legend heard his name called in the MLB draft over the weekend.<\/p>\n

Fairfield\u2019s Nathan Smithburg has been drafted to the Tampa Bay Rays, continuing his incredible baseball career.<\/p>\n

Smithburg was a standout pitcher at Fairfield before graduating in 2022. During his time with the Trojans, he was a three-time all-conference and all-district selection and was named captain of the all-region team as a senior.<\/p>\n

He was also awarded second-team all-state as a senior after going 6-1 with a 0.45 ERA and 83 strikeouts in 83.0 innings of work<\/p>\n

He then took his talents to Indian Hills Community College, appearing in 40 career contests as the team’s primary closer.<\/p>\n

Smithburg was also named to the 2023 National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) All-Region 11 team.<\/p>\n

He joined the Oklahoma Sooners after the 2024 season and did not pitch a game in 2025.<\/p>\n

In 2026 he hurled 19 games, won two and tallied 18 strikeouts with a 3.79 ERA.<\/p>\n

The next potential stop in his journey is the Tampa Bay Rays, who selected him in the 18th round, 533rd overall.<\/p>\n

Congrats to Nathan Smithburg on his accomplishment, and hopefully he’ll be the next Tri-State star to make it to the big leagues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FAIRFIELD, Iowa \u2014 A Southeast Iowa baseball legend heard his name called in the MLB draft over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":750996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2377],"tags":[13695,5,23583,7165,93152,4,1586,93151,5075,2320,297,2550,68,2551,2549],"class_list":["post-750995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa-bay-rays","tag-all-conference","tag-baseball","tag-baseball-career","tag-fairfield","tag-indian-hills","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-draft","tag-nathan-smithburg","tag-oklahoma-sooners","tag-pitcher","tag-rays","tag-tampa-bay","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-tampabay","tag-tampabayrays"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116914921651378255","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750995","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=750995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/750996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}