Standing in the batter’s box, his stance slightly open and leaning slightly backward, Kevin Parada grips his Marucci CAT9 bat and lets it hang downward over his right shoulder, away from his body and angled to the ground. He raises his left arm, his padding-encased elbow hiding his face to the pitcher.
It is perhaps fine form for carrying a sack of potatoes, but not quite as conventional for preparing to launch fastballs 400-plus feet.
He adopted the stance in the fall, he said, his way of getting his body in the most comfortable, most athletic position. (As the pitcher winds up, he coils his body into a more standard posture.) The raised left elbow is a timing mechanism to initiate his swing.
“I’ve had a few people talk about it and say that the stance looks unorthodox,” Parada said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “But, clearly, it’s working, so no one’s having any reservations about that part of it.”
On that, there is no disagreement. With a laugh, Yellow Jackets coach Danny Hall professed not to know how or why Parada adopted it.
“And right now, it’d be one of those areas that I don’t want to know because he makes it work,” Hall said.
Parada, a sophomore catcher, has made it work like no other player in the country. Parada, a beach lover from Pasadena, Calif., is two-thirds of the way through a regular season that has made him a leading candidate for national player-of-the-year honors.
Entering Tech’s home series against Duke that was to start Friday, Parada was tied for the Division I lead in home runs with 18, led in RBIs with 62 and was tied for seventh in both runs (50) and hits (62). Before Friday, he had popped 10 home runs, with three two-homer games, in the past 13 games, while hitting .411, raising his season average to .383.
“I think we thought when we recruited him, that he was going to be a good hitter,” Hall said. “I don’t think anybody would have said or had the expectations that he was going to do what he’s doing, but he is. And I would just say, kind of each week, he just does something that you’re like, Wow, that’s pretty special.”
On April 15, he crushed two North Carolina pitches to the opposite field that easily cleared the right-center wall at the Tar Heels’ Boshamer Stadium, his second two-homer game in as many weeks. Two days later, he came to the plate in the top of the second inning with two out and the bases loaded.
“And first pitch, he hits it over the scoreboard to left and you’re like, Holy cow,” Hall said.
It should bear mention that the scoreboard rises perhaps 30 feet above the fence in left center, 370 feet from home plate.
Parada is a worthy initiate into the society of Jackets who have gone from crouching behind home plate at Russ Chandler Stadium to become first-round draft picks – a lineage that includes Jason Varitek, Matt Wieters and Joey Bart – and, in the cases of Varitek and Wieters, achieve major-league stardom. (Bart is in his first full major-league season, with the Giants.) More broadly, Parada is on his way to taking his place among Tech’s all-time greats with the likes of Riccardo Ingram, Ty Griffin, Nomar Garciaparra, Jay Payton and Mark Teixeira.
“I think Kevin’s right in line with all those guys,” Hall said.
Parada came to Tech in 2020 a most celebrated prospect. Had he decided to choose professional baseball coming out of high school, he could have been a first-round draft pick and received a multi-million signing bonus. But he chose the college-baseball path, and Tech specifically.
But he said he had little idea of the giants he was following at his position. He said he was won over more by the team’s family atmosphere and Tech’s reputation for its academics than its standing as “Catcher U.”
“I didn’t even know the depth of Catcher U until I got here,” Parada said. “I committed the year that Joey was drafted (second overall in 2018), but I didn’t realize how many guys have come out of Georgia Tech, the lineage, and now it’s something that I want to fulfill and continue the legacy.”
Parada, according to Tech assistant coach James Ramsey, has one of the better swings that he’s ever seen, which is saying something given that Ramsey was an All-American at Florida State and a first-round pick of the Cardinals before he played seven seasons in the minor leagues before turning to coaching. What distinguishes Parada’s swing is that it sweeps through the hitting zone for “such a long time,” Ramsey said, increasing the probability of making solid contact.
His combination of power and bat control virtually is unparalleled in Division I. Among the top 10 home-run leaders entering Friday’s games, Parada had the highest on-base percentage (.474) and the lowest strikeout percentage (11.7%). As Hall’s 2-hole hitter, it has made him a most critical piece in a Tech offense that ranks third in the country in scoring at 9.7 runs per game.
“He can pull a ball that’s inside, he can hit a ball that’s inside out to right field,” Ramsey said. “So basically, the whole field is at his disposal at all times. So that’d be the biggest thing that I see from him – just the way that he controls his body the whole time through his swing. Those two things put together, you’re going to have a chance to be a major-league baseball player for a long time.”
After earning freshman All-American status and drawing attention as a likely first-round draft pick (while players at four-year colleges normally have to wait until their junior season to be drafted, Parada will be eligible as a sophomore because he’ll turn 21 within 45 days of the draft), Parada honed in on increasing his power with the assistance of strength coach Steve Tamborra. Adding about 15 pounds to reach 210 (he’s 6-foot-1) has turned his doubles into home runs.
In fall practice, the team’s ball-tracking data reported consistently higher exit velocities off the bat and longer distances.
“I wasn’t trying to hit the fall farther,” Parada said. “I wasn’t trying to do anything different.”
His weight-room work was emblematic of his devotion.
“A kid like him could have been very content to just be an All-American and be a first-rounder and all that stuff,” Ramsey said. “But he wants to be the No. 1 pick. He wants to be the best player in the country.”
Parada doesn’t shy from Ramsey’s description.
“Absolutely,” he said. “That’s my goal, to be the best version of myself, and in the end, whatever that looks like, it looks like. But I can only control what I can control, and I really just want to pursue being the best possible player I can be.”
His home-run binge – and his chase of the team single-season record of 25, set in 1990 by Anthony Maisano – truly is remarkable for multiple reasons. Since college baseball adopted standards before the 2011 season that limited bats’ potency, Tech’s home-run leader has exceeded 17 once, when Kyle McCann hit 23 in 2019. McCann was aided by outfield dimensions that favor lefties – it’s 350 feet to the right-center wall, but 382 to left center.
Wieters peaked at 15 home runs before the Orioles drafted him fifth overall in 2007. Bart’s career high at Tech was 16.
“I think it definitely puts what he’s doing into perspective,” Hall said. “If he even gets even close to some of that, in my mind, that’s just greatness.”
Parada is trying to keep records and numbers out of his thoughts.
“I know that stuff can happen, but if I start thinking about trying to hit more home runs or anything like that, I’m going to get out of who I am,” Parada said. “In the end, I’ve got to just play for who I am and let the numbers take care of themselves. And if I beat the school record, that’s awesome, and if I don’t, it is what it is. I’m not trying to break records just for the heck of it.”
