Orioles pitching prospect Joseph Dzierwa wasn’t always set on baseball. Standing 6-foot-8 and the son of a Northwestern football player, he played three sports at Otsego High School in Ohio. He was team captain on the football team and a shooting guard for the basketball team in addition to playing baseball.
“I’m from a small town so I never played travel ball growing up, really,” Dzierwa said on Glenn Clark Radio on June 25. “I always played three sports. I didn’t really have time to go play travel ball. I think that’s why I was under-recruited a little bit. I liked baseball and football. I started getting recruited and started taking some visits.”
One sport that Dzierwa didn’t play in high school but has grown fond of is golf.
“You think about it, on a [given] day I’ll shoot maybe high 70s, mid-70s, so I think of it the same way as pitching,” he said. “You have that many pitches, kind of. You can hit the perfect shot. It’s like throwing the perfect pitch. But sometimes the wind might grab it or a hitter might hit it and get a bloop. It’s a lot of controlling what you can.”
Orioles fans should be glad college baseball coaches noticed Dzierwa, who has been lighting it up in his first season in the minors.
The 22-year-old started his season with High-A Frederick. In eight starts with the Keys, Dzierwa had a 5-1 record with a 2.21 ERA along with 50 strikeouts and held his opponents to a .160 batting average. The standout performance led to a call-up to Double-A Chesapeake.
Dzierwa picked up where he left off. In seven appearances with the Baysox, the big left-hander has a 2-1 record with a 2.78 ERA along with 46 strikeouts and has held his opponents to a .204 batting average.
“I just wanted to stay consistent. I really wasn’t focused on too much of the stats and all that stuff. I really just wanted to kind of stay consistent,” Dzierwa said. “Just buy in each day and just stack it throughout the season and see where it takes me.”
Dzierwa was selected with the 58th overall pick of the 2025 MLB Draft by the Orioles out of Michigan State. He was the highest drafted Spartans pitcher since Mark Mulder was taken second overall by the Oakland Athletics in 1998.
“I think when you can control what you can, that’s the most important. That’s what our pitching coach at Michigan State preached a lot — executing pitches and stuff. I knew I had to get a breaking ball and get that usable. I think that’s come along pretty well. “
Dzierwa and JT Quinn are two of the highest drafted pitchers of the Mike Elias era so far, dating back to Elias’ start as Orioles GM ahead of the 2019 season. Both were taken early in last year’s draft.
“Obviously there’s a history and stuff but them taking you shows they believe in you,” the lefty said. “JT and I, we were with each other since the draft. I think it was pretty cool. We’ve been together and keep plugging along.”
At 6-foot-8 — the same height as Dodgers pitcher Tyler Glasnow — Dzierwa would be among the tallest pitchers in the majors.
“I was like 5-8 coming out of junior high and about 6-2 my freshman year,” Dzierwa said. “So ninth grade is when I hit my growth spurt.”
For more from Dzierwa, listen to the full interview here:
Photo Credit: Joe Noyes/Chesapeake Baysox