Last night Nick Maton made his MLB debut for the Philadelphia Phillies against the San Fransisco Giants. Nick went 1-4 in his debut with a base hit to left-center field. Nick Maton is the second one in his family to make the MLB. His older brother Phill is currently a pitcher for the Cleveland Indians.
Coming into the 2021 season, Nick was ranked 19 on the Phillies top 30 prospect list and, his ETA was 2021. He was due to make his debut at some point this season. Nick will start again in today's game at shortstop against the Giants.
Nick took a different route to the MLB than most players. Originally, he was drafted out of high school by the Oakland A's in the 40th round of the draft but turned it down and went to Eastern Illinois University. In the one year, he was at Eastern, he had a solid year batting nearly .300 and was named to the Ohio Valley Conference All-Freshman team. Only spending one year at Eastern Nick transferred to Lincoln Land Community College.
At Lincoln Land, Nick had an amazing year, he was a NJCAA All-American. His average was 408 and had 46 runs batted in. Not only was he making plays with his bat he was also contributing whenever he was on base. Nick had 33 stolen bases and 60 runs scored.
Community College rules are different than division one rules. You can transfer from a community college after 1 year there, you can graduate with your associates and go to a different school and keep playing. You can also get drafted to the MLB early if you are eligible to get drafted from a community college.
After Nick's one year at Lincoln Land he was going to transfer to Missouri. Then the MLB draft came around and, he got drafted in the 7th round by the Phillies. Instead of going to Missouri, he signed a contract for the Phillies.
Nick made his way through the minors pretty fast only spending 4 years in them. In 2017 he was assigned to the Williamsport Crosscutters. After that short season, he made the Class-A Lakewood BlueClaws in 2018. The BlueClaws are the high A team for the Phillies. In 2019 he was playing with Class-A-Advanced Clearwater Threshers which, is the low A team. That did not affect his confidence at the plate though has he made the Florida State League All-Stars and later that year got promoted to double-A.
Then in 2020, Nick got an invite to Spring Training, then the whole world shut down. When the MLB season began again teams were allowed to have a taxi service where minor league players would be in a spot and if the team needed them for some reason they could call them up if they needed. Nick was on that 40 man roster but never got the call-up.
It is always cool to see a kid from your hometown become a professional athlete. Hopefully, Nick can stay up in the majors and, it would be cool if he gets to bat against his brother if they play the Indians.
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