Rewind just one year ago, and Andrew Wantz was not getting paid to play baseball. He wasn’t on the 40-man roster, or even at the 60-man alternate training site. Angels manager Joe Maddon admittedly didn’t know who he was.
Instead, Wantz was working out in the garage of a college friend, using a rusted $200 squat rack purchased on Facebook Market. He was giving pitching lessons on the side and working to be ready for a baseball future that was incredibly uncertain.
“We bought racks, weights,” Wantz said. “We also made some equipment ourselves. Just trying to be innovative. It was just tough. … We made do with what we had.”
A year later, and Wantz is in the big leagues with the Angels. And with the 2021 MLB Draft set to begin Sunday, Wantz — the Angels’ 2018 seventh-round selection — represents the organization’s only draft pick of the past three seasons to have made his MLB debut.
Wantz’s journey to the Angels roster has been quick and also quite improbable.
When Wantz last played pro ball before the COVID-19 shutdown, he was ineffective at Double A. He went 0-6 with a 7.13 ERA in 48 innings. He walked 26 batters and allowed 59 hits, and he spent a lot of time on the injured list, as the team wanted to give him ample rest.
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