Iowa’s Brody Brecht taken 38th overall in 2024 MLB Draft

Ankeny native and former Hawkeye wide receiver taken by Colorado Rockies

CEDAR RAPIDS – Brody Brecht turned out to be a high-round Major League Baseball draft pick. Just not a first-round MLB draft pick.

The University of Iowa pitcher was selected Sunday night by the Colorado Rockies in the Competitive Balance-A Round, 38th overall.

The right-hander from Ankeny is the highest-drafted player at Iowa under head coach Rick Heller.

Brecht went 4-3 with a 3.33 earned run average this past season in 15 starts. He struck out 128 hitters in 78 1/3 innings.

The 21-year-old, 6-foot-4 junior went to Iowa as both a baseball and football player, playing wide receiver in football. But he eventually quit the football team and put his full efforts into baseball.

Brecht generally was considered a first-round pick by most experts, ranked 21st overall by MLB.com, because he can throw a 100-mile-per-hour fastball, has a wipeout slider and high upside because he never has concentrated on baseball. But his pitch command has been suspect, and he really right now is strictly a fastball-slider pitcher.

That apparently was enough to slide him out of the first round.

“Movement patterns really get affected in Coors Field,” said MLB Network draft analyst Dan O’Dowd, a former big league general manager. “But he doesn’t have tremendous movement patterns. But the one pitch that does work there is a hard, late tunnel slider, which he has. I love the durability of the body there. It’s a body that is built to give innings or a body built to pitch the ninth inning for them.“

The MLB assigned dollar amount on Brecht’s 38th-overall pick is $2.45 million. That doesn’t mean he’ll sign for that amount, as players and teams can bargain, considering each team has a specified amount of money it can use on all of its draft pick.

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