Austin Amaral

Draft Prospects

• Ranked #457 prospect in 2023 draft
  School: Stetson Source: 4YR
  
  Commit/Drafted: Never Drafted
  Age At Draft: 21.6
  Amaral is a 6-foot, 200-pound righthander who pitched mostly out of the bullpen for Stetson during his first two seasons, but made a strong transition to the starting rotation in 2023. He outperformed his peripherals significantly and posted a 3.30 ERA over 76.1 innings despite just a 24.3% strikeout rate, 11.9% walk rate and 4.11 FIP. Amaral has a lot of funk on the mound, with significant tilt in his leg lift with a pronounced plunge and wrist wrap in the back of his arm stroke before finally firing to the plate. He gets a strong rate of swings and misses with his fastball, a pitch that sits 92-93 mph and touches 96 with plus vertical break, and uses an 80-84 mph slider as his go-to secondary. The slider has a good bit of horizontal movement and flashes two-plane depth at times as well. He’s mixed in a mid-70s curveball with more top-down movement and has flashed a mid-80s changeup but rarely uses either pitch. Amaral benefitted from the lowest home run/fly ball rate of his career at 2.2% this spring, which is notable in a year where seemingly everyone in college baseball was hitting the ball over the fence, but he’ll need to sharpen his control and command at the next level.