On Monday, Stanford junior catcher Kody Huff went #206 overall to the Colorado Rockies, in the seventh round of the 2022 MLB Draft. Huff had a strong season for the Cardinal this past season, hitting 13 home runs for 51 RBIs to go along with a .315 batting average, a .411 on-base percentage, and a .567 slugging percentage.
In terms of what Huff will bring to the Rockies, he’ll bring a nice blend of offensive power as well as an ability to play sound defense behind home plate. A lot of catchers are much more focused on the defensive aspects of their game, but Huff takes great pride in being a catcher who can hit as well. Due to the high altitude in Colorado, the balls do fly farther, so Huff should take advantage of that.
Touching more on his defense, Huff was really a critical part of Stanford’s pitching success this year. He did a great job of working with the entire pitching staff and helping to bring out the best in all of them. Every pitcher that worked with Huff said nothing but good things about how he worked with them and made life easier for them on the mound. Huff had 523 put outs, 60 assists, and just 3 errors for a .995 fielding percentage.
As far as who projects to replace Huff at catcher next season, Stanford has a really talented incoming freshman catcher in Malcolm Moore out of C.K. McClatchy High School in Sacramento, California. Moore was considered to be a first or second round talent in the 2022 MLB Draft, but the big question was whether or not a deal could be reached since he’s currently committed to Stanford. At the end of Monday, after having completed 10 rounds, no team drafted Moore, so it looks likely that nobody will take him on Tuesday and even if a team does take him, it’s unlikely he’ll sign anyways.
Moore will have some competition for the starting job in Albert Rios, who’ll be a junior and Charlie Saum, who’ll be a sophomore, but odds are good that Moore will win the starting job in the end. The only question is whether or not he’ll be starting day one or if Stanford will ease him into the job. It’ll certainly be interesting to see how Stanford navigates that at the beginning of next season.
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