By Mike London
mike.london@salisburypost.com

WINSTON-SALEM — Three long days. Twenty long rounds.

There were 614 players picked in the MLB draft conducted in Seattle.

South Rowan graduate Haiden Leffew and East Rowan graduate Chance Mako, tall teens who can fire baseballs in the 90s, weren’t among those 614.

While that was surprising, it doesn’t mean they weren’t among the best 614 available. Every team in MLB knows exactly who they are, how hard they throw, what they’ve done in the past and what they project to do in the future.

But there’s often more to the MLB draft than meets the eye. Leffew and Mako certainly would have been drafted had teams been willing to offer enough dollars to pull them away from their scholarships to big-time ACC programs.

Mako will be a freshman at N.C. State, while Leffew will be a freshman at Wake Forest.

They are good students who will make the most of college classes. Mako, who will be 19 in a few weeks, will be eligible for the draft again in 2025. Leffew, who won’t turn 19 until December, will be draft-eligible again in 2026.

Leffew reported to Wake Forest on July 5 and is already enrolled in summer school and is going through conditioning drills with his new teammates.

The second day of the draft (Monday) started at 2 p.m. Wake’s conditioning drills started at 3 p.m. Leffew stayed connected with what was happening in the draft through an Apple Watch connected to his phone. He could see texts coming in from his advisor.

“We got some calls from MLB teams during the draft,” Leffew said. “My advisor handled them, but he kept me updated. There were some good offers, but they just weren’t enough for me not to go to Wake Forest.”

Wake Forest became a hot item in college baseball in 2023, making its first trip to the College World Series since three Rowan County lads helped take the program to Omaha in 1955. Wake’s Rhett Lowder, from North Stanly, about 22 miles down the road from Salisbury, was one of the nation’s elite pitchers this season and won his second ACC Pitcher of the Year award.

Lowder was the seventh pick in the draft by the Cincinnati Reds. Lowder’s tremendous jump while he was at Wake Forest had some influence on Leffew.

“Lowder was a guy throwing in the upper 80s when he first got to Wake, but they’ve got a great pitching lab and some of the best coaches in the country,” Leffew said. “Lowder developed into a great pitcher.”

Wake Forest had five pitchers drafted. That not only speaks volumes for where the program is, it means opportunity for incoming freshmen such as Leffew. He could be in the mix to be a weekend starter as a freshman. Two of those three spots are wide open right now.

Leffew is a 6-foot-3 left-hander who was instrumental as a pitcher and hitter in South Rowan’s run to the 3A state championship in 2022. At the end of that run, he faced South Brunswick phenom Walker Jenkins, who was the No. 5 pick by the Minnesota Twins in this year’s draft.

“Well, it was 50/50,” Leffew said. “I struck Walker out one and got him to pop up once. He had two singles. One was an infield hit. Maybe I’ll face him again one day. That’s the plan, anyway.”

Leffew has excellent velocity, especially for a left-hander. He consistently throws a tailing fastball in the 90s and even reached 97 mph on a pitch in a recent workout. His curveball is rated as an outstanding pitch by scouts. He also throws a cutter, sinking fastball and changeup.

Baseball America had Leffew ranked No. 187 — that would be a sixth-rounder — as far as the players available in the draft.

Leffew was shut down late in his senior high school season with a strained shoulder muscle, but showed he was healthy in private workouts for the San Francisco Giants and Atlanta Braves prior to the draft. He was invited to the MLB Draft Combine held in Phoenix in late June, but declined to attend.

“I wasn’t going to be throwing there, so it didn’t make much sense for me to fly across the country,” Leffew said.

Mako, a 6-foot-6 right-hander, did attend the MLB Draft Combine at Chase Field, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks. He threw a bullpen session in Arizona.

Mako, who has pitched at Dodger Stadium and on national stages on several occasions, was rated even higher than Leffew prior to the draft.

He had spoken to representatives from every MLB team before the draft and 27 of the 30 teams had visited the Makos. He throws hard with good secondary pitches and has a prototype MLB frame. He was viewed as a hurler who could be picked as early as the third round.

Prospects Live had Mako rated 136th among draft-eligible players. ESPN had him 155th. MLB Pipeline had him 162nd.

Like Leffew, Mako had a firm monetary figure in mind and wasn’t going to waver from it.

It was going to take a lot to get him away from N.C. State.

Like Leffew, Mako had multiple  “Would you sign for this?” calls as the draft ran its course, but no one was willing to meet the asking price.

So Mako joins a Wolfpack program that had two pitchers drafted.

“Chance and I know each other well and we texted each other before the draft and wished each other luck,” Leffew said. “We’ve had some of the same experiences.”

Now they share one more. In the big picture, not being drafted may turn out to be the best thing for both of them.

They are mature for their age, but now they’ll get a chance to gain valuable experience close to home with their families and friends supporting them for a few more years.

They’ll get to face top college hitters such as UNC’s Vance Honeycutt, the former Salisbury High star, and they may even get to square off against each other in the ACC, as they did in an epic South Piedmont Conference game this season.

Who knows? They may both be first-round picks and instant millionaires the next time they’re in the draft.

“I’m not disappointed at all,” Leffew said. “Some people may look at this as worst-case scenario, but worst case for me would still be the best case for a lot of people.”