JACKSON TWP. — The dream of professional baseball has lived inside Garrett Wright since childhood.
That dream approaches reality.
“The best way to put it is 12-year-old Garrett Wright is pretty impressed and pretty happy right now,” said now 21-year-old Garrett Wright.
Yes, the former Jackson High School star is all grown up and expected to be selected in the upcoming 2026 MLB Draft, which takes place July 11-12. MLB.com has Wright No. 190 on its Top 200 prospects list for the 20-round affair. He was one of the more than 300 prospects invited to the MLB Draft Combine in Phoenix last month.
Watch Ohio High School Sports Live on NFHS Network all year
After two outstanding years at Bowling Green in the Mid-American Conference, Wright took his talents to the University of Tennessee in the SEC this past season to prove he wasn’t just a mid-major mirage.
He responded by leading the Volunteers in batting average (.348) and OPS (1.033) despite missing the start of the season as he recovered from surgery on a broken hamate bone in his left hand. A right-handed hitter, Wright totaled 17 doubles, a triple and nine home runs to go with 41 runs and 30 RBIs as the Vols (38-22) advanced to a regional.
Athleticism is at the top of the list of what attracts scouts to the 6-foot, 193-pound Wright. He’s a catcher who eventually settled into the leadoff spot for the Vols. He spent part of the season playing center field to protect that hamate bone from the pounding of being behind the plate. He committed just one error in 179 total chances in the field.
It was the kind of overall performance against some of the top collegiate competition in the nation that validated what Wright had done at Bowling Green. He was the MAC Freshman of the Year in 2024 and the MAC Defensive Player of the Year in 2025 while leading the conference in hitting at .406.
“The scouts definitely had their eyes on me last year,” Wright said. “I went to some workouts last summer. I was in the Cape (Cod League). But it came down to I was still in the MAC, and there is a MAC stigma that it’s not the highest competition level for baseball. So being able to transfer to an SEC school and still do what I did, it didn’t put me on any other team’s radar. It just boosted me on everybody’s.”
Wright didn’t clean out his locker at Bowling Green after his sophomore season and expect to leave. But it eventually became clear a move could benefit him. As his high school coach, Bill Gamble, put it, “I told him, ‘I feel like you’ve mastered the MAC.'”
Wright played a series at Tennessee as a Bowling Green freshman and was struck by the atmosphere at Vols’ home games. So when he entered the transfer portal last year and Tennessee was interested, it proved to be an easy marriage.
“Just being there was awesome and being on the field, it was like, dang, these people actually care,” Wright said. “Then you go back to the MAC games and there are 25 people there and six of them are in my family.”
The scouts and personnel people who reach out to Gamble don’t ask much about Wright the baseball player. They can see the talent that is there.
They ask about Wright as a person, a teammate, a competitor. Gamble knows right where to start.
“The first thing I bring up is he has a strong inner circle with his mom and dad,” Gamble said about mom Jennifer and dad Ron. “He has older siblings that played high-level D1 sports. He’s around that mentality all the time. He’s just a fierce competitor. I don’t care if it’s in the drill work or in a game, the dude just wants to win. Even for us, he elevated everyone around him because he wanted to win all the time. You appreciate that when you get that type of athlete.”
This is a kid who went out for football as a senior in high school just to kick and punt. By Week 3, he was starting at safety and becoming one of Jackson’s top tacklers.
Wright’s sister, Erinn, played softball at Toledo while his brother, Trey, played baseball for the Rockets.
It hasn’t been an easy ascension for Garrett Wright as a baseball prospect.
Slated to be Jackson’s starting varsity catcher as a freshman, that 2020 season was wiped out because of COVID-19. As a senior in 2023, he missed the first two weeks of the season due to shoulder surgery and was limited to DH duty until May, never really getting a chance to display his full game.
This winter he felt pain in his wrist and feared it was the hamate bone. His fears proved true. He had surgery on Jan. 20.
“I missed the first three and a half weeks of the season,” Wright said. “You’re not guaranteed to get a chance to play. You could just get shut down and have to redshirt. But I did good enough in the fall and my first two years of college that they wanted to give me a shot. Being able to get back out on the field after the surgery, it proved it to myself that it wasn’t the end. It gave me a chance to keep it rolling.”
Wright’s versatility and athleticism allowed him to get on the field sooner than later.
Being able to jump to center field from catcher — as former Jackson star and current Detroit Tigers All-Star catcher Dillon Dingler did during his college career at Ohio State — proved crucial.
“I probably would’ve missed another four weeks or so if I wasn’t able to play the outfield,” Wright said. “But that was kind of my plan, being able to play multiple positions. It kind of gives you the pull of, ‘You are not taking me off the field. You have no reason to.’ If I’m going to hit and produce, there is a spot on the field for me no matter what.”
Wright has a year of eligibility remaining at Tennessee, but he fully expects to be drafted this weekend and move on to a pro career.
The time is here to turn dreams into reality.
“Again, 12-year-old Garrett would be kinda upset if the draft didn’t happen or I turned down the draft,” Wright said with a laugh. “… I really want to go play at the next level. It’s not something I want to miss out on.”
Reach Josh at josh.weir@cantonrep.com
On X: @jweirREP
This article originally appeared on The Repository: Jackson baseball’s Garrett Wright MLB draft ready after Tennessee transfer | Exclusive
Reporting by Josh Weir, Canton Repository / The Repository
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Josh Weir, Canton Repository | USA TODAY Network
