The world is Cam Collier’s oyster. The 17 year old bet on himself while graduating high school early, doing that so he could expedite his path to professional baseball by matriculating into Chipola Junior College. That put him up against older competition, but that didn’t phase him in the slightest, and his early work against them had him rightly positioned atop most every draft board on the planet.
That he fell to the Cincinnati Reds at pick #18 in the 2022 MLB Draft was less about his overall talent, and more about his potential signability. He was committed to the University of Louisville if things didn’t pan out for him on the financial side of things, but in almost a perfect inverse scenario, the Reds had much more money in their bonus pool than 18th overall - 7th overall, in fact, due largely to their possession of both a compensation pick for losing Nick Castellanos and their Competitive Balance Round B pick.