How Yale’s Jack Ohman Became One Of Top Freshman Pitchers In The Country

date	ip	h	r/Er	bb	k
2/22 @ Queens	2.1	1	0/0	0	4
3/2 @ The Citadel	5.0	1	0/0	2	5
3/9 @ Rice	7.0	6	3/0	1	7
3/16 vs. VMI	5.0	4	0/0	3	5
3/23 vs. Cornell	6.0	4	1/0	1	9
3/29 @ Harvard	5.0	1	0/0	3	8
4/4 @ Brown	8.0	3	1/1	1	11
4/11 v.s Columbia	9.0	5	0/0	0	6
4/19 @ Penn	6.2	6	3/3	4	7
4/27 vs. Princeton	6.2	2	2/2	2	9
TOTALS	60.2	33	10/6	17	71

“He’s always been projectable,” Will said of his son. “But I think even he’s surprised how quickly it all came together.”

That surprise is shared across the sport. Ohman, once overlooked, is now being circled by crosscheckers and whispered about by scouting directors. He’s climbed all the way to No. 8 on Baseball America’s 2027 college draft board, not with a flame-thrower’s velocity or a trick-pitch gimmick, but with elegant mechanics, mature command and an innate feel for how to dismantle hitters.

“Nobody’s privy to the work that goes on behind closed doors,” Will said. “All they see is the result on the field this year, and they go, ‘Where did this kid come from?’ But for four straight years, in 115-degree heat, he was outside in the backyard, throwing or hitting or doing something.”

Ohman is, in the truest sense, a pitcher’s pitcher. And he’s doing it on one of the most tradition-bound stages in the game.

“What’s wild is how unfazed he’s been,” said Yale pitching coach Chris Wojick, who first scouted Ohman when he was throwing in the mid 80s. “He didn’t come in looking like this, but the kid works. He asks smart questions. He learns fast.”

This wasn’t supposed to be the story, though. Not for a freshman in the Ivy League. Not in an era when NIL powerhouses hoard elite arms, and the transfer portal rarely forgives late bloomers.

“I never really cared that I wasn’t the most recruited guy,” Ohman said. “I knew if I found the right place and worked the right way, it would come together eventually.”

Armed with a quiet conviction, Ohman has since bucked every trend. In doing so, he’s forced the sport to take notice.

“He’s doing stuff with the ball at 19 years old that I couldn’t conceive of,” Will Ohman said. “I probably couldn’t conceive of it at 25.”

– –

Long before the numbers, before the gyro slider or the Ivy League wins or the national rankings, Ohman was just a kid in the backyard trying to keep up with his father.

There were no pitching coaches, no data labs. Just Jack, a ball, and his father Will, the big-league vet who wanted nothing more for his son than to be able to extract the same value from baseball that he did. Will knew, perhaps better than anyone, what the game could give—and what it could take.

“He taught me how to pitch without ever making it feel like a lesson,” Jack said. “It was just being around him, listening to the way he talked about the game. I probably didn’t even realize how much I was learning at the time.”

From the earliest days, baseball was their shared language.

Jack wasn’t taught so much as invited in. Lessons came in strange places: in the living room, on the back patio, in the car and especially in front of a TV screen.

“We used to play MLB The Show,” Will said. “I wouldn’t let him just mash buttons. I’d make him sequence pitches—two in, one away, that sort of thing. And I’d explain why. How to work a count. Why you can’t just throw back-to-back changeups to a lefty unless you’ve shown him something first.”

The game became a chalkboard.

Jack, still years away from touching 90 mph or having to apply the very sequencing he was absorbing, learned how to think like a pitcher before he ever really looked like one. Even then, he was obsessed with feel. Fascinated by how a pitch came out of his hand, what it looked like crossing the plate, how it fit into the rhythm of an at-bat. He learned to build an inning like a story.

But carrying the name “Ohman” came with its own unwritten lessons. For every door that opened, there was pressure behind it.

“I wanted him to take the name and make it his,” Will said. “I told him that. If you’re gonna carry it into baseball, you better own it. Because you’ll always be the big leaguer’s kid—until you aren’t.”

Will never forced the game on his son. He offered it. And Jack, methodical by nature, took it up, not with urgency, but with patience.

He grew into baseball the way he grew into his body—gradually. At Brophy Prep, coaches appreciated his instincts more than his velocity. He threw strikes, sure, but he wasn’t exactly scaring anyone with radar readings.

“I wasn’t throwing hard, but I always thought I could pitch,” Ohman said. “Even when guys were throwing five, six miles an hour harder than me, I felt like I could get outs. I just had to be sharper, think a little more.”

Still, those who watched closely could see it coming. Wojick was among the first.

The numbers weren’t loud—84 to 86 mph on the mound and a decent feel to hit at the plate—but the movement patterns, tempo and athleticism all stood out. Ohman was Brophy’s starting shortstop, not a pitcher-only recruit. That mattered to Wojick.

“All three of our starting pitchers were high school shortstops,” Wojick said. “I think having really athletic pitchers is something I’ve thrived on over the years. And Jack was the starting shortstop at one of the best high school programs in the country.”

So Wojick tracked Ohman into the spring. The velocity crept up. First 88, then 89, then low 90s. He wasn’t dominating, but the pieces were lining up.

“We really liked the swing too,” Wojick said. “He hit well in the fall of his freshman year here, probably better results at the plate than he had on the mound.”

A visit to campus in New Haven sealed it. Jack was drawn to the academics, the people and the environment at Yale.

When he arrived on campus, he weighed barely 165 pounds. The fastball had ticked up to 93, but his command was an issue and his arsenal, still raw from a lack of direct focus on pitching in high school, was unshaped. He had a big over-the-head windup, a tall, “Bronson Arroyo-like” leg kick, a 12–6 curveball that he struggled to land and a changeup that was more concept than weapon.

And in the fall, he struggled.

“He would be the first one to tell you that if he had the fall he did at a bigger program, he might’ve just been pushed off to the side because he wasn’t ready to go,” Wojick said.

But Yale didn’t need ready-made arms. It needed workers, and that’s exactly what made Ohman such a weapon.

“We only have 13 pitchers on staff,” Wojick said. “If I’m not going to develop our freshman, then I only have 10. There’s no transfer portal for us. It’s me and you for the next four years.”

So they got to work. They streamlined the delivery and shortened the leg lift. They added mass and introduced pitch design tools. Ohman was still figuring out grips week to week, sometimes throwing different versions of a changeup in the same bullpen. The slider, which has become his go-to out pitch, didn’t even exist yet. Not in a usable form, anyway.

But the buy-in was total.

“We had a plan for what we needed to clean up,” Wojick said. “And Jack was all in. He asked questions, he watched video, he sat next to me during games doing charts. He wanted to know everything.”

That curiosity—fueled by years of sequencing video game pitches with his dad, backyard bullpen sessions, trial and error—became the engine behind a stunning leap.

“I truly believed the sky was the limit for him,” Wojick said. “And he’s only scratching the surface.”

– –

Ohman knew his fastball was good. He just didn’t know how good it could be.

It was the first thing Yale’s coaches keyed in on during fall development. The fastball came out clean, firm and riding—usually in the low 90s but with real life. Still, it wasn’t overpowering. Not on its own. Not yet.

“The fastball was always very good,” Wojick said. “But he didn’t always command it.”

What he did have was that same buy-in that propelled him to this point. From the start, Ohman immersed himself in the data. He asked for TrackMan reports and dug into the video.

“He’s probably one of the smartest pitchers I’ve ever coached,” Wojick said. “His sequencing, his understanding of shape and how his pitches tunnel—he already thinks like a pro.”

Ohman’s fastball now sits between 92 and 95 mph, and he’s touched 97. With over 20 inches of induced vertical break, it stays aloft long enough to draw swings that miss the barrel. His dad is convinced the pitch will hit triple digits before college is over.

But even with that velocity, Yale’s staff knew the offering couldn’t stand alone.

To give the fastball context and maximize its deception, Ohman needed something that could run on the same track, then fall off. They found it two weeks before Opening Day.

The answer was a hard, low-efficiency gyro slider—what the industry’s begun to call a “deathball.” Short break. Tight spin. A pitch that looks like a fastball halfway home, then dives under bats at the last moment. Ohman worked out the grip in the bullpen, threw it in a few early outings and realized quickly what he had.

“The slider changed everything,” Wojick said. “Once he could land it for a strike, or throw it just off the plate and get swing-and-miss, hitters couldn’t cheat fastball anymore.”

Added Ohman: “It just clicked. Once I saw the swings it was getting, I knew it could be a real weapon. It felt natural, like it belonged in my mix all along.”

The pitch became the axis around which everything else turned. Ohman uses his slider like a veteran now, burying it late in counts or flipping it in early just to plant a seed. The changeup is still a work in progress, but he uses it sparingly and effectively. What separates Ohman on the mound is how he sequences—not with flair, but precision. Always thinking two or three pitches ahead.

“I’m always trying to stay in front,” Ohman said. “If I can make a hitter uncomfortable or get him guessing, I feel like I’ve already won the at-bat.”

On his current trajectory, Ohman is set to finish the season with the lowest ERA by a Division I freshman who threw 60 or more innings in the Field of 64 tournament era (since 1999).

But, ask him about the season, and Ohman doesn’t talk about the numbers. He talks about feel, about how the changeup will come. About how he wants to improve tunneling and how he wants the slider shape to keep evolving.

Time, he’ll tell you, is the key to everything.

He’s not in a rush to dominate. He just wants to be better.

“He’s so focused on getting that, on getting better, that sometimes I don’t even think he realizes how good he already is,” Wojick said.

– –

For all the joy that comes with breakout success, navigating it in modern college baseball is no small feat. That’s especially so when it happens away from the bright lights of the SEC or ACC.

Ohman opened his career with 35.1 consecutive innings without surrendering an earned run, a stretch so outrageous it seemed to exist outside of context. But instead of congratulations or curiosity, many of the messages that buzzed his phone said something else entirely. They wanted to know when he was transferring.

“People were texting me like, ‘Where are you going next year?’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean where am I going?’” Ohman said, “‘I just got here.’”

But that’s the climate.

Dominance, in today’s version of the sport, is often met not with celebration but speculation—about which school a player might head to next, what brand deal he might land, how much his breakout is worth in the marketplace. But that conversation has never interested Ohman.

He isn’t thinking about next year. He’s barely thinking about next week.

“If I’m not focused on the next pitch or the next bullpen, I feel like I’m doing myself a disservice,” he said. “That’s how I’ve always approached it.”

With the way this season has unfolded, with national recognition and individual awards all suddenly on the table, Ohman knows that the greatest threat to sustaining it would be letting his mind drift anywhere else. His internal motor hasn’t changed. He’s still charting bullpens and still tweaking grips. Still watching video and writing notes like he’s trying to earn a rotation spot, not hold one.

“He’s so locked in on being present,” Wojick said. “There’s just not an ounce of entitlement in the kid.”

There is, however, more on the horizon. Wojick said Yale plans to have Ohman return to two-way duty next year, picking up a bat again and seeing where it leads. The coaching staff has long liked his swing—it was part of what got him recruited in the first place—and believes there’s real upside in letting him explore both sides of the ball.

“I think next year he’ll be one of the best two-way players in the country,” Wojick said. “But this year, he’s been one of the best pitchers in the country. He’s taken it and run with it.”

But for now, the bat can wait. The moment is on the mound.

Yale, in the truest sense, has a star on its hands. Not just an ace, but one of those rare players whose presence is unmistakable, whose name carries weight, whose outings draw phones to the radar gun and silence to the dugout.

Jack Ohman hasn’t just arrived. He’s announced himself.

He’s a contender for every major award, the No. 8 college prospect in his draft class and a reminder that greatness doesn’t always follow the expected path. And maybe that’s why, through all of it, the part that matters most to him isn’t where he’s ranked, but how far he’s come on his own terms.

Because after years of backyard bullpens and quiet work, after being overlooked, under-recruited and underestimated, Ohman finally feels like he’s found his footing in the game.

“This game will try to beat you down,” Ohman said. “You have to get up and punch it back in the face. I feel like this year, for the first time, I’m fighting back against baseball.”