Nick Patten is probably more accustomed to the whole dorm thing than most of his fellow teammates on the GCL Pirates.
Specifically, he’s fairly comfortable living in a dorm in Bradenton, Fla.
The irony of this is that Patten, the Pirates’ 28th round pick in this year’s draft, grew up closer to PNC Park than Pirate City. Growing up in Meridian, Butler County, Patten spent his senior year of high school at IMG Academy, which is across Bradenton from the Pirates’ spring training facility.
For Patten, a former baseball and basketball player at Butler High School and a product of the University of Delaware, being drafted by his hometown team was a dream come true. The dorm rooms at Pirate City are named after former All-Stars, and Patten is living in the Freddy Sanchez room. As a kid, he would go to ballgames at PNC Park; he saw Homer Bailey’s no-hitter. When he was a sophomore at Butler, Patten played a game at PNC Park.
“That was like a dream, I guess, and something I thought was a really cool experience and something I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” he said by phone from Pirate City.
As a multi-sport athlete in Butler, Patten said he didn’t participate in the travel teams and summer leagues that young serious ballplayers tend to join. He did, however, have a personal coach in his father, Daryl, a former NAIA All-American third baseman at Geneva College.
When the younger Patten decided to pursue baseball seriously, he transferred to IMG Academy, a boarding school for student-athletes, for his senior year. Growing up, he was a contact hitter who primarily played third base and shortstop, but the left side of the infield was filled. There was an opening at first base, however, so he put in extra work with a coach to make the transition. The position stuck, and Patten remains a power-hitting first baseman.
Despite being near Pirate City, he never made it over to the Pirates’ spring training games, although he recalls seeing Andrew McCutchen and Pedro Alvarez working out at IMG Academy.
Through a coach at IMG, Patten was connected to Delaware coach Jim Sherman, committing to Blue Hens so late in the recruiting cycle that he wasn’t able to receive a scholarship until his junior year.
In three seasons at Delaware, Patten had 35 home runs, a .532 slugging percentage and a .279 batting average. Listed by the Pirates at 6 feet 4, 205 pounds, this season he had a .241 average, 9 homers and 30 RBIs in 58 games.
Surrounded by his family and girlfriend in Butler, he got the call from the Pirates on the third and final day of the draft. Patten said he contemplated deferring his move to the pros, but decided to take the leap.
“I kind of knew in my heart — and my family as well — that this is the step I wanted to take,” Patten said. “It’s always been a childhood dream to play professional baseball.”
Patten and Chad Kuhl, a fellow Delaware product, met during the offseason when Kuhl was working out at the team’s facilities. Kuhl, who remains in close touch with Sherman and whose parents still attend Delaware games, was eager to have a fellow Blue Hen in the Pirates organization.
“It’s cool to have that small-school, small-town presence,” Kuhl said. “I think that him getting drafted and him getting drafted by this organization, it means a lot that they can scout anywhere. It doesn’t matter if it’s a cold-weather state.”
Elizabeth Bloom: ebloom@post-gazette.com and Twitter @BloomPG.
Correction, posted July 20, 2018: Pirates draft pick Nick Patten did not graduate from Butler High School. An earlier headline and photo caption incorrectly stated his affiliation to the school.
First Published: July 19, 2018, 11:00 a.m.