As Jaxon Grossman jumped on to the dog pile after the Salt Lake Community College baseball team won the National Junior College Athletic Association championship on May 31 in Grand Junction, Colo., he thought back to the remarkable baseball journey he has traveled.
The 2022 King Kekaulike High School graduate, a 6-foot-4, 220-pound right-handed pitcher, spent the 2023 season at the University of Utah where he pitched in just two games. He sat out the 2024 season to rehabilitate a slight injury, regroup and find his love for the game again.
Then, this season he was the pitcher of the tournament at the JuCo national championship tournament, collecting two wins on the mound, allowing just three earned runs and eight hits in 11 innings. For the season, he finished 6-0 with 5.15 earned run average over 14 appearances which included nine starts. He struck out 55 and walked 18 in 50 2/3 innings.
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In his first two outings of the season, he touched 99 mph on the radar gun which makes him a prime candidate to be selected in the Major League Baseball draft July 13-14.
“It’s been a crazy journey going from Utah to taking a year off to going on to being on a national championship team, it’s just unreal,” Grossman said Thursday after returning home to Maui.
He announced his commitment to play at the University of Oklahoma on May 6 and is signed to play for the West Virginia Black Bears in the MLB Draft League this summer, but he is leaning towards staying home to prepare for the draft or OU in the fall.
He has thrived since taking a year off after a rough season at Utah straight out of King Kekaulike.
“It was definitely a struggle, but it just made me want to play even more, just gave me the hunger to want to be better than I was,” Grossman said.
There is no question where he wants to end up now: Major Leaguer.
“Nothing else,” Grossman said. “That’s all I want.”
Grossman is keeping pace with fellow Maui baseball players in college. Four players from the Maui Interscholastic League — Ben Zeigler-Namoa, Dylan Waite, David Vergel de Dios and Konnor Palmeira — played for the University of Hawai‘i this season, the most ever in a single season for the Rainbow Warriors.
Wehiwa Aloy was named the Southeastern Conference Player of the Year and his brother Kuhio Aloy was named first-team all-SEC — both went to Baldwin High School. Wehiwa Aloy is also a finalist for national player of the year awards, the Golden Spikes Award and the Dick Howser Trophy.
“Hawai‘i baseball, in general, is very slept on,” Grossman said. “There’s a bunch of guys that get to places like those guys at Arkansas, and there’s guys at smaller D-I schools that are very good. They didn’t get as much opportunities as other people. And then there’s guys that didn’t have the opportunity at all to play college baseball — and I know some of those guys, they could be playing.”
There are times that Grossman has to pinch himself to realize that he has found his baseball life, again, much like he had after high school when he was also a draft prospect.
Now, he will forever have a national championship ring from the 2025 season in Salt Lake.
“There was a lot of up and downs throughout the season,” Grossman said. “But I pushed through and then we just came out on top and just an awesome feeling to just be in that situation.”
In a month, he may become a professional through the MLB draft. If that doesn’t happen, he will be in Norman, Okla., in August.
“I mean, both,” Grossman said when asked what he is looking forward to. “If I had the opportunity to get drafted, that’s just an amazing opportunity. And then going to Oklahoma, that’d be an amazing opportunity, too. I’ve just got to see what happens with the draft and kind of decide from there.”
Not bad to have options like that when a year ago he was out of baseball.
“I actually hurt myself at the last practice at Utah,” Grossman said. “I basically took that year off to rehab and get myself healthy for this year. I had just a little something off my shoulder, but I decided to leave Utah and I didn’t want to go to another school not feeling well.
“So I just said, ‘I’m just going to take this year off and just see what happens.’ I’m 100% now.”
Grossman admitted he is proud of himself as professional baseball or major college baseball awaits.
“I’m super proud,” he said. “I just know that I have a lot left in me and it doesn’t stop here.”
“Monday Morning Maui Sports” columns appear weekly on Monday mornings with updates on local sports in the Maui Interscholastic League and elsewhere around Maui County. Please send column ideas — anything having to do with sports in Maui County — as well as results and photos to rob@hjinow.org.
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