The spotlight has burned brightly on Bryce Rainer ever since he was a freshman. That year, he helped lead Harvard-Westlake High School to a CIF-Southern District Section Division I title, throwing a complete game in the semifinal of the tournament. The title was the second in school history, a history that includes future MLB stars Jack Flaherty, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Max Fried and Lucas Giolito, among others.
Scouts have flocked to watch Rainer play for the past four years, but rather than wither under the scrutiny, he has thrived. He starred at the National High School Invitational earlier this spring and hit a career-best .505 during his senior season, while leading Harvard-Westlake to the CIF-SS final game. Though the stakes have continued to rise every year as he’s moved closer to being draft-eligible, Rainer has never let the pressure bother him.
“I really tried not to think about it too much,” he said last month at the MLB Draft Combine. “At the end of the day, it’s just a ranking. It doesn’t really mean much. You can rise and fall as easily as anyone else. I just think about it as playing the sport that I love, and if rankings come with that, with success, then that’s awesome.”
Rainer entered this season as one of the most highly regarded high school talents in the 2024 class, and he was the top high school player listed in Keith Law’s most recent top-100 prospects rating, coming in at No. 8. Law has Rainer going with the No. 7 pick to the St. Louis Cardinals in his latest mock draft.
His confidence in his abilities allowed Rainer to make a surprising decision after his freshman season. Rather than continue to play a two-way role for Harvard-Westlake, Rainer elected to focus on being a position player. He didn’t pitch at all his sophomore season and then threw only a handful of innings his junior and senior seasons. Though Rainer intrigued plenty of scouts with his 96 mph fastball, his prospect status only grew as he established himself as a smooth fielding shortstop with an above-average arm, a feel to hit and power potential from the left side.
But has he ruled out pitching altogether? Rainer has left that door open.
“It’s definitely something I would reconsider,” he says of the decision to stop pitching full-time. “I threw a little bit this year, but we just felt there wasn’t really a need to go out and throw a bunch of innings early on in high school.”
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