Bourne Braves outfielder Ethan Conrad (Photo by Shannen Hardy/CCBL)

Wake Forest’s Ethan Conrad wins 2024 Summer Breakout Prospect Award

Summer Baseball Patrick Ebert - September 11, 2024

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For college baseball fans and prospect followers alike, it’s time to get to know Wake Forest outfielder Ethan Conrad. After two impressive seasons at Marist – he collectively slashed .359/.425/.587 during his freshman and sophomore years with the Red Foxes – Conrad has opted to transfer to Wake Forest. He made that decision at the beginning of the summer, even before the start of the Cape Cod Baseball League season, where Conrad continued to play at a high level.

Playing for the Bourne Braves, Conrad slashed .385/.433/.486, finishing among the Cape league leaders in batting, runs, hits, stolen bases and OPS. He even earned All-Star Game MVP honors for the West team with a 1-for-2 performance that included an RBI double, a stolen base and two runs scored.

It marks the second year in a row Wake Forest has plucked a talented player away from a small school, doing so with infielder Seaver King a year ago, who also enjoyed a strong performance on the Cape prior to arriving in Winston-Salem. And following in King’s footsteps, for his meteoric rise Conrad has been named D1 Baseball’s 2024 Summer Breakout Prospect.

After enjoying success at every level he’s played, Conrad feels prepared to make an impact for the Demon Deacons.

“I feel like my whole life growing up I’ve always known that I’ve been super talented – I always felt like I belonged – but I’ve never really been tested as hard as I was on the Cape,” Conrad said of his summer experience. “Getting the opportunity to go down there and be around some of the best players, and still be myself, was really eye-opening for me to know that I can still play how I play. At the end of the day it still was just baseball.”

“The talent was a big jump from anywhere I’ve ever played,” Conrad added of the overall talent level found on the Cape. “Everyone around me was really good. It was more fun, more challenging, you really had to lock in more and as much as possible to be able to succeed there. That was fun to be able to experience that.”

Conrad hails from Saugerties, N.Y., about 45 minutes north of Marist College. A physical, 6-foot-3, 200-pound athlete, you won’t miss Conrad when he takes the playing field. And as good as he is with the bat in his hands, it might be his speed that stands out the most. He stole 19 bases in each of his first two seasons in college and he stole 19 more this summer with Bourne. His profile on X states that he runs a 6.5-second 40-yard dash, which is game-changing speed from a scouting perspective.

Coming out of high school, however, the interest in Conrad didn’t match his high-level talent. Given his athleticism he played quite a few sports while growing up, including basketball, football, soccer and karate. By the time he began high school baseball was his primary focus.

The pandemic played a role in his exposure, limiting the number of events he could travel to during his sophomore and junior seasons, and his only two offers were from schools in his own backyard.

“I was definitely fully focused on baseball, but after COVID hit it was kind of tough for me to be seen so late,” Conrad recalled. “I would say I was under-recruited and ended up with only a few offers, Albany and Marist, and I just felt that Marist was the best fit. I got a pretty good offer from them and I was able to stay close to home, so I thought that would be good, go there and play right away, which I thought was crucial.”

At the beginning of the summer Conrad was originally scheduled to play in the New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL) but worked with Wake Forest after committing to play with them to get out of that contract. His time in the portal lasted 10 days, starting June 3 and ending on June 13 when he signed on with the Deacs.

He spent a lot of his time with PAC-Hub advisor Kevin Hinchey, who helps navigate the transfer portal for young student athletes. There were a lot of phone calls involved, conversations with different coaches and scheduling visits, as Conrad and Hinchey – both natives of Saugerties – set up shop and spent the first few days of the summer at Conrad’s high school field to get a better understanding of what opportunities were available.

For Conrad, who values spending time with family and friends doing just about anything from fishing, going to the beach or playing pool and ping pong, the visit to Wake Forest was a crucial part of his journey and set the university apart from all his other choices.

“It didn’t happen until I was actually on campus and able to meet the people in person,” Conrad said. “Just the way they described the day-to-day lifestyle and relationships that the players have with each other and the coaches have with the players. I didn’t feel that from any other school as much as I did from Wake. Deep down I had the confidence that once I got there I was going to mesh with these people and really felt wanted by these people. Not just for my baseball talent, but also for the person I am.

“It’s such a huge decision, and you only get to make it one time. The biggest part of the whole process was going somewhere where the people around me aren’t just going to help me succeed but be happy, be able to be myself.”

Wake Forest head coach Tom Walter has been with the Deacs’ since 2010, improving year by year, which culminated in their College World Series appearance in 2023. They’ve made the NCAA Tournament each of the past three seasons and the bar has been significantly raised when it comes to program expectations.

After adding Seaver King out of Division II Wingate a year ago, Walter and his staff – which includes assistant coaches Bill Cilento and Corey Muscara – plucked up another small school phenom with first round draft potential.

“We’re super excited about him,” Walter said about Conrad. “We’ve been watching him in some individual work and in the weight room and he’s a special athlete; he can do it all. He can run, he can throw, he can hit for power, he can hit for average. He’s one of those five-tool guys that you get really excited about. This summer was fun watching him put it together and burst onto the national scene.”

The Wake Forest coaching staff received a few calls about Conrad leading up to the summer when they chose to make a strong push for his services. It started with a call to Cilento by Tony Rossi, the former long-time head coach at Siena, who brought up Conrad’s elite talents while noting he was easily the best player in the MAAC.

Several calls were made to other coaches and scouts in the area to confirm Rossi’s report, and Muscara’s connection with Marist head coach Lance Ratchford helped cement the positive connection. Further time spent watching video and analyzing data was made to make sure there weren’t any red flags, and after Conrad’s visit to Wake Forest, he officially became a Demon Deacon.

“We do a deep scrub on the data, just to make sure there’s nothing alarming there, like he’s got a huge chase percentage, or a huge in-zone swing-and-miss percentage, things like that,” Walter said of the work that goes into evaluating players like Conrad and King. “We watch a lot of video and try to make a determination as to whether we think the swing’s going to hold up against ACC pitching. Clearly in both of those cases they have plenty of bat speed and athleticism, and they’ve got good bat-to-ball skills.”

And similar to Conrad getting a positive impression of Wake Forest during his visit, the coaching staff got a positive impression of Conrad as well. While personal connections were very important for Conrad, who will be moving away from the northeast for the first time in his life, Walter and his staff need to make sure their players buy in to the program.

This is especially true in the portal era where intangible qualities like culture and personality could be easy to dismiss.

“We’re looking for someone who cares about Wake Forest,” Walter explained. “We don’t want them to come in and kind of rent us for a year and then just go into the draft. When they leave here we want them to consider themselves Wake Forest baseball players. We want guys who buy into who we are and what we do and add value to our team culture.”

Looking ahead to the fall Conrad has been penciled in as Wake Forest’s starter in center field. It’s not a position he has a lot of experience playing, however, spending the majority of his time at first base throughout his baseball career. Given his 6-foot-3, 200-pound stature and left/left profile it’s easy to understand why he played first base. But when you factor in his game-changing speed you try to find the position where that is best put to use.

Conrad didn’t start playing the outfield until college, but he opened his sophomore season at Marist at first base due to a team need. The team’s first baseman to end the 2024 season, Justin Kapuscinski, had an injury to begin the year that prevented him from playing anything other than DH. Once Kapuscinski was healthy enough to play first base, Conrad shift to right field and continued to play that position for the Bourne Braves.

Similar to the overall adjustment, transferring from Marist to Wake Forest, you have to dream a little on Conrad’s potential to believe he’ll be able to handle center field on an everyday basis. But when you watch him play and you see the speed and overall athleticism it’s hard to believe he won’t be an asset both offensively and defensively.

“I’m always trying to stay one step ahead, always trying to be ready for the next play,” Conrad said of his approach to the game. “I definitely like to play fast, once I get on the bases I like to try and pick out a good pitch to run on. Hustling out of the box, trying to turn a single into a double or trying to turn a double into a triple with my speed.”