Cubs select Cam Smith 14th-overall in the 2024 MLB Draft

Cam Smith doesn’t really remember his first trip to Wrigley Field.

The Florida State baseball product has pictures of him in Chicago from when he was seven or eight years old with his grandparents, Patty and Bill Thomas. Those pictures help him recall some of that trip, when the Chicago Cubs were on the road and the group took a tour of the ballpark, but he was just a little too young to really remember the experience.

Now, the 21-year-old Smith will get another chance to create a lasting memory at the Friendly Confines.

On Day 1 of the 2024 MLB Draft on Sunday, the Cubs drafted him with the 14th-overall pick (with a slot value of about $5.07 million). And he’s already looking forward to taking another trip to Wrigley.

“We’re just so excited to go back there once again, and I can actually remember the experience [this time around] and it’ll be engraved in my head forever,” Smith said on a Zoom call with the media from his home in South Florida. “I’ll never forget about it. So yeah, it’s going to be a treat, man, and I assume we’re going to get emotional again.”

Now a 6-foot-3, 224-pound, right-handed hitting third-base prospect, Smith was a highly-rated draft prospect coming out of Palm Beach Central (Fla.) High School two years ago, but he went undrafted and joined the Seminoles. The Cubs, though, had him on their radar all the way back then. Vice president of scouting Dan Kantrovitz recalled meeting Smith and his mother after one of his games. There, Smith took batting practice just for the group of four representatives from the Cubs, and they kept in contact since then.

So even though Smith said he didn’t really have any Zoom interviews or phone calls with the Cubs once the college baseball season ended, Kantrovitz felt like they had a good enough relationship to where it wasn’t as necessary.

“[Area scout] Ike Ballou did a really good job of just staying in touch and kind of keeping a pulse for the situation,” Kantrovitz said. “The reality is we felt pretty comfortable with it. It wasn’t somebody that we felt like we needed to have too much extra time with the at the combine or anything like that.”

As the two sides stayed in contact once Smith entered college, the Cubs were able to watch him blossom into what Kantrovitz called “a pretty complete hitter.”

His numbers improved across the board from his first to his second year at Florida State, which ended in a semifinal appearance in the College World Series. His batting average jumped from .258 to .387, his OPS went from .843 to 1.142, he recorded 14 more extra-base hits (39, including 16 home runs) and 21 more RBIs (57). One of his most significant areas of improvement was his strikeout rate. Smith struck out just 14.9 percent of the time as a sophomore, a far cry from the 28.7 percent strikeout rate he posted as a freshman.

In between the two seasons, Smith stood out in the Cape Cod League last summer, hitting .347 with a .981 OPS. He also earned the league’s Outstanding Pro Prospect honors, and it’s just been constant improvement since then.

Kantrovitz credited that to mechanical changes in Smith’s swing, specifically where he was holding his hands. Kantrovitz said that changed his load and made him more direct to the ball. There was also a noticeable improvement in Smith’s mental approach, where Kantrovitz saw “probably a little bit less guessing and more reading and reacting and recognizing spin,” which resulted in his strong second season.

“He definitely made a lot of progress from his freshman year to sophomore year,” Kantrovitz said. “We view him as somebody that’s really still on the upswing, somebody with that pretty steep trend line of improvement. He had a good freshman year, but then he got to the Cape and just started to demolish the ball there and then carried that same success into the ACC this past season.

“We still see sort of room for improvement, and I think it’s just kind of on a pretty steady upward climb there. So, certainly not somebody that I think has plateaued by any means, and somebody whose rate of improvement and ability to improve and make some adjustments stood out to us.”

Along with the mechanical change, Smith also found something else to which he attributes his improvements.

“Basically, the biggest thing for me was finding ways to slow this game down. I found something that helped me up until now to slow this game down, truly, and that was meditation,” Smith said. “I took pride in meditation, and it got to a point where it was a hobby. Doing it before [and] after the games. During the games, even, when I’m at third base or on the on-deck circle. Meditation is something that slowed my heartbeat down, and that’s something huge that gets you a long way in this game.”

It’ll be interesting to see if Smith can follow the mold of his fellow Cubs recent first-round picks.

Jordan Wicks (2021, Kansas State), Cade Horton (2022, Oklahoma) and Matt Shaw (2023, Maryland) all were selected from the collegiate ranks and have quickly moved through the system. Wicks made his major league debut last season and was on the Cubs’ Opening Day roster this year. Horton is the No. 17 prospect in baseball (per MLB Pipeline), and though he’s currently rehabbing a shoulder injury, he’s already with Triple-A Iowa. Shaw is MLB’s No. 29 prospect, just participated in the All-Star Futures Game over the weekend and could be in line for a promotion to Triple-A Iowa this summer.

Could Smith be next in line to climb the ladder fast?

“With the farm system and guys shooting up, I mean, that’s my goal,” he said. “That’s the goal is to get to the big leagues as quick as you can, so I’m excited to get playing.”

There’s obviously still a long way to go before anyone can properly evaluate the Cubs’ pick of Smith in the first round. Plenty of prospects don’t pan out at the big league level, so he has a lot of work to do to get to a level where he can contribute for the Cubs.

But that’s something for Smith to worry about in the future. Sunday night was a time for him to celebrate getting picked to move on to the next level of baseball.

“I just got a big support system, so to hear my name called, I broke down in tears immediately, man,” Smith said. “It all hit me at once.”

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