A’s No. 4 pick draws comparisons to Matt Olson: ‘He was No. 1 on our board’
Oakland Athletics selected Wake Forest first baseman Nick Kurtz with the No. 4 overall pick in the MLB draft.
The Athletics have officially made their final first-round pick of the franchise’s Oakland era, selecting Wake Forest’s Nick Kurtz fourth overall on Sunday in the 2024 Major League Baseball draft.
Kurtz, a 21-year-old first baseman, slashed .306/.531/.763 in his junior season with the Demon Deacons.
“Nick was the first person on our draft list in January when we met,” said A’s scouting director Eric Kubota. “He was the No. 1 pick on our board then, and he still was No. 1 on our board now. We like him for a ton of different reasons as scouts. We see a really advanced hitter with amazing zone awareness. Big power.
“He brings more than just that. We all, to a man, think he’s a very, very good first baseman. Chance for a Gold Glove-type first baseman. In a lot of ways, he reminds us of Matt Olson. That’s the easy comparison for us to make.”
A native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Kurtz led the NCAA in walk rate at 28.5% and is the Wake Forest record holder for career walks.
“He doesn’t swing at balls out of the strike zone,” said Mike Kinney, Kurtz’s high school coach at Baylor School in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His strike zone awareness is incredible, and the ability to get his barrel to the baseball is unlike very few. Very few kids have that ability to see the baseball that deep and still be able to get their barrel to it.”
The A’s had the fourth overall pick in the draft despite finishing with the worst record in Major League Baseball last season at 50-112. The Cleveland Guardians, who finished 76-86 in 2023, won the MLB Draft Lottery and the No. 1 overall pick despite entering with a 2% chance to win.
Oakland, along with the Kansas City Royals and Colorado Rockies, entered the lottery with the best chance to win the No. 1 pick at 18.3%.
The A’s No. 4 pick was their highest since they selected left-handed pitcher Mark Mulder No. 2 overall out of Michigan State in 1998. Mulder made All-Star teams with Oakland in 2003 and 2004 and led the American League with 21 wins in 2001.
The Athletics face an uncertain future as they prepare to head to Sacramento next year, but their newest draft pick is committed to compartmentalizing the franchise’s off-field turmoil.
“Letting external factors not really affect me is really going to be the hard part about all that stuff, just because there’s a lot of moving around,” Kurtz said. “Just trying to let the main thing be the main thing. I like to say that a lot. There’s a lot of things going on, but when you can do that, you’ll be in good shape.”
Kurtz’s focus at the plate is one of his elite traits. He led the NCAA with 78 walks during the 2024 season and credits his multi-sport background with helping develop his batter’s eye.
Kurtz played football and basketball growing up and was also a promising pitching prospect early in high school.
“I think it can’t not help,” Kurtz said. “I feel like the more you do, the more you can do. You can always find a way to use it in baseball. Baseball uses so many different things that there’s nothing that can hurt it.”
Kurtz’s background as a pitcher aided his approach at the plate, even though pitching wasn’t always his favorite thing to do.
“I actually think it really helped a lot of the time,” Kurtz said. “I would think to myself, ‘If I was still pitching, what would I do to get me out?’ That’s a lot of the things that would come into my mind. So I’m looking at my at-bats with a game plan to get me out.
“The transition itself, though, was super easy. I never loved pitching. I knew it was never going to be my thing. I did it because I was a tall left-handed pitcher, I had potential, that type of thing. I did it because it was going to help me get into college at first. I always knew I was a hitter at heart. I knew I always had it in me. I knew that if I spent all my time on hitting, kind of let go of the pitching at some point, that it was going to turn out well for me.”
The Athletics led off the second round by selecting Louisiana State University third baseman Tommy White at No. 40 overall. The 21-year-old White slashed .330/.401/.638 with the Tigers in 2024 and ranks No. 20 on MLB.com’s Top 250 Draft Prospects list.
White, nicknamed “Tommy Tanks,” transferred to LSU from North Carolina State in 2022 and slashed .374/.432/.725 in 2023 as the Tigers won the College World Series title. He was named to the CWS All-Tournament Team that year.
“For us, he was one of the best college hitters in the draft,” Kubota said. “Coming in in January, we felt that way. It was a little different situation for him this year because he did not have Dylan Crews hitting behind him, so he probably didn’t see as many pitches. But we just think Tommy’s a really advanced hitter with big power, as his numbers would attest.”
Oakland went back to the Baton Rouge well to draft LSU left-handed pitcher Gage Jump with the 73rd overall selection, the last pick in Competitive Balance Round B. Jump posted a 3.47 ERA in and 101/22 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 83 innings pitched with the Tigers in 2024.
The MLB draft continues on Monday and Tuesday. Rounds 3-10 will occur on Monday, and rounds 11-20 will be held on Tuesday.
Please check back for updates to this story.