How Good Is Jake Bird?

Jake Bird is an American professional baseball pitcher for the Colorado Rockies of Major League Baseball (MLB).

Bird was a student at Stevenson Ranch’s West Ranch High School. During his final year of high school, he committed to play college baseball at UCLA, where he pitched to a 1.55 ERA over 58 innings.

Undrafted in the 2014 MLB draft, he chose to attend UCLA instead. The Falmouth Commodores of the Cape Cod Baseball League was where he played collegiate summer baseball in 2016.

During his senior year at UCLA in 2018, he had a 7–4 record and started 16 games with a 2.18 ERA and 61 Ks in 111+2/3 innings, leading the Pac-12 Conference. The Colorado Rockies drafted him in the 2018 MLB draft, taking him in the fifth round.

To begin his professional career, Bird played in the Rookie-level Pioneer League with the Grand Junction Rockies, where he was a four-game winner in relief with a 3.38 ERA in 26+2/3 innings worked.

In 2019, he pitched for the Class A South Atlantic League’s Asheville Tourists, going 7-2 with a 3.62 ERA and eighty strikeouts in 97 innings (he was named an All-Star with the team).

How Good Is Jake Bird?

Jake Bird stands 6-foot-4 and weighs 210 pounds, but he lacks the kind of explosiveness that would make him stand out from the crowd. He uses a sinking fastball that travels between 89 and 93 miles per hour and pitches to contact.