Daniel Susac will be the Sacramento area’s latest first-round MLB pick. How’d he get here?

Daniel Susac took a gamble coming out of Jesuit High School.

He entered the 2020 MLB draft, but he turned down $2 million from an MLB team and attended the University of Arizona.

That investment has paid off. The Arizona catcher is in position to be Sacramento’s first first-round draft pick since Nick Madrigal in 2018. Susac is projected to be selected in the 8-15 range Sunday, according to various mock drafts.

He is the 12th-ranked draft prospect, according to MLB.com.

“I was really close with a couple of teams on that day,” Susac said of the 2020 draft. “It all came down to that I think I just valued myself a little higher. I believed in myself. ... I bet on myself being in a better spot. I think it worked out.”

He added about not signing out of high school “Maybe (there is was a little regret) a week after the draft, I thought that was close. But once I stepped on campus, I was fully confident in myself. I knew it would work out.”

Draft slot money between picks No. 8 and No. 15 is between $4 and $5.5 million. Teams can sign a player for less than slot value but not more. There are typically backdoor negations between agents and teams. It’s not the same as the NBA and NFL drafts.

Going to Arizona, according to Susac, helped him grow. This past season, he led the Pac-12 in hits and total bases while hitting .366 with 12 home runs in 64 games.

“The last two years were huge,” Susac said. “I grew more as a leader and person (at Arizona) than I did as a player. I was ready out of high school as a player but where I got better is handling a (pitching) staff and being a better teammate. My game got better over two years and it was because the people and coaches I was around.”

Susac is invited to Los Angeles for the MLB draft but he has elected to stay in Sacramento and have a draft party with family and friends. He said it was very important to have those closest to him in one place on draft night.

“I wanted everyone that was close to me (that was) in town and for it to be a place where everyone could come,” Susac said. “I rather everyone I’m close with from Sacramento be able to come.”

A baseball hotbed in Sacramento

Susac is not the only local product hoping to be taken in the first round.

Woodland High School graduate Cooper Hjerpre is also projected to be drafted in the first round after two standout years at Oregon State. McClatchy’s Malcolm Moore is also projected to go in the first two rounds, if he can reach a deal with a team. Moore signed with Stanford and could take the same route Susac did out of high school.

“Sacramento has always had crazy talent,” Susac said. “If you look back through all the years, there are so many first-rounders. Seven guys from Elk Grove are in the big leagues right now. Sacramento is a hotbed for talent. Teams are starting to notice it. You see a lot of players signing with Division l schools out of Sacramento.”

Other recent first-rounders from the Sacramento area include Matt Manning from Sheldon and Dylan Carlson from Elk Grove in 2016 and Derek Hill in 2014 out of Elk Grove. There have been 10 top-15 selections from the area, according to Sactownbaseball.org.

A helpful hand from big brother

The Susac family is baseball royalty in Sacramento.

Oldest brother Andrew, also a catcher, was a second-round pick in the 2011 draft by the San Francisco Giants; he backed up Buster Posey on the Giants’ 2014 World Series team. He also had stints on the Milwaukee Brewers, Baltimore Orioles, Kansas City Royals and Pittsburgh Pirates.

Daniel’s other older brother, Matt, played at the University of Nevada. His younger cousin, Tonko, played with him at Arizona this past season. All of them went to Jesuit and were all coached at some point by Daniel’s dad Nick and Daniel’s uncle, Johnny.

“Baseball is one of the most family-oriented sports,” Daniel Susac said. “It’s something that usually passed on through generations. I was lucky enough to have a very rich group of people around me in terms of baseball knowledge.”

Andrew took a similar path to his kid brother. He was drafted out of high school in the 16th round of the 2009 draft. He opted not to sign and instead enrolled at Oregon State, where he raised his draft stock.

As Andrew puts it, he’s his brother’s biggest fan and also his biggest critic.

“I’m real proud,” Andrew Susac said. “Daniel would tell you the same thing that he appreciates me more now than maybe some of those scuffles we got into when we were younger. I was hard on him and wanted to get the best out of him because I know what it takes. My dad and uncle know what it takes to be mentally strong but also a good athlete. … If you ask most good players, that tough love is a good thing.

“He’s got a good demeanor about him. He’s got a good head on his shoulders which is the hardest part of this game. I found that out the hard way at a young age. … He worked hard his whole life. He’s self-driven, works out on his own and he enjoys it. It’s not a job to him.”

Living up to the hype

The hype around Daniel Susac started when he was a 9-year-old playing in Woodcreek Little League.

Susac was playing in the Majors division, which is for kids up to 12 years old. Kids would crowd the fence behind home plate with their phones out ready to record when Susac would step to the plate because they knew something big was about to happen.

There was a stretch when Susac opened the Little League season by hitting a home run in his first four at-bats. Teams avoided pitching to him after that.

That hype carried over to when he stepped on campus as a freshman at Jesuit. He was pulled up to the varsity team and was only the second player in the Marauders’ storied history to play as a freshman.

He felt the hype. And so did his family.

“When I was a freshman in high school, I started to feel it a little bit,” Daniel Susac said. “The older I got, the more I realized it was more of a blessing than a curse. I started to realize it’s a good thing to have pressure. It means you are good position because people either want to see you succeed or want to see you fail. Either way you can value that as a good thing.”

Andrew Susac added, “We all saw it, too. Everyone tries to compare Daniel to me and we are completely different bodies. Daniel is a lot longer and everything looks a little slower but he’s more efficient and quicker.”

That hype will turn into a dream come true when Susac hears his name called Sunday.

“It’s going to be a really fun one,” Susac said. “Especially for my family as well. All the amount of time they put in towards me and putting me first.”