Daniel Susac could be the next member of the family selected in the MLB draft
Daniel Susac was destined to be a baseball player beyond high school. He grew up around the game and watched his older brothers excel at the sport.
Now in his senior year at Jesuit High School, Susac has an opportunity to be selected in next month’s MLB draft, which has been shortened to five rounds.
He’s been that good since he was young. His dad can remember one of the first moments he knew his son could be special. At 6 years old, Daniel hit his first home run at Charlie Richards Field in Roseville. The fence is 200 feet from home plate.
“I remember (my son) Matt coming home screaming saying you won’t believe what just happened,” Nick Susac said. “After he hit that home run, I knew he had a chance to be pretty good.”
Daniel Susac’s earliest memories of the game go back to that Roseville field.
“My brother Matt and I would walk or bike to Charlie Richards Field every day to hit,” Daniel said “I remember that day I hit four buckets and I kept hitting the fence. My brother was ready to leave but I told him to give me 30 more (balls to hit). I ended up hitting my first home run with like five baseballs left. I remember rounding the bases and going crazy that day.”
Around the same time, Daniel’s uncle Johnny Susac made a bold prediction. The Jesuit assistant coach thought Daniel had the potential to be better than his brother Andrew, who at the time was one of the top high school players in the county.
“In front of some people in 2007 at a crab feed, I said Daniel would be better than his brother,” Johnny Susac said. “At this time, Andrew was one of the top high school baseball players in the county but Daniel was a different kid who was very competitive. At 6 years old when every kid was watching Barney, he was watching SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight on ESPN. He is the kind of kid who would go in the backyard by himself and just play baseball.
“I knew he would be a different cat,” Johnny added. “He had older brothers who he wanted to play baseball with all the time and be with. He wanted to hang out with all the Jesuit baseball players when he was young. Daniel’s family built a wiffle ball field when he was younger in his backyard and he would play with all the high school players until 1 a.m. He always wanted to be competitive even with anyone, even if they were way older.”
Woodcreek Little League days
Playing against older competition was a theme of Daniel’s childhood.
By the time he was 9, he was playing in the Majors division at Woodcreek Little League, which is for kids up to 12 years old.
Everyone who watched Daniel during his time at Woodcreek Little League saw something special. 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.
“It happened a lot,” Nick Susac said on his son being intentionally walked. “When he started the season by hitting four home runs in a row, that was it. That was all she wrote. They would just walk him.”
Daniel remembers just wanting to hit. His competitive nature took over.
“It was weird to me when I was young,” Daniel said. “I would get mad because I loved to hit.”
The Sacramento Capitals
The travel ball team Daniel Susac played for growing up was the Sacramento Capitals.
Nick Susac and his brother Johnny Susac helped start the team. The two of them revamped an abandoned Little League field near Arden Mall to play and practice on. The Capitals stayed together from age 7 until high school ball started.
“I told all the kids and parents if you really loved baseball, this is where you are going to want to be,” Nick Susac said. “That team was so talented and full of future Division l players. I remember getting all of our kids together at 14 years old for an 18-U tournament at Oregon State. We went and won the whole thing. It was a fun group.”
Some notable players that played on the Capitals were Tino Bethancourt, Carson Blatnick, Garrett Forrester, Kai Miranda, T.J. Nichols, Mitchell Parker, Brock Rudy, Tyler Soderstrom, Jake Torres and Luke Williams.
“That was a pretty crazy team,” Daniel Susac said. “We had a lot of people on that team play Division l but it was full of great people. It’s crazy to think so much talent can come from the same place on the same travel team.”
Making history for a storied program
Daniel Susac still demands the same amount of attention he did during his time at Woodcreek Little League. At Jesuit’s last game of the season against De La Salle, there were more than 40 MLB scouts in attendance.
Jesuit opened its doors in 1963 and only two players in program history have played varsity all four years. Phil Cantelme graduated from Jesuit in 1977 and is the current catching coach at the school. He was the first boy to play varsity all four years at Jesuit.
Daniel Susac was the second.
“Phil has done a lot for me,” Daniel Susac said. “We do a lot of catching drills together and he always tells me what to do and what not to do and how to get better. He’s been a great coach to me all four years at Jesuit.”
Tonko has one more year left at Jesuit but could join Daniel next year at the University of Arizona; both players committed there last fall. Of course, that hinges on whether Daniel gets drafted in June.
“It was sad that (the game against De La Salle) was our last game together at Jesuit,” Daniel said. “Obviously at Arizona we can play again. It was surreal but we went out on a good note. We have always been on the same page and our chemistry was getting even better.”
Big league dreams like big brother
Daniel is ranked as the 67th-best prospect in the MLB.com draft rankings and has the potential to go in the first few rounds of this year’s draft.
His older brother Andrew went though the same draft process when he was a senior at Jesuit. Andrew was taken in the 16th round out of high school but went to Oregon State.
After spending two years at Oregon State, Andrew was drafted by the San Francisco Giants in the second round of the 2011 draft. He backed up Buster Posey during the Giants 2014 World Series championship run and is currently in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization.
“Daniel had to carry the Susac name,” Johnny said. “In 2014, everyone knew who Andrew was after the Giants won the World Series, especially the people in Roseville. Andrew had the keys to the city.”
Dating back to that Roseville Little League field, Daniel’s brothers helped get him to the cusp of a major-league draft pick.
“They are both my biggest supporters,” Daniel said. “Andrew has shown me so many catching drills my whole life to help improve me. He always wants me to succeed and to be better than him, which is something a lot of people won’t do. Same with my brother Matt.”