By: J. Daniel Pearson
Positively Osceola
Published 7/27/20-26
Photos Courtesy of the Danville Dans
If he were a song, Nick Palmi would be climbing the Billboard Charts “With a bullet.”
The 2024 Osceola High standout has used an incredible year to not only secure a Division-1 scholarship, but has also started to capture the attention of Major League baseball organizations – all the way to the point where he was contacted by those scouts during the past Major League Draft in June.
Despite the positive developments, things did not start smoothly for Palmi year.
Signing with the College of Central Florida out of high school, Palmi was told after the exhibition fall season that they wanted to redshirt his freshman year. Their reasoning was that they had some returning upper-classmen at his position and wanted to preserve his four years of eligibility.
“That was a really a hard decision to accept. To me, the only way to really get better at baseball is to play. Instead, I ended up going to the practices and workouts and then had to watch the games,” he said. “It was hard to stay focused. but I decided to use that year to get bigger and stronger.” He did just that, using the year to add 15 pounds of muscle to his 5-11, 185-lb. frame.
But another decision he made, however, was to find another place to play. “Without any stats from the year before, there weren’t a lot of schools beating my door down,” Palmi said. “But some of the coaches at Hillsborough remembered me from high school and invited me in for a workout.”
Palmi would receive an offer and take advantage of the opportunity.
He would use that opportunity to post huge numbers in his first collegiate season, becoming one of the top players in the conference – hitting .412 with 13 home runs and 66 RBI. His favorite moment came in his first game and first official at-bat of his college career when he homered off his former team Central Florida College.
The next logical step was to play in a collegiate summer league. Palmi would select the Prospect League, located in the midweek. “There are a bunch of summer college leagues around the country, but the Prospect League was recommended to me because of the competition and the fact that they do a great job of keeping stats and analytics that the major league teams can follow,” Palmi said.
Palmi would be assigned to the Danville Dans in Illinois. He would pick up where he left off at Hillsborough — putting together another spectacular season where he hit .341 with 11 home runs, 10 triples and 44 RBI. Those numbers easily put him in the top 10 in those offensive categories.
One of the big differences between college and the summer league has been the use of wood bats. And although the NCAA mandated the use composite bats that more closely resemble the performance of wood bats, Palmi said there was still an absolute difference between the two. “In college, you could miss a little and still get a hard-hit ball, wood bats just have a different feel,” he said. “You really need to square the ball to the barrel on a wood bat.”
Whether using the composite bat of college or the wood bats required in summer leagues, Palmi’s statistics resulted in a staggering year. Combining his college and college summer league numbers, he recorded a .377 batting average, 24 home runs, 114 RBI and 66 extra-base hits in less than 100 games.
Perhaps the most impressive combined-stat were the 15 triples he hit in just 99 games. Putting that number in prospective, Arizona Diamondback speedster Corbin Carroll led the Major Leagues last year with 17 in a 162-game schedule. “No real explanation, I’ve always been a line drive type hitter. I played in a lot of big ball parks in both college and Prospect League and ball just seems to find the gaps for me,” Palmi said.
And while his play at Hillsborough put him on the pro scouts’ radar, earning him May workouts with the San Diego Padres and Miami Marlins, his big season with Danville resulted in the Padres contacting him during this June’s major league draft. Specifically they wanted to know what it would take financially to sign him if they selected him in the middle rounds.
“I really didn’t have an agent or an advisor lined up to help me, so those conversations were a little difficult,” Palmi said. “I didn’t want to settle for less and with NIL and college, I just decided to bet on myself and go to FAU. I will still be draft eligible next June and if I have a good season it will work itself out.”
With more than 100 games played between college and when his summer league ends this week, Palmi said it has been fun year but also an absolute grind. The Prospect League has teams stretched across seven states, including Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, resulting in many long bus trips, while playing six of seven games every week.
“It’s hard to step off a bus after a three or four-hour ride and then play a game the same night,” said. “But everyone in this league wants to play at the professional level and you know that playing every day and tough travel is part of the minor league lifestyle. It’s something that definitely will help prepare me for the future.”
Another way playing in summer league has helped him – although in a weird way – has been his defense. “Danville has perhaps the worst infield in the league. They pretty much call it a goat pasture. I have had slow hit ground balls hit a rock and pop up in my face,” Palmi joked. “You really have to be on your toes playing on that field, so when we get to play on a nice field or turf, it’s really makes the defensive part of the game so much easier.”
As he heads Florida Atlantic University and the next chapter in his baseball life, Palmi says the goal is simple. “I just want to improve every day I am there. I need to work on things, including cutting down on my strike outs and continue to improve both at the plate and in the field. The ultimate goal is to play professional baseball, so I want to build towards that goal.”
