W.F. West's Drew Reynolds Commits to Texas Tech Baseball

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RED RAIDERS: Reynolds Verbally Commits after Missing Nearly Entire Sophomore Season to Hand Injury

It was March 2019, just four games into Drew Reynold’s sophomore season as a catcher for W.F. West baseball, when he swung at an outside pitch on a 1-1 count, fouling it off and hammering the knob of the bat into his right hand; his throwing hand.

He knew immediately something was wrong, and when he couldn’t extend one of his fingers he told his coach he couldn’t hit. His coach told him to shake it off. Reynolds stepped back into the batter’s box with the bases loaded, able to hold the bat with just three of his five fingers on his right hand and hit an infield blooper for an out. He then caught the next inning.

Reynolds, sensing it was more than just a bruise, went to a doctor after the game. The doctor didn’t notice any breaks on the X-ray and told him it was likely a strain.

So Reynolds went back to playing. His coaches would have him hit wiffle balls to ease him back to the plate. But it wasn’t until an entire month had gone by, where Reynolds would catch games but not hit due to the excruciating pain, that he and his dad decided they had had enough.

“I was like, “Dad, what should we do?’” Reynolds said. “I’m tired of just catching and not hitting.”

They decided to visit a hand specialist who took X-rays and within a day they had located the problem. Reynolds had broken his hamate bone, one of the hand’s eight carpal bones. Three days later he had surgery to remove the bone.

“You actually don’t need the bone, so all they did was take it out,” Reynolds said.

It’s a fairly common injury among baseball players, especially MLB players, and recovery time ranges from weeks to months. Yankees star Giancarlo Stanton was out for three months during the 2015 season after breaking his hamate bone.

It was a devastating injury for Reynolds, who would spend the next five months rehabbing.

Reynolds had spent most of his childhood as a pitcher until eighth grade when he and his dad looked online to see which varsity spots would be opening up the following year. They saw both the Bearcats’ catchers were seniors, so Reynolds began training to be a catcher.

“I was like, ‘OK, I could have a chance,’” Reynolds said. “So I start catching more that summer and that’s when I really get into it.”



Reynolds caught the first varsity game his freshman year at Ridgefield, and then he and a teammate would switch off the rest of the season to give each other breaks. He was primed for a breakout season as a sophomore before the season-ending injury.

He was finally cleared to play in August 2019 and eventually joined the EnFuego elite travel team based out of Lacey. By the start of winter meetings in January 2020, Reynolds wasn’t back to the level he was at before the injury, but it didn’t take long for him to start a precipitous climb that got him noticed by Steve Avila, EnFuego’s coach and the president of EnFuego Baseball Academy. Avila was also the former northwest scouting supervisor for the Cleveland Indians. He knew talent when he saw it.

“He pulls me aside and compliments me on working hard,” Reynolds said. “He tells me, ‘Don’t stop working. You’re the most improved.’ His name in baseball is a huge thing. He has a lot of connections and a lot of people trust him. He just saw the upside in me; the potential that I have.”

That fueled Reynolds to keep grinding and it wasn’t long until Avila approached him again, but this time with something even better. Avila told Reynolds he had a few guys he’d like to have talk to him: those three guys were scouts from UCLA, the University of Washington and Texas Tech University.

“I was like, ‘Are you actually serious?,’” Reynolds said. “That’s always been my dream to go to one of these big colleges, but I never thought it’d be a reality. I’ve always wished for this moment and I’ve just been working my butt off.”

Avila was serious and he figured Texas Tech was Reynolds’ best bet, so he had the Red Raiders’ recruiting coordinator and assistant coach J-Bob Thomas call Reynolds. The two kept in contact the past couple months until Thomas offered Reynolds a roster spot.

It was an easy decision. Reynolds verbally committed on July 24.

Reynolds has played about 15-20 games since February, when EnFuego first started its season for the year. COVID-19 put a halt to that until mid-June and Reynolds most recently played in a tournament in Wyoming three weeks ago. He has one final tourney this summer before the team shifts to practices in preparation for fall ball.

The soon-to-be-senior will then head into his final season at W.F. West in spring 2021 if COVID-19 doesn’t impact it. After that, it’s off to Lubbock, Texas to begin his college career as a Red Raider.

Texas Tech is one of the top programs in the country over the past five years The Red Raiders were ranked No. 1 this year for the first time since 1997, finishing the COVID-19-shortened season 16-3 overall. They are only one of three programs in the nation to reach the College World Series in four of the last six postseasons: 2014, 2016, 2018, 2019; and have won three of the last four Big-12 titles.

Not only that, Texas Tech has produced 39 draft picks over the last five years, the most of any school in the state of Texas and the Big-12 during that time period. The Red Raiders put together the ninth-ranked recruiting class in the nation in 2020, according to perfectgame.org.

Reynolds is already looking forward to what the future holds for him in Texas.

“I’m excited because I know every year they go out and try to win the national championship,” Reynolds said. “One of the coolest things, in my opinion, is to be the best college baseball team around. That would be awesome holding a big ring. Coming back to a small town in Washington, in Lewis County, and be one of the few guys to get to say they played in the College World Series would be an honor.”