Switch-pitcher Cijntje, former star at a closed Miami high school, drafted 15th by Mariners

As a kid in Curacao, Jurrangelo Cijntje — a natural lefty — would purposely forget his glove at home.

This would allow Cijntje to throw right-handed while using his father’s glove.

On Sunday night, Mississippi State switch-pitcher Cijntje’s plan proved successful as he became the 15^th pick in the Major League Baseball Draft, selected by the Seattle Mariners. Cijntje throws up to 98 mph with his right hand and 93 with his left.

The slot value for pick No. 15 is $4.88 million, which will make a rich young man of Cijntje — a graduate of a now-defunct Miami high school, Champagnat.

Cijntje, who was in Fort Worth, Texas, on Sunday for the draft, used the word “awesome” when asked for his reaction to getting drafted.

“My whole family is here from Curacao,” Cijntje told Major League Baseball Network, “and I’m really excited to share this moment with them.”

MLB Network’s Harold Reynolds called Cijntje “a weapon,” and broadcasting colleague Jim Callis praised the prospect’s secondary pitches, including a slider and a changeup.

Seattle seems to be a good fit for Cijntje.

“The Mariners are elite at scouting and developing,” MLB Network’s Dan O’Dowd said. “He couldn’t have gone to a better organization.”

Mississippi State Bulldogs coach Chris Lemonis, in an interview with The Herald, said some pro teams have said they would’ve wanted Cijntje to pitch right-handed exclusively.

But Cijntje wants to continue to do both, and it is likely Seattle will allow that … at least for as long as possible.

“We brainstormed for two years how best to use him,” Lemonis said. “To start this year, we pitched him on Sundays. That gave us two games in the series to evaluate the other team to see how best to use him.”

Lemonis said he brought in Justin Parker as his new pitching coach in the summer of 2023. As soon as Lemonis made that move, he was on a plane to Miami to talk to Cijntje and his family.

Cijntje and his family let Lemonis know that they were staying at Mississippi State, and that turned out to be another wise decision.

“He and coach Parker had a plan every game, figuring out what he was going to throw,” Lemonis said. “He didn’t always pitch left-handed against a left-handed hitter. But we’d match him up in certain ways and still get an inning out of him left-handed.

“He’s a different kid to coach — how you train him. How you use him. Other teams were adapting to him. We had multiple teams in [the SEC] who would just go right-left, right-left throughout their batting order to make him switch every time. And he wasn’t good like that. He needed to get into a rhythm.

“Every once in a while, you’d get a lefty [hitter] who can’t hit lefties, and we’d switch [Cijntje] that way.

“But a lot of times, he was so good right-handed that he would stay that way for multiple batters in a row. His last couple of starts, he was right-handed all the time.”

Lemonis said that when Cijntje first arrived in Starkville, Mississippi, in the fall of 2022, he didn’t fit in on the Bulldogs campus all that well.

“Kid from Curacao, he was shy,” Lemonis said. “He didn’t know the culture. Didn’t know the kids.

“But as the [2024] season went on, he became one of the most popular and fun kids on the team. When he left campus, he was sad to leave. He had the time of his life with us.”

Notably, Cijntje was drafted out of high school in the 18^th round by the Brewers, who liked him as an infielder.

But he went to Mississippi State because he wanted to pitch.

“He’s a swtich-pitcher, switch-hitter, speaks four languages, can play the infield or pitcher,” Lemonis said. “There’s a brilliance there that we can’t even comprehend, and he does it so naturally.”