Phillies Pick Jackson Memorial Alum Matt Potok in MLB Draft

Matt Potok endured the good, the bad and the ugly of baseball during his first three years at Coastal Carolina University, or perhaps more accurately, the good, the bad and the injury.

With a chance at personal redemption as a red-shirt junior this spring, Potok did what fewer and fewer players in today’s big-time college sports landscape do: he stayed where he started.

Potok’s fourth year at Coastal Carolina was his most memorable, both for him and his team, and that memorable season ends with the former Jackson Memorial High School ace being selected by the Philadelphia Phillies in the 18th round of the 2025 MLB First-Year Player Draft.

A decorated high school career at Jackson Memorial would have been even more decorated if Potok’s 2020 junior season was not wiped out by the COVID pandemic. He entered his college career at Coastal Carolina with a reputation as a 6-foot-4 strike-thrower and lived up to that reputation while pitching out of the Chanticleers bullpen. He pitched 26 2/3 innings in 17 appearances — one of which was a start — and posted a 3.71 ERA with 29 hits and seven walks allowed to go with 19 strikeouts.

After a promising first season pitching in relief, Potok got a chance to start as a sophomore and got off to a promising start. In his first five starts, he went 2-0 with a 2.25 ERA, 12 hits, six walks and 20 strikeouts in 20 innings, capped by a 10 strikeouts and two walks in six four-hit innings in a win over Texas State.

After that, however, Potok posted a 10.50 ERA in his final six starts, which included three weeks on the shelf due to injury during the early part of May. That turned out to be a precursor to what would have been his junior year in 2024. That year never got off the ground for Potok, who missed the entire season while recovering from elbow surgery.

Potok came back this spring as a red-shirt junior and went back to pitching almost exclusively in relief. In 35 2/3 innings, Potok pitched to a 2.52 ERA with 33 hits allowed, eight walks and 33 strikeouts — the kind of stat-line that reflects what made Potok such an appealing recruit out of Jackson Memorial.

As a freshman at Jackson Memorial in 2018, Potok immediately showed off his strike-throwing ability with one walk and 16 strikeouts in 15 innings. He was an All-Shore pitcher as a sophomore, when he posted a 0.62 ERA in 34 innings with 33 strikeouts and just three walks.

Although the 2020 season was canceled, Jackson Memorial made it all the way to the state championship game of the Last Dance World Series summer event and Potok was one of the best pitchers in the entire tournament. That performance catapulted him into his senior season, when he capped his high-school career with 55 strikeouts and just six walks in 34 innings — good for a 1.85 ERA.

The best part of Potok’s resilience was that he got to experience pitching in the biggest games there are to play in college baseball to end his amateur career. Coastal Carolina made it all the way to the College World Series championship, which the Chants lost in two games to Louisiana State University (LSU). Potok pitched five innings over three appearances in the NCAA Tournament, during which he allowed three runs on nine hits and two walks while striking out two.

Now, Potok will look to build off his first healthy season since 2022 and establish a foothold in a Phillies organization that made him the second of two draft choices from the Shore Conference on Monday. Philadelphia used its ninth round pick on Toms River East shortstop Matt Ferrara, who was the 2025 Shore Sports Insider Player of the Year this past spring.