There are a handful of big leaguers with San Antonio ties in Spring Training this year.<\/p>\n
Kayson Cunningham was taken in the first round with the 18th overall pick by the Arizona Diamondbacks back in July.<\/p>\n
He grew up going to Spring Training as a kid. Now he’s on the experiencing it from a different perspective.<\/p>\n
“Being a little kid coming out to these spring training games, asking for a ball, asking for autographs, and now it’s came full circle,” said Cunningham. “And I’m the one giving the balls out, giving autographs. So it’s really a blessing, and it’s a dream come true.”<\/p>\n
The dream is now a reality for Kayson Cunningham.<\/p>\n
After a stellar career at Johnson High School, he’s learning what it takes to make it in the majors.<\/p>\n
“It’s definitely going from a pond to an ocean I’d say,” said Cunningham.”But, you know, just make, you know, the game’s about adjustments, and I’ve made a lot of huge jumps these past couple couple months. I had a really big off season, and so I’m in the weight room getting stronger, working on my game, knowing that I’m gonna have a long season ahead of me.”<\/p>\n
Cunningham, who turns 20 in June, is already one of the prized prospects in the Diamondbacks organization.<\/p>\n
He’s been soaking up everything he can in his first big league camp.<\/p>\n
“Watching those guys being around them it’s truly eye opening and just being around them thinking that could be me someday in the big leagues, playing with them,” said Cunningham.<\/p>\n
Cunningham got a little taste of Class-A ball after being draft last year.<\/p>\n
One of my main goals is this summer is to get called up to High-A in Hillsboro,” said Cunningham. “I was starting off in Visalia in low-A but hopefully I get that call up to high-A this year in my first pro season.”<\/p>\n
When we caught up with Kayson, he picked up three base hits during his backfield game. His day at the plate caught the attention of Arizona manager Anthony Lovullo.<\/p>\n
“After I hit that double, he told me nice swing,” said Lovullo. “So that was, that was probably one of the first interactions I’ve had with him. When I got drafted. I talked to him a little bit, but yeah, I can’t wait to play with him some play for him someday.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are a handful of big leaguers with San Antonio ties in Spring Training this year. Kayson Cunningham…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":["post-540172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}