FTB Spotlight – Jacob Swinarski
High School – American Heritage
Grad Year – 2018
FTB – Going into his 5th season with FTB
In the FTB Organization we talk quite a bit about the family atmosphere. It doesn’t get better than someone who has a family member who previously played in the Organization. Joey Swinarski was a 2014 grad who played 5 seasons with FTB as a right handed, power hitting outfielder who signed with an SEC program out of high school. Now, his cousin Jacob has his turn competing with FTB. Jacob has played with FTB since middle school and has been nothing but a model of consistency. He has done nothing but compete every single time he puts on the FTB jersey. It is a sense of pride for all of us that have been a part of FTB for a long time that it always stays a family thing.
In many ways Jacob is very similar to his cousin Joey, but the similarities are mostly off the field. They are both extremely hard working, tremendous teammates, and are the highest of character human beings. When we turn to the on field evaluations, it is much different but the outcome may be the same. I first got to evaluate Jacob as his cousin was completing his last season for me, and FTB. At my first glance I immediately saw things that were very different (I will get to one thing that was exactly the same later in the spotlight). As I mentioned Joey’s profile earlier; Jacob was a slick fielding, high energy, middle infielder. Even at the age 14 he had high level actions and a feel for playing the middle of the diamond. He had a plus arm and good feet and hips. Offensively, he displayed a very good hit tool and ability to hit line drives all over the field. He looked like a table setter in every phase of the game. As mentioned, it is a much different profile from his cousin, they both possessed that one thing at first glance: They were on their way to being high level D1 players.
As FTB always preaches “Family”, it doesn’t get more real than Jacob Swinarski. We are very proud of the second generation of the Swinarski name!
