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CHAMPAIGN — Isaiah Jackson’s bounce-back from losing his spot on Heartland Community College’s baseball team has been astronomical in nature.
The 2020 Champaign Central graduate reached a new plateau this week, when he agreed to an undrafted free agent contract with Major League Baseball’s Milwaukee Brewers.
The 6-foot-5, 185-pound athlete is being signed as a right-handed pitcher despite not being selected in the MLB draft earlier this week. He told The News-Gazette on Thursday that he’s flying out to Arizona on Sunday to begin the process of becoming a professional baseball player.
“It’s been a long road,” Jackson said, “but I’m excited to get started.”
Maroons coach John Staab describes Jackson as a “freak athlete” whom he felt always possessed “a ton of potential.” Jackson’s top finish on a News-Gazette All-Area baseball listing was honorable-mention status after his junior season of 2019.
Jackson faced a critical juncture in his baseball career that year, though he didn’t fully understand it at the time. Playing in the outfield during a game against Danville, Jackson attempted to cut down a Vikings baserunner trying to score.
“I threw it as hard as I could, and I heard a pop in my arm,” Jackson said. “It didn’t necessarily hurt, but as I went to sleep the next day, my arm was pretty torn up.”
That feeling gradually dissipated, however, and Jackson didn’t worry about it further. Little did he know he had torn his labrum.
It was an injury Jackson couldn’t exacerbate too much in his senior year, as the IHSA baseball season was canceled amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But the issue soon did become a problem for Jackson on the diamond.
“I was talking it over with my agent and my family, and they saw a brighter future for me on the mound,” said Jackson, who did log some innings pitched at Central. “I’m on the taller side, more of an athletic build, and they felt with me throwing this hard it’d be a lot easier for me to get my foot in the door.”
Jackson in his senior year at Central began working with Josh Kauten, a pitching, strength and recruiting coach at K’s Training Academy in Bloomington. Kauten spent five years pitching in minor league baseball, between 2004 and 2008.
“When he came to me, he already had some arm pain. That was probably part of the reason he came, trying to figure out why his arm was in pain,” Kauten said. “He’s an incredible athlete. If you’ve seen him in person, he’s a physical specimen. My first goal was to get him out of pain.”
Jackson wound up going to Carterville’s John A. Logan College for the 2020-21 school year. It was with the Vols that his labrum injury only became worse, ultimately requiring surgery.
“I ended up getting it done by the Chicago White Sox’s head doctor, Nik Verma. He did an excellent job,” Jackson said. “I knew it was time to get it fixed, so I wouldn’t have to go through this again. I’m super glad I did, because it shaped me as a man and with discipline.”
Jackson opted to leave John A. Logan to focus fully on his rehabilitation and recovery, taking classes at Parkland College back in Champaign while staying in touch with Kauten.
Jackson was throwing in the 93 to 94 miles per hour range prior to his surgery, according to Kauten, who wasn’t exactly optimistic about what Jackson would look like as a pitcher post-operation.
“Labrum surgery generally is a borderline death sentence for a pitcher,” Kauten said. “Knowing that and how young he was, we decided not to rush (him) back. He could’ve pressed the envelope and come back for his redshirt freshman year, but we were trying to play the long game.
“What was the route to get us to the major leagues?”
How is it that an athlete who only occasionally pitched in high school came to consider pitching professionally as a viable career path?
“You see it all the time: Guys that are really good position players end up being better pitchers,” Kauten said. “His biggest asset is his physicality and his arm strength. He kind of tests off the charts on any metric you’d want to put a pitcher through — vertical jump, grip strength, arm strength, speed. He tested in the top percentile of pretty much everything.”
Working with Kauten and coaches at John A. Logan allowed Jackson to begin “learning how to use my body correctly” on the mound and “redefining my mechanics.”
Jackson also stayed true to his rehabilitation process behind the belief that “saints that are the toughest, God puts the most things on them.”
“I just trusted the process and kept working,” Jackson continued. “I know a lot of guys, when things aren’t going their way, it’s easy to sit back and grieve because I put my whole life into this. So I really wanted to work.”
Jackson and Kauten discovered something surprising when Jackson finally began throwing pitches again.
“His first bullpen he got up to 96, which was mind blowing,” Kauten said. “It’s really a unique situation in terms of not just he came back as good as he was — he came back better. Which, in the world of labrum surgery, is unheard of.”
Both Jackson and Kauten said Jackson has touched 98 miles per hour on the radar gun since. Jackson added that he’s able to throw four-seam and two-seam fastballs plus a circle change-up and a curveball.
Kauten said Jackson’s size makes his pitches even more dangerous.
“He really gets crazy (arm) extension,” Kauten said. “He’s letting go of the ball really close to home plate. ... The hitter has even less time to see it.
“His change-up shows flashes. He really hasn’t thrown that many innings, so it’s really just trying to learn how to pitch and trying to refine his off-speed pitch to match his fastball.”
Jackson wound up linking with Heartland baseball in order to work on just that. He also in September 2022 announced a verbal commitment to play at Missouri once his season with Heartland concluded.
But Jackson’s lone campaign with the Hawks ended far sooner than he anticipated.
He described dealing with blisters on his pitching hand as well as back pain in some of his early starts for Heartland.
“My doctor recommended (the back injury) was overuse,” Jackson said. “(I was) going to physical therapy, going to Chicago Recovery Room (in Champaign) and also getting scraped out going to the chiropractor. My coach was all for it.”
Jackson became especially concerned with logging recovery workouts. He said Heartland was contesting a doubleheader in Normal the day before he was scheduled to make his return start from the back injury.
“We have two hour-and-15 (minute) rain delays,” Jackson said. “We were at the field all day, and I had threw and needed to recover.
“I ended up leaving 35 minutes early to go recover (at Champaign’s Crunch Fitness). ... I don’t know why I didn’t tell my coach this. I think he would’ve been fine with that if I would’ve told him.”
Jackson cites this as the reason for his removal from Heartland’s roster.
“I take full responsibility for this,” Jackson said.
He landed on his feet, though, managing to find a spot in the MLB Draft League. This is a collegiate summer baseball league with six teams, and Jackson was placed on the Mahoning Valley Scrappers in Niles, Ohio.
“Having the chance to go right into the next opportunity was the best thing for him, so he didn’t have to sit around,” Kauten said. “There were dozens of 95-plus mile an hour arms. Him being near the top of that leaderboard and being able to stand out among the best of the best was pretty cool.”
Jackson said a motivational pep talk with Scrappers manager Dmitri Young and pitching coach Ray King — both former MLB players, the latter a pitcher — during his MLB Draft League tenure renewed his confidence on the mound.
“They said, ‘We see a lot in you. You wouldn’t be here for no reason,’” Jackson said. “My next three outings I did amazing, and they were super excited and happy we had that conversation.”
Jackson said he had every intention of heading to Missouri to play college baseball after not hearing his name called in this month’s 20-round MLB draft.
“The Milwaukee Brewers called me after the draft and gave me an offer, and I didn’t accept it. I didn’t feel the price was right for me to opt out of college and start my professional career,” Jackson said. “(Wednesday), they called me again, and they doubled their offer.
“It was pretty much a no-brainer for me to go play ball.”
Kauten feels this was the right move for Jackson to make at this time.
“It came down to, when you want to be a major leaguer, how quickly can you get into their system and have a chance to compete,” Kauten said. “You never know what’s going to happen, and he’s in his prime of peak physicality.
“He’s healthy, he’s got some money in his pocket and an opportunity to show what he can do.”