For players selected in the 2019 MLB Draft, the start of their professional careers has been tumultuous, to say the least. After joining their short-season or complex league teams for July and August, their first full professional season was canceled just after the start of Spring Training due to the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving them to work on their own, followed by an inconsistent 2021 season filled with COVID-19 protocols.
Between the fall of 2019 and the spring of 2021, players were getting work in wherever and however they could. Red Sox farmhand and former UConn reliever Jacob Wallace was throwing to a high school teammate that was also trying to take video, rather than to professional catchers with a plethora of resources.