READING, Pa. — Dylan Cozens is taking batting practice on a late Wednesday afternoon at FirstEnergy Stadium, and it’s a sight to see. Teammates, coaches and staffers stop to watch the hulking left-hander swing.
Home run.
Home run.
Home run.
If the 6-foot-6-inch, 235-pound Cozens looks like a football player playing baseball, well, he is.
Cozens, a 22-year-old who is one of the Philadelphia Phillies’ top prospects, verbally committed to play defensive line at the UA in 2012. Had he stuck with football and redshirted as a true freshman, he’d be a fifth-year senior this season. He could’ve been the playmaking defensive lineman the Wildcats have been looking for since Rich Rodriguez arrived nearly 4ƒ years ago.
The Scottsdale Chaparral High School product is a tantalizing case of what could have been. Consider: Arizona has 104 sacks as a team over the last four seasons. Just 41 came from defensive linemen. The Wildcats finished last season with 27 sacks, the second-worst total in the Pac-12. Of those, just 12 came from Cozens’ planned position.
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“It was one of those deals where he was meant to play football,” said Charlie Ragle, a UA assistant and a former head coach at Chaparral. “It just so happened that he was a really great baseball player.”
•••
Cozens arrived at Chaparral in 2011 after leaving Scottsdale’s Desert Mountain High School.
Ragle was waiting for him at the front door.
“I begged him to come out and play football,” he said.
Cozens didn’t have a lot of experience on the gridiron, but he had the raw talent, physicality and athleticism that would project well.
“I saw him play basketball before and just marveled at the physical tools,” Ragle recalled.
Ragle told Cozens that if he listened to his coaches, he’d get a dozen college scholarship offers by the end of his senior season.
He wound up with more than that. Cozens took visits to Arizona, Boise State, Missouri, Utah and Washington, ultimately committing to play for Rodriguez, who had just hired Ragle and fellow Chaparral coach Vince Amey onto his UA staff. The Scout.com recruiting service listed Cozens as a three-star recruit and the top-rated defensive lineman in the state. In his lone season at Chaparral, Cozens amassed 49 tackles, 13 tackles-for-loss and 8ƒ sacks, helping the Firebirds win a state championship.
The decision to commit to Arizona came easily.
“Just having Ragle going down there and Amey was big for me,” Cozens said before Wednesday’s 11-3 win over Binghamton, a game in which he went 2 for 4 with 3 RBIs. “And then I just felt like it was a great school atmosphere. The campus was awesome: I went on my visit there and had the most fun out of all my visits, so that’s just what made me want to commit. The coaches, Coach Rod, all the people there made me feel like they really wanted me and I was special, so it felt like a good fit.”
Ragle was convinced he’d be coaching Cozens at the college level. He was projected as a low-round baseball draft pick, not quite high enough to forgo college for a shot at the major leagues.
Then things changed.
•••
Cozens doesn’t remember it, but Scott Kingery certainly does.
It was the 2012 Division I state semifinals, and Chaparral was pounding Kingery’s Mountain Pointe team 10-2 heading into the fifth inning.
Then Cozens put Kingery’s team out of its misery.
“It was a walk-off home run to end my high school career,” Kingery, the 2015 Pac-12 player of the year at the UA who is now Cozens’ teammate with the Reading Fightin Phils. “That was the last game I played in high school. I’ve told him that he ended my high school career, but out of high school I just saw this big kid and he hit a ball and it was just a line drive. I didn’t even turn around to see it, I just started walking off the field like ‘that’s incredible.’”
Cozens had a lot of hits like that as a senior, when he batted .520 and broke Paul Konerko’s school record with 19 home runs, the last one a walk-off to win the state championship.
Cozens had already signed his letter of intent to play football with the Wildcats. The odds of him making good on his promise were shrinking by the day.
The Philadelphia Phillies selected Cozens with their second-round pick in that year’s draft and offered him $659,800 to sign.
Football was no longer in his future. Instead, Cozens plays baseball with the kind of hard-charging approach that would’ve made him a star on the gridiron.
Heard of a “football mentality?” He’s got it.
“He was a physical specimen, and he played the game with an intensity that I believe is required to be ultra-successful,” Ragle said. “That’s what will allow him to become a major-league baseball player because he has that mentality.”
•••
Football is now a distant memory for Cozens, a fun experience he had for one season in high school.
“It was a great time,” Cozens said.
Cozens has since had more excitement. He was selected to play in the MLB Futures Game in San Diego earlier this month, a sign that those in baseball are noticing his potential. Cozens replaced hometown favorite Hunter Renfroe in right field for the U.S. team, and went hitless in his lone at-bat.
Cozens needed a few years to get into the swing of things — he only hit .255, .265 and .248 his first three seasons, with more strikeouts (255) than games played (250) — but now he’s, well, just swinging at things.
In 98 games with Reading, the Phillies’ Double-A affiliate, Cozens is batting .279 with 26 home runs, 88 RBIs and 82 runs scored. He has stolen 17 bases, three fewer than the 20 he swiped all last season.
MLB.com recently listed Cozens as the Phillies’ No. 7 overall prospect. The website projects a 2018 arrival in the big leagues.
“It’s just been a lot of fun,” Cozens said. “It’s been, you know, just to be a part of this team and win ballgames, to be able to experience the futures game and have a good year is what you’re looking for. It’s part of the process of eventually one day trying to get to the major leagues.”
Cozens is a strong, powerful hulk of a man with the speed of someone much smaller. Imagine what he could’ve done as a Wildcat.
“I don’t want to be ignorant and say a kid is going to go play in the NFL,” Ragle said. “But I’ve coached pretty good players in high school that went on to play in the NFL, he had all the tools and he was a worker. He certainly had the ability to be a big-time college football player and probably give himself a chance to play beyond college. He’s 6-6 and can run.
“Those guys, they don’t grow on trees.”
