the lineup card: vol 10
In the age of ever-expanding online platforms, the world of baseball has witnessed a seismic shift in its next generation of players. Before appearing in a college or pro game, young athletes can accumulate thousands of followers on social media, charged by exposure at prestigious showcases that attract attention from scouts, teams, and fans across the globe. Social media has become their playground, where they craft personal brands and engage with fans on a scale never seen before by their age group.
Mizzou commit Evan Damario and soon-to-be LSU freshman outfielder Ashton Larson both standout as emblematic examples of this transformative era. Despite growing up playing ball less than 30 minutes away from each other, Damario and Larson never really crossed paths until uniting for a similar cause – helping a locally-owned company called JAW Bats promote their product.
Jacob Walters initially started JAW Bats out of his parents’ basement in 2012. He made his first bat at age 15, combining his two passions – baseball and woodworking. Walters admitted that the bats were “pretty terrible” in the beginning, taking about seven years of trial and error for him to finally feel somewhat happy with the finish and quality of his product. By age 22, he was able to move his business into an older 4,000 square foot building in the small town of Baldwin City, Kansas.
Walters first met Larson about a decade ago and has become good friends with his family. Since JAW Bats does not have a batting cage in their building yet, he would occasionally invite Larson and other talented players to test out his products at training facilities. Today, JAW Bats has nearly 65,000 followers on Instagram, signing close to 200 high school and college athletes according to Walters.
“We’re friends with our customers and those two couldn’t be a better example for hard work and success in baseball,” Walters said when asked about Larson and Damario. “They’re a blast to work with.”
Damario first picked up a JAW Bat while working with a hitting instructor. He did some drills using the heavy trainer and short bat to focus on his barrel accuracy and quickly became enamored with the quality. The future Mizzou catcher asked where to get them and went to visit to shop.
“It’s not mass production like some of these other companies. They put love into the bats,” Damario described, adding that he enjoys trying out new models and colorways for them. “For me, it’s amazing to have helped the company grow.”
All parties are extra careful to make sure they follow NIL rules and state laws for athletes in terms of getting paid. Now that Larson is headed to LSU, Walters said they can discuss what they are allowed to do there. Damario serves as an affiliate ambassador and can earn commission through sales using his promo code. However, all earnings go under his mother’s name since athletes in Missouri are not permitted to get paid until they turn 18.
Meet Evan
Damario, 17, has spent his entire life growing up in the suburbs of Kansas City, where summers are blazing hot and winters are freezing cold. He is about to enter his junior year at Rockhurst High School, a private, Jesuit, all-boys prep school located on the Missouri state line.
At 8 years old, Damario picked up a baseball for the first time after his grandfather bought him a glove. He took one lesson and immediately fell in love with the game. His parents gave him the opportunity to choose where he wanted to play and never pressured him. By age 14, he was competing in travel tournaments and has since joined Wow Factor, one of the nation’s top-ranked programs. Damario now competes in showcases all over the country and just recently spent 20 days away from home for a tournament in Georgia.
“You get used to it,” Damario claimed. “Of course, it’s tough missing my friends but it’s also super fun because you’re staying in a hotel or house, getting to hang out with your guys and always meeting new people.”
When Damario began his first tourney with Wow Factor’s National Team last September, a bunch of other new kids had also joined at the same time. Despite the fact that every player was either committed to or being recruited by Division I schools, the lack of team chemistry early on resulted in them underperforming. Over time, the team bonded during postgame meals and hotel stays, sharing their pitch grips and other experiences that have helped them get to where they are. The closer they became, the better they performed, earning some valuable wins over the past several weeks.
Shortly before Damario joined, he noticed that he had been overworking himself to the point that he was getting sick constantly. His trainer recommended investing in a WHOOP, which looks like an Apple Watch, except it tracks sleep, heart rate, skin temperature and anything else that signals how the body is recovering. At first, Damario recalled sleeping for nine hours and reading that his body only recovered 10%, forcing him to reevaluate how many hours he should be working out per day. He also started using BrainTap, a headset that is designed to clear your mind and help you sleep using sound and light therapy. Damario has noticed an improvement in his performance both on the field and in the classroom since deciding to prioritize his recovery.
“My body was just completely overloaded with stress,” Damario said, admitting that would wake up at 4:30 every morning and train for hours before and after school so he could keep up with the players he compared himself to. “I play with those guys now so I’m not really worried about it. I know where I stack up against them. Everyone has their own road to fame.”
In travel ball, Damario splits playing time with another one of the best catchers in the 2025 class – LSU commit Omar Serna. He considers Serna a brother and is grateful to have a teammate of his caliber there to push him daily. From watching him play, Damario has learned ways to improve his footwork, glove placement and breathing while receiving pitches in the mid-to-upper 90s.
Behind the plate with Wow Factor, Damario has also gained experience using PitchCom – the same technology used by Major League Baseball and a bulk of top college programs. He wears an earpiece that allows him to hear directly from his coaches before relaying signs to the pitcher and fielders.
“I love PitchCom because they have the scouting report,” Damario said, explaining that the coaches can tell him how often an opposing player pulls the ball, which may influence them to call more off-speed pitches. “That’s what colleges and pros are doing so why not get used to it now?”
Meet Ashton
Larson, 18, originally lived in Lansing, Michigan before moving to Overland Park, Kansas with his family at age 10. The cold weather presented some challenges growing up, but Larson believes that emphasizing lifting and mechanical work indoors as opposed to playing year-round made him better in the long run.
He recently graduated from St. Thomas Aquinas High School, a private Roman Catholic school with a history of athletic dominance. Back in 2016, notable alum Riley Pint was drafted fourth overall by the Colorado Rockies. Aiming to follow in those footsteps, Larson was not in the classroom every single day. He spent a lot of time training in Houston, Texas, and was often out of town for fall tournaments. However, with the support of his parents and school, Larson stayed on top of his assignments and graduated with a 4.0 GPA.
“Being able to miss class like that is a privilege, it’s not a right,” Larson said, comparing the experience to the one he will receive in college. “Learning how to handle that, communicate with teachers and take pride in getting work done at a young age was really good for me.”
Off the field, one of Larson’s biggest passions is graphic design, a skill that he picked up while taking classes in middle school. Like Damario, he wears a WHOOP, which inspired one of his most creative designs for JAW Bats. When Larson turned his phone sideways using the app, it showed his full heart rate and allowed him to find previous timestamps throughout the day. After hitting a home run, he screenshotted the EKG spike from that exact moment, put it into Photoshop and made a sticker to customize the bat with. He plans on majoring in business with a digital marketing focus in college.
Perfect Game ranked Larson as the top high school recruit in his home state, 78th nationally, and 13th among outfielders. For about a week, LSU commit played collegiate summer ball in Salt Lake City with future teammates Derrick Mitchell and Dylan Thompson before leaving for the MLB Draft Combine, where he got to showcase his talent and speak with former two-time All-Star outfielder Michael Bourn.
On July 11, Larson was selected by the Minnesota Twins in the 20th round of the MLB Draft. He had two weeks to decide his future steps. The process came all the way down to the July 25 signing deadline.
“Not the most fun thing I’ve ever done, there’s some cool parts for sure, but a lot of stress,” Larson said. The Twins had an opportunity to pull him away but ultimately, Larson and his family decided that going to Baton Rouge made the most sense. “Just having clarity on what my path is feels good. I’m ready to work for that and accomplish the goals that are within that path.”
Larson immediately called LSU head coach Jay Johnson to inform him of his decision. Fresh off a College World Series title, Larson will join a Tigers outfield that just lost two starters to the pros – Dylan Crews and Brayden Jobert. He shared the news on social media, which blew up with supportive messages from LSU fans and over 1,000 likes.
“I expected people to be excited but the volume of people was really cool to me,” Larson said. “It made me excited to go and represent for the incredible fan base that is LSU baseball.”
Major League ties
In addition to their relationship with JAW Bats, Damario and Larson share another unique connection — they both have MLB players mentoring them.
During a game with the Rawlings Tigers in St. Louis a few years back, Damario played against Landon Edmonds, the son of eight-time Gold Glove Award winner and prolific hitter Jim Edmonds. He and Landon added each other on Snapchat after the game and began talking. The two quickly became best friends.
Damario has been invited over to their house countless times since. Jim Edmonds, who was inducted into the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame in 2014, has walked Damario through the Cardinals’ locker room and press box. He often talks Damario through the mental side of hitting, sharing stories about handling failure from his own experience. Edmonds’ first impressions of Damario were away from the field, but he quickly gained a deep respect for the well-rounded nature and work ethic displayed by both him and his parents.
“I treat him like if he was mine,” Edmonds said over the phone, adding that he hopes that anyone else’s parents would do the same for his son. Whenever he takes him to the batting cages, he asks Damario about his approach during at-bats from previous games. “He’s really good about answering questions and telling me what he’s thinking, but he’s not like a ‘I know everything’ kid. There’s not much he can’t do. I’ve seen him catch, pitch, play the infield, hit…he works really hard. He’s gonna go as far as he wants to go and that’s pretty much to the top.”
Larson benefits from more of an older-brother relationship. At age 9 or 10, he first met Detroit Tigers closer Alex Lange, who was an LSU Tiger at the time. Over the years, Lange has taken Larson under his wing, helping him get into private training facilities and mentoring him through his development.
This past offseason, Larson lived with Lange and Philadelphia Phillies infielder Alec Bohm while they trained together in Houston. Larson said that his biggest takeaway from having a front-row seat all these years has been observing Lange’s consistent work ethic through the ups and downs. He recognizes these learning opportunities are a major advantage for him.
“Those types of things, you really only get if you’re a son of a big leaguer or a sibling,” Larson said. “It really is like my chosen family and for him to invite me to be a part of that is really cool.”
A purpose beyond baseball
Damario still has two years to go before he heads to Mizzou or potentially gets drafted. Larson, on the other hand, will begin his collegiate journey on Aug. 12. His personal performance goals include getting stronger, faster and developing into the best possible player and teammate he can be to help his team make another national championship run as a freshman. Off the field, he has even bigger future plans in mind.
When Larson was 10, he participated in an event called “Home Runs That Help” which was a fundraiser for community outreach programs. There, he connected with a two-year-old kid named Will Buckman, who was battling Leukemia at the time.
“Being able to be around him and see the light that he is, how incredible his family was and raise money for him was a really, really important experience in my life,” Larson said. By age 5, Buckman was in remission, and they still share a close relationship to this day. Larson hopes to eventually create a foundation that focuses on helping families battling childhood cancer.
Another focus of his is to use his platform to raise money for families of baseball players who had their lives cut short. In January of 2022, one of his USA Prime teammates, Nate Rogalski, tragically passed away after a sudden bout with bacterial meningitis.
“I promised his family that I would keep his name alive,” Larson said. “Sharing his story, supporting the families, being able to cover funeral costs and getting people to wear their names on hats in places like Major League Baseball, even though they might not be able to make it now…that’s really important.”