Like almost any MIT student, Mason Estrada wants to take what he learned on campus and apply it to the working world.
Unlike any other MIT student, Estrada will soon be going to work on a pitcher's mound, and some day Dodger Stadium might be his office.
Estrada, the star pitcher for MIT's baseball team, is signing a contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers organization, after the team selected him in the 7th round of the Major League Baseball draft on July 14. The right-hander, whose stellar stuff earned significant attention from MLB scouts, will be reporting soon to the Dodgers' instructional camp in Arizona.
"I'm definitely excited," says Estrada, who was projected as a likely draft pick but did not know he would be selected by the Dodgers, Major League Baseball's defending champions.
From the outside, MIT might seem like an atypical starting point for a pitching career, but it has helped Estrada in multiple ways: by providing a strong baseball program in itself, and, more subtly, by reinforcing the value of systematic improvement, at a time when baseball pitching increasingly resembles, well, engineering.
On the first count, Estrada praises his MIT coaches and teammates for the baseball environment they have helped provide.
"It was really awesome," Estrada says about playing baseball at the Institute. "I was surrounded by a bunch of guys that wanted to win. There was a great team culture of grinding and working hard."
Meanwhile, pitching in professional baseball more than ever involves "pitch design" or "pitch shaping." For a decade now, major-league teams have used high-speed cameras to determine which pitches work best. In turn, pitchers are often reverse-engineering parts of their arsenals, by starting with the desired outcome, then finding the combination of velocity and movement to stymie hitters.
Into this setting, enter Estrada, an MIT aeronautics and astronautics major - although, he makes clear, pitching at MIT has never involved transferring aerodynamic knowledge from the classroom to the mound. Rather, what counts is using feedback and analysis to get better.
"It's not necessarily based on the subject I was studying," Estrada says. "It's learning to think like an engineer generally, learning to think through problems the right way, and finding the best solution."
This season, Estrada went 6-0 with a 2.21 ERA for MIT, striking out 66 and allowing a paltry 22 hits in 40 2/3 innings on the season. There are additional numbers that hint at his potential: Estrada's fastball has hit 96 miles per hour, and he throws two types of sliders, with velocity in the upper 80s while producing up to 2,700 rotations per minute, in line with big-league metrics.
On the mound, Estrada uses his lower body to generate significant drive toward the plate - "I have to rely on my strength," he says. Pitchers who share elements of this approach include Spencer Strider of the Atlanta Braves, although, Estrada emphasizes, "Everybody at the professional level is different."
MIT's baseball coaches praise Estrada's dedication to the sport.
"Mason's work ethic is through the roof," says Todd Carroll, MIT's pitching coach and recruiting coordinator, now in his 13th season at the Institute. Carroll thinks Estrada's fastball and sliders could translate well to the professional game. The forward drive of Estrada's motion, Carroll also notes, means that when Estrada delivers a pitch, "It's on a hitter quick."
Carroll concurs that the engineering mindset on campus actively helps players improve over time.
"MIT students are problem-solvers," he says. "MIT is a place where people can do that as well as anywhere in the world. When a pitcher here misses the strike zone, that's a problem they want to solve."
Inevitably, all the off-field work, analysis, and preparation, is designed to let Estrada simply be himself on the diamond. For athletes, some parts of the brain are best put on pause when competing.
"In games, I'm just focused on getting the hitter out," Estrada says. "I'm staying in the moment."
As it happens, baseball's relatively new world of pitch shaping and pitch design has been enabled by MIT-linked technology. The kind of high-speed video camera many teams use, the Edgertronic, is manufactured by Sanstreak Corp., founded by Mike Matter '84, a graduate of what is now the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. If the camera name sounds familiar, it should: Matter named it in homage to Harold "Doc" Edgerton , the legendary MIT pioneer of high-speed photography, whom Matter counted as a mentor.
Estrada is the fifth MIT undergraduate selected in baseball's draft, which dates to 1966, and the highest-drafted player in MIT history at 225th overall. The others are Alan Dopfel '72, selected by the California Angels; Jason Szuminski '00, drafted by the San Diego Padres; Austin Filiere '18 picked by the Chicago Cubs; and David Hesslink '17, chosen by the Seattle Mariners. Of those players, Szuminski reached the majors, with the Padres.
At least two major-league pitchers also earned MIT degrees after finishing long baseball careers: Chris Capuano MBA '19, a former All-Star with the Brewers, who received his master's degree in management as part of the MIT Sloan Fellows program, and Skip Lockwood SM '83.
As a Dodger, Estrada joins an organization famed for great pitching: Since the team moved to Los Angeles in 1958, their star pitchers have included Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Fernando Valenzuela, Orel Hershiser, and Clayton Kershaw.
Beyond that, the Dodgers are known for investing considerable resources in player development, staying on the leading edge of analytics while bulking up their staff in order to help players improve. They have won the World Series twice this decade, in 2020 and 2024.
Whatever happens on the diamond, Estrada wants to return to MIT to complete his degree. Before the draft, he had made plans to temporarily transfer to the University of Tennessee to play Division I baseball next season, with the plan of returning to MIT as a student. However, Estrada will not be doing that now that he is signing with the Dodgers.
As things now stand, Estrada is taking a leave of absence from the Institute while his professional career starts to unfold.
"I just want to be clear I'm very thankful to MIT and to the MIT baseball staff for all they've done," Estrada says.
And now, campus experience in hand, Estrada is off to his very distinctive work environment.
