hunter pence’s nephew Striker Pence moved his timeline up Thursday afternoon, announcing on Instagram that he is reclassifying from the class of 2028 to the class of 2027. The 17-year-old right-hander from Santiago High School in Corona was already one of the most closely tracked pitching prospects in the country.
Striker Pence and the 2027 class
The move shifts Pence into a deeper draft conversation one year earlier than expected. He enters the 2027 group as the class of 2027 No. 2 prospect and the top prep pitcher in the country, behind Dylan Seward of Norco.
Before the change, Baseball America had ranked him as the No. 1 player in his class. Perfect Game graded him as a 10, a reflection of how much attention his arm already drew before Thursday’s announcement.
Jered Goodwin, Perfect Game’s vice president of scouting, put the distinction this way: “what separates Striker from the rest of his class is being able to utilize his tools and seeing how they translate in competition.” That is the line evaluators keep coming back to, because Pence is not just a radar-gun name. He is a 6-foot-6, 185-pound power arm whose fastball sits at 98 mph and reaches 101 mph, with a slider in the mid-80s.
Santiago and Blair Field
Last season at Santiago, Pence helped the program finish 19-12 and third in the CIF Southern Section Division 1 baseball playoffs. That run gave another public look at the arm that has made him one of the most scrutinized high school pitchers in the class.
In August last year, he showed that ceiling in the Area Codes game at Blair Field in Long Beach, when he threw seven straight pitches at 100 mph. A league game against Orange Lutheran last season also offered a glimpse of the slider that scouts have watched closely.
Hunter Pence connection
The family link adds another layer to the profile. Pence is the nephew of former San Francisco Giants outfielder Hunter Pence, but the draft news stands on its own: a 17-year-old right-hander with a triple-digit fastball is moving into the 2027 pool now, not later.
For clubs tracking the class, the practical change is simple. Pence is no longer a name to file away for 2028. He is eligible to sit much nearer the center of the 2027 board, where his size, velocity and ranking will be weighed against the same competition that already has him near the top of the class.
