CHESTER — History has been made. Kaiden McCarthy, a hard-throwing right-handed pitcher from Chester and graduate of Vermont Academy in Saxtons River, was selected by the Atlanta Braves in the second round (48th overall) of the Major League Baseball draft on Saturday, the highest draft choice ever for a Vermont baseball player.
The Chester native compiled a 3-0 record with a 0.72 ERA and 42 strikeouts while helping Vermont Academy (15-6) earn a berth in the Lake Region championship game this past season.
McCarthy, a two-time Lake Region Pitcher of the Year, earned the 2026 Gatorade award as Vermont’s top baseball player and garnered strong praise from baseball scouts around the country despite being undersized at 6-foot, 190 pounds.
The 17-year-old reclassified to be eligible for the 2026 MLB Draft and previously committed to the University of Tennessee. After finishing up his high school career, he appeared in two games in June with the Vermont Lake Monsters of the Futures League, a wood-bat summer baseball league for college players.
“From what I saw, he has a very, very high ceiling and I’m excited for him,” Lake Monsters manager Matt Fincher told the Burlington Free Press on Saturday.
McCarthy is one three high school prospects featured in Season 2 of “The Prospect,” a three-episode original docuseries from GameChanger and MLB Network. McCarthy’s parents, Matt and Shanna, and Vermont Academy baseball coach Russ Williams were also interviewed for the series. The first two episodes can be found on GameChanger’s YouTube page.
McCarthy said he’s become accustomed to all the attention, ever since people started noticing how hard he threw even as a 14-year-old.
“I feel like I’ve dealt with it pretty well, being from Vermont,” he said in a recent phone interview from his home in Chester. “There haven’t been a ton of people drafted out of Vermont, because it’s a small state. Baseball is not super popular here, obviously. I feel like there’s definitely been a lot of attention on me, just due to the fact of what I’ve done so far.
“The big thing for me is I want to be able to give back to my community,” said McCarthy, who has volunteered locally as a youth baseball coach and has maintained a B average in the classroom. “I know I’ve got to go out there and perform, and I know the community is going to support me, so if I can support them back and help them, that’s going to be huge for me.”
Only two Vermonters have ever been selected in the top five rounds, most recently when the Pirates took Owen Kellington from Randolph in the fourth round in 2021.
“It’s definitely awesome,” McCarthy said. “I feel like it can put a lot of pressure on me, but I feel like I’ve pushed through it really well. You want to accomplish something, especially if it’s not been done before. I could be the first (from Vermont) to get picked at a higher round and everything, but it’s been pretty great.”
McCarthy can make more history if he reaches the major leagues: there has only been one high schooler from Vermont (Mike Rochford, South Burlington) to get drafted (by the Red Sox in 1982) and make it to the big leagues in the six decades since the draft was instituted.
It is somewhat fitting that the Braves picked McCarthy, since the franchise has a notable baseball connection to Southern Vermont. The then-Boston Braves signed Brattleboro’s Ernie Johnson as an amateur free agent in 1942. Johnson, also a right-handed pitcher, played most of his career with the Boston/Milwaukee Braves and went on to become a legendary broadcaster with the team after it moved to Atlanta.
McCarthy, who turns 18 next month, is expected to sign with the Braves and begin his professional career right away rather than go to Tennessee. The slot value for the No. 48 overall pick in this year’s draft is $2.08 million.
We’ll have more on McCarthy’s historic draft selection in Tuesday’s print edition of the Reformer and online at reformer.com.
Bill LeConey is night news editor of the Brattleboro Reformer, Bennington Banner and Manchester Journal. He is a longtime sportswriter and editor, and an avid sports historian. He can be reached at wleconey@reformer.com.
