It doesn’t take long for a draft pick to stop feeling like a throwaway when the stuff starts playing. Nate Payne is living that reality right now.
The Marlins grabbed Payne 544th overall in the 2024 MLB Draft out of Central Dauphin High School in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, then signed him for $235,000 after he backed away from his commitment to George Mason University. Two years later, he’s gone from the kind of pick most clubs hope to stash and forget into a real name in the organization’s prospect conversation.
Payne’s 2025 season gave the first real hint. He spent most of the year in the Florida Complex League before finishing with Jupiter, and across both stops he logged a 3.20 ERA in 56 ⅓ innings with 73 strikeouts.
Hitters managed only a .176 average against him. The rough edges were obvious, though: 37 walks, a 5.91 BB/9, and a fly-ball profile that showed up in a 0.41 GO/AO ratio.
The underlying numbers from Prospect Savant backed up the eye test. In the 16 ⅔ Hammerheads innings it tracked, Payne posted a 37.7 Whiff% and held average exit velocity to 83.5 mph.
He gave up just six hits in that sample - five singles and one home run - while striking out 27% of the hitters he faced. Even with the command still a work in progress, the strikeout-to-walk line of 18 K/14 BB made one thing clear: the arm talent was real.
Now the 2026 season has pushed the story forward. Payne began the year in Jupiter, moved up to Beloit after only three starts, and has kept climbing on the strength of better strike throwing, more ground balls and fewer walks.
Through 17 starts between the two levels, he has thrown 83 innings, averaging 4.88 innings per start, with a 3.69 ERA and 113 strikeouts. That works out to a sharp 12.25 K/9.
The command jump stands out most. Payne has already thrown nearly 25 more innings than he did all of last season while walking eight fewer batters.
His BB/9 has fallen from 5.91 to 3.14, and his GO/AO ratio has improved from 0.41 to 0.68. He’s also created 29 ground-ball double-play opportunities, up from 17 a year ago.
There’s been a cost. Payne has allowed 14 home runs, along with 12 doubles and two triples, and his .379 BABIP points to a pitcher who’s also taken his share of hard contact and some bad luck. But his strike percentage has climbed by nearly 10 percentage points from last season, which helps explain why 2026 has looked like a tradeoff: a little more contact damage, a lot more efficiency and command.
That’s what makes the rise notable. Payne gave up a college commitment to chase pro ball as an 18th-round high school pick, and the odds were always steep. Still, at 20 years old, he’s already flashed enough to look like a legitimate major league pitcher in the making.
The historical company is thin. The last player taken at least 544 picks into the amateur draft to reach the majors was college right-hander Duncan Davitt, selected No. 554 in 2022. For the Marlins, no player has done it since Jeff Lindgren and Josh Simpson from the 2019 draft, when the event still had 40 rounds, and both of them came from college.
Whatever comes next, Payne and the Marlins have already gotten more than the usual return on an 18th-round high school pick. With each start, that 544th-overall selection looks a little sharper.
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