The Clubhouse DJ: Aaron Dolan and the Cold-Weather Road to Peoria
By Nate Mercer ·
The Rawlings Junior Fall Championship ran Sept. 18-20 at Peoria Sports Complex, the spring training home of the San Diego Padres and Seattle Mariners. One of the pitchers on those fields was Aaron Dolan, a class-of-2028 right-hander from Denver South High School, throwing for the Colorado Yard Dawgs. His final line for the weekend was six innings, five strikeouts and no runs. He doesn't have an 80Grade ranking, and he hasn't committed to a college. I'd like to spend a few minutes on how he got to Arizona anyway, because the route is open to a lot more kids than the ones who already have their names on lists.
Start with the spring. Denver South's 2026 season opened March 10 at Monarch and ended May 16 at Pine Creek in the Region 5 final: 24 games in a little over nine weeks. The National Weather Service's Denver snowfall record for 2026 shows 10.5 inches in March, 3.4 in April and 5.8 in May. I write this from Green Bay, where we also schedule spring baseball and hope for the best, so I'm in no position to complain on Denver's behalf. It's still snow in every month the season touched.
Dolan spent most of that spring on the Ravens' junior varsity as a sophomore. MaxPreps has him at 14 1/3 innings with 24 strikeouts, one earned run and a 0.49 ERA. His one varsity appearance came April 29 at Montbello: 3 1/3 scoreless innings with six strikeouts in a 17-7 win. He also plays first and third, and he hit a varsity home run. Over the full season, the varsity finished 17-7 and won the 5A/4A City league at 9-1.
Back in February, Prep Baseball Colorado ran its preseason preview of Denver South, built in part on a questionnaire it sends to high school head coaches across the state. Dolan wasn't on its list of top players. He was a sophomore, and most of his innings were about to come on JV.
Summer and fall belong to travel ball, and that's where his name started showing up in public. Five Tool Colorado, whose X bio says it highlights top Colorado prospects, posted three of his hits for Marucci Recruits in 2025, each tagged "Denver South (CO) 2028 #uncommitted" with a link to his player profile. This summer he played for Prolific Select 2028, and a July 30 Five Tool Colorado post named him player of the game in an 8-3 win: five innings, nine strikeouts, and 2-for-3 at the plate with an RBI.
For the fall he joined the Yard Dawgs, a Parker program whose 2028 group is coached by Jason Bates, a former Rockies infielder who played his college ball at Arizona. The team's Five Tool page lists 18 players from about ten high schools, from Pueblo and Colorado Springs into Denver, and shows the group going 3-1 at a wood-bat event in Albuquerque the week before Peoria.
Then Arizona. The Rawlings Junior Fall Championship was built for the class of 2028, with pool play, timed games and a four-game guarantee for every team. Peoria Sports Complex opened in 1994 as the first spring training facility built for two teams, and it has 13 full-size fields and 30 practice mounds. The Arizona Fall Classic's X bio says its aim is maximizing players' exposure to professional scouts and college recruiters.
Dolan posted his line himself as his "Final line for the AZ fall classic" and thanked the Yard Dawgs for having him. It doesn't say whether the six innings came in one outing or more than one. On the Sunday morning of the event, the Arizona Fall Classic's account had already posted his name, class, position and team with the tournament hashtag, to more than 12,000 followers. A week after Peoria, he posted another weekend line for Prolific Select: 5 1/3 innings and seven strikeouts.
So how do more kids from short-spring states get seen? Nothing here is a secret, and most of it involves somebody typing a name into a box. Coaches can enter stats. Showcases can post videos. Players can share their work. There are a lot of ways but sometimes it feels like nobody is listening.
At 80Grade, we listen. We read. We follow. For a lot of kids, we want to bring meaning back to this game in new and old ways.
That means paying attention before the rankings show up. Before the commitment graphic. Before everybody already knows the name.
There are kids all over the country throwing bullpens in January, playing JV in April, driving hours for weekend tournaments in July and getting on planes in September because they believe they belong on a bigger stage. Most of them will never have a crowd following every step. That doesn’t make the steps any less important.
If you’re one of those players, keep putting yourself out there. Keep competing. Keep getting better. And tell people what you’re doing.
Send us the video. Send us the stat line. Tell us where you came from, what you’re working toward and what the game means to you. We can’t promise where baseball will take you, and neither can anyone else. But your story doesn’t have to wait until somebody decides you’re a prospect worth talking about.
Baseball has always been about more than rankings, commitments and draft boards. It’s also about the kid who wants the ball, the long drive to the tournament, the extra round in the cage, the teammates you meet along the way and the feeling that keeps bringing you back to the field.
We want to find those stories.
More importantly, we want the kids living them to keep loving the game.