Miami to Miami: Hayden Cuthbertson’s draft to The Show

After winning the Mid-American Conference (MAC) championship with the Miami University baseball team, pitcher Hayden Cuthbertson was drafted to the Miami Marlins in round 18 of the 2025 Major League Baseball Draft as the 528th overall pick.

Cuthbertson grew up as the youngest of four children, and with three older siblings who played sports, he felt the push to be great from a young age. He played baseball his whole life and always had the goal in mind to continue playing at higher levels.

“They’d always make fun of me, saying they were better when they were my age,” Cuthbertson said. “That drove me to be better and try to be a better athlete than all of them.”

Cuthbertson is a left-handed pitcher from Delta, British Columbia, Canada. After finishing high school, Hayden was recruited to play at Three Rivers College, a junior college (JUCO) in Missouri, where he stayed for two seasons.

Playing at a JUCO was a stepping stone to get to a Division I program for Cuthbertson, an opportunity to gain experience and be able to compete at a more competitive level. At Miami, he did the same, utilizing practices and coaches to improve his pitching.

“He’s like a sponge with everything,” head coach Brian Smiley said. “He went from a guy that was just kind of throwing baseballs up there, not necessarily knowing how to pitch, to a guy that ended up being able to fill whatever role we wanted him to fill. He’s just really, really competitive.”

Smiley and pitching coach Larry Scully first heard about Cuthbertson from an online video from his Three Rivers days. The left-hander displayed an uncanny throwing form that Scully had to see in-person.

Scully traveled north to watch the young pitcher in action. It only took a handful of pitches for him to realize the RedHawks potentially had a special recruit on their hands.

“You do this long enough, and you get to a point where when you see something that you know you like, it doesn’t take very long,” Scully said. “He actually threw about three or four pitches, and I was really impressed.”

Cuthbertson checked all the boxes from a pitching standpoint. Smiley highlighted Cuthbertson’s ability to stay grounded when he’s on the mound, keeping his mindset directed at the batter instead of a previous mistake he made or worrying about the next hitter.

“Every time he took the ball, whether it was good or bad, you never doubted that he was out there fighting the opponent,” Smiley said. “He wasn’t fighting himself. He never was in his own head. He was just trying to fight the opponent, which you always appreciated.”

During the regular season, Cuthbertson earned a chance to prove himself as a true starter against the University of Toledo Rockets. He pitched six-straight innings, allowing three hits and giving up no runs.

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The thing that set Cuthbertson apart from other players and pitchers was his unique arm slot and his left-handedness, an important attribute against the Toledo lineup that featured multiple left-handed hitters.

The RedHawks would meet Toledo two more times, in games one and three of the MAC tournament. Given the importance of the postseason matchup and thinking about the tournament as a whole, Smiley decided to give Cuthbertson another starting opportunity against the Rockets in game one.

Smiley proved to be correct in his choice, as Cuthbertson pitched six innings with five strikeouts and four runs en route to a 10-4 Miami win.

“You can look real smart, or you can look really bad if it doesn’t work,” Scully said. “We went back and forth, and at the end, [Smiley] had the confidence, I had the confidence, that Hayden can do this for us. He can start game one … He went out and really dominated, and because of that, it set up the rest of the pitching rotation in the tournament that favored us.”

Miami would go on to win the MAC championship, once again over Toledo, bringing the conference title to Oxford for the first time since 2005.

Cuthbertson and his coaches knew that his talent was on full display during the 2025 season. Smiley said the team didn’t necessarily have expectations, but everyone knew it was a matter of time before an MLB team would be reaching out.

Over the summer, after taking time off to rest, Cuthbertson was pleasantly surprised to receive the call that he was being drafted to the Marlins. It was the culmination of a lifetime goal, and he knew he had to take the opportunity to fulfill his childhood dream to play professionally.

“This is what I’ve always wanted,” Cuthbertson said. “I’ve been very grateful for it, but at the same time, I’m ready for it now. I’m trying to work on getting better and trying to move up.”

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