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Diamond Hogs 2020 Signee Spotlight: Oklahoma RHP Jaxon Wiggins

Jaxon Wiggins is another talented member of Arkansas' loaded 2020 signing class.
Jaxon Wiggins is another talented member of Arkansas' loaded 2020 signing class. (Rhett Hutchins/Baumology)

This is the 13th story in our series spotlighting members of Arkansas baseball's highly touted 2020 signing class, which is ranked third nationally by Perfect Game and Baseball America. Links to previous profiles can be found below.

As Jaxon Wiggins prepared to warm up at the Tyson Complex in Springdale last month, an onlooker quipped, Good luck.

The comment - said inauspiciously and with a smile - wasn’t directed at the 2020 Arkansas signee on the bullpen mound. Rather, it was for the catcher in the Perfect Timing College League, who had likely never caught a pitcher who threw as hard as the right-hander from Roland, Okla.

Sure enough, the catcher grunted and shook his mitt in pain as Wiggins peppered the zone with his fastball that sits 93-96 miles per hour.

“He’s an intimidating figure,” Anthony Frazier, his high school coach, told HawgBeat. “He has that presence on the mound kind of like a Randy Johnson. He’s got a big, powerful arm, heavy ball. When people make contact, it doesn’t go very far.”

He’s not as tall as the 6-foot-10 Hall of Famer and throws with the opposite arm, but Wiggins is a 6-foot-6, 210-pound athlete capable of gunning down runners at home from center field and throwing down between-the-legs dunks in addition to touching 97 mph off the mound.

In fact, retweets of his feats on the basketball court are sprinkled throughout Wiggins’ Twitter page. An eight-minute highlight reel on YouTube features dunk after dunk - from alley-oops to breakaways to posterizations - as well as several blocked shots sent several rows into the stands.

“On the basketball court, he’s the best athlete I’ve ever coached,” Roland assistant coach Nick Mooney said. “He’s stronger and faster than what some people might think. He can jump out of the gym. … He can dribble/pass it well and also shoot. I coached two other guys who played DI football and he’s more athletic than both of them.”

Despite being double- and triple-teamed throughout the season, Wiggins averaged 18 points, 15 rebounds and five blocks while leading the Rangers to a 23-3 record and No. 1 seed in the Oklahoma Class 3A state tournament, which they were favored to win for the first time in school history before it was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Mooney believes Wiggins - who was named the OBCA District 3 Player of the Year as a senior and was a two-time Sequoyah County Times Player of the Year - could have played Division I basketball had he chosen to take that route. Instead, his love was always baseball.

“They knew I was going to play baseball, so they didn’t bother offering,” Wiggins said about schools interested in his basketball talents. “I really enjoyed (baseball) growing up, I’ve always played it and it got funner, funner and funner the further I got, so it’s always been fun.”

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