This post was updated July 27 at 5:13 p.m.
The average American earns around $1.7 million in their lifetime, according to a 2011 study.
Almost no one would turn down the opportunity to earn around $2 million just to sign up for a job that – could – one day, earn them eight figures per year.
But incoming freshman right-hander Angel Cervantes did.
The 2025 MLB Draft’s No. 50 overall pick turned down the Pittsburgh Pirates so he could honor his commitment to UCLA baseball, Cervantes announced in a post on X on Wednesday.
While the Pirates’ offers aren’t public, the MLB gave the Cervantes’ pick a $1.93 million slot value, and the No. 51 and No. 52 overall picks signed for $2.75 million and $2.60 million, respectively.
Not only will the right-hander be an impactful addition to the 2026 team, but it’s a positive indication of what the squad already is.
Cervantes is betting on himself to make immediate contributions to a team with realistic 2026 national championship aspirations. He’s betting that UCLA and coach John Savage can still develop elite high school arms into the top pitchers in the nation.
He’s putting every young baseball player’s dream on hold for at least three years for the Bruins.
NIL: Not an Instant Lottery
Fans are quick to scream “NIL” whenever something doesn’t make sense in their head.
Like if Cervantes is picking college baseball over affiliated ball, it must be because he’s earning hand over fist in Name, Image and Likeness.
The truth is, he probably isn’t. Most Division I baseball players make little to no money in NIL, and even the nation’s best players on the diamond only make around $40,000 to $50,000 a year, according to College Football Network.
And yes, the House v. NCAA settlement will allow schools to pay players directly. But that $20 to $21 million each school is allotted is for the athletic department as a whole. Meaning UCLA will have to split that pool of money between rising redshirt sophomore quarterback Nico Iamaleava, rising senior guard Donovan Dent, rising senior center Lauren Betts and rising senior gymnast Jordan Chiles before it even opens the checkbook for the rest of the school’s student athletes.
It’s ridiculous to think athletic director Martin Jarmond or Savage are going to hand over a sizable check to an incoming freshman.
Strictly in terms of NIL, it is highly unlikely Cervantes will make back whatever the Pirates could have given him directly from playing college sports.
The gamble Cervantes is likely playing is the one that’s hardly new to college baseball: developing for three-to-four years at a university instead of the minor leagues so that he can re-enter the draft with an increased stock, sign for an even larger signing bonus and fast-track to the majors.
As most Bruin baseball fans know, Gerrit Cole turned down the New York Yankees and their reported $4 million signing bonus after getting drafted No. 28 overall in the 2008 MLB Draft, instead choosing to come to UCLA.
Three years later, Cole had pitched on the biggest stage college baseball has to offer – the Men’s College World Series – and earned himself a then-record-setting $8 million signing bonus from none other than the Pittsburgh Pirates as 2011’s No. 1 overall pick.
While they may not have had the multi-million dollar contract sitting in front of them like Cervantes, the Bruins already boast a plethora of players who could have gone to professional baseball straight out of high school.
It almost seems court-mandated that every broadcast has to mention how rising junior shortstop Roch Cholowsky was a projected first-round pick in the 2023 MLB Draft if not for his steadfast commitment to UCLA.
Pirate finger-pointing
There’s also the notion that Cervantes just didn’t want to be a part of the Pirates organization.
And while that could be true, the Pirates are far better at developing prep pitchers than most people give them credit for. Mitch Keller – a 2014 second-round pick out of Xavier High School in Iowa – has been a staple of Pittsburgh’s starting rotation since 2022.
Kyle Nicolas and Jared Jones have had setbacks recently but were both prep-to-pro arms who have a seemingly bright future at PNC Park – both top prospects before exceeding rookie limits in 2024. Additionally, Bubba Chandler, a 2021 third-round pick out of North Oconee High School in Georgia, is currently MLB Pipeline’s No. 2 right-handed pitching prospect.
Plus, if Cervantes’ goal was just to get drafted by a different team, he could go to a junior college – where he’d be able to enter the 2026 MLB Draft – instead of a four-year university like UCLA, where he’d have to wait until 2028 to become eligible for the Rule 4 Draft again.
And if Cervantes’ wish is to turn himself into a top-five pick come 2028 – and earn an eight-figure signing bonus – he’ll still likely end up on a bottom-feeding franchise.
Rankings or hat pickings?
Yes, UCLA was No. 1 in Baseball America’s “Way Too Early” 2026 top 25 rankings published Tuesday.
Yes, LSU – 2025’s national champions – were No. 1 in last year’s iteration.
But of the remaining 24 teams in last year’s article, only three actually made it to Omaha, Nebraska.
And the rest of Tuesday’s rankings are littered with, as expected, SEC and ACC teams, along with recent powerhouses like Oregon State and Coastal Carolina.
The Bruins are a good team who are returning nearly every player who made a sizable impact in 2025. They arguably have their best shot at a second national title ever.
But it’s hard to overlook how many little things went in UCLA’s favor last season.
The Big Ten doesn’t have the top-heavy talent of the SEC or ACC, and the four former-Pac-12 programs in the conference all finished top five in their inaugural Big Ten regular season.
In the Los Angeles Regional, the Bruins dodged many of their opponents’ top arms, like Arizona State’s Ben Jacobs or UC Irvine’s Ricky Ojeda.
Then UTSA looked nothing like the team that beat then-No. 2 seed Texas, losing to UCLA in two games during the LA Super Regional.
And then UCLA got to face the tournament’s Cinderella, Murray State, in its first MCWS game.
But LSU and Arkansas sent UCLA home packing after back-to-back beatings that, after the top of the first against the Tigers, never felt particularly close.
In his final press conference of the season, Savage emphasized the need to improve his team’s starting pitching.
Right-hander Cody Delvecchio started the season as the Friday night guy, but struggled early on before becoming academically ineligible for the majority of the season. He was most recently drafted by the San Francisco Giants in the 12th round. Rising redshirt senior southpaw Ian May began the year as the Saturday starter but lost his spot in the weekend rotation after just four starts and was only reinserted out of apparent necessity before being moved to the bullpen for the NCAA tournament.
Rising junior right-hander Landon Stump was the Sunday starter all season, but finished 2025 with an ERA north of five while averaging just over four innings per start.
Rising sophomore right-hander Wylan Moss was excellent for much of the season – and earned Big Ten All-Freshman Team honors – but seemingly struggled adjusting to the collegiate baseball workload as a back issue hampered his effectiveness down the stretch.
Luke Rodriguez tossed 51.2 innings in his freshman campaign and had a 2.11 ERA across 21.1 innings pitched in 2025 before becoming academically ineligible. He has since entered the transfer portal.
Rising senior right-hander Michael Barnett has been a dependable workhorse for the past two seasons – and after shockingly going undrafted in the 2025 MLB Draft – is slated for his final season at UCLA. While certainly deserving of a weekend rotation spot, by Savage’s admission, Barnett doesn’t fit the typical profile of a front-of-the-rotation arm.
By Perfect Game rankings, Cervantes arguably has the best pre-college pedigree of a Bruin pitcher since Thatcher Hurd – who had a 1.06 ERA and 48 strikeouts to just 10 walks in his first 34 innings pitched before an injury cut his freshman campaign short, followed by his transfer to LSU.
Additionally, fellow incoming freshman right-hander Zach Strickland went undrafted despite being the No. 86 player in the class, according to Perfect Game, and could compete for a spot as a starter or back-end of the bullpen.
Throw in the anticipated returns of the Bruins’ two hardest throwers – rising sophomore right-handed closer Easton Hawk and rising junior high-leverage right-hander Cal Randall – and the Bruins are set to have a much more competitive pitching staff than they did a year ago.
Book your flights?
UCLA has lost little talent to the transfer portal in recent years.
AJ Salgado, who announced his signing to the New York Mets organization as an undrafted free agent via Instagram on Thursday, is the only everyday player the Bruins are losing. The team seems to have his replacement in rising junior center fielder and Texas transfer Will Gasparino, though.
Partnering the strengths of 2025 and adding a revitalized pitching core, UCLA has as good a shot as ever at showering in blue and gold confetti at Charles Schwab Field once again.
And players know that; they want to play for the Bruins.
So much so that they’d turn down seven figures.
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