Alex McKenna grew up in the shadow of Colossus. The massive wooden roller coaster is one of over a dozen similarly turbulent rides still anchored at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Canyon Country (aka Santa Clarita), California, about 35 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

Alex, 20, was the Houston Astros’ fourth-round selection (#132 overall) in the 2018 MLB First-Year Player Draft out of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. The assigned value for the 132nd pick, according to MLB.com, is $410,400; those four hundred “Gs” could prove to be an epic bargain by his MLB debut. McKenna signed with Houston June 22.

UPDATE: McKenna had a busy week in mid-August! On August 14, 2018, he played in the New York-Penn League All-Star Game for the Astros’ Class A Short Season Tri-City ValleyCats. The very next day, Houston promoted him to their Full Season A Quad Cities River Bandits. Congratulations, Alex! While waiting for his “marching orders” to join the Quad Cities team, McKenna performed as the ValleyCats’ first base coach in their August 15th game, to avoid unnecessary injury exposure.

McKenna impressed with a team-high .328 batting average and .958 OPS in 32 games with Tri-City. Next stop, Houston’s Advanced-A team to start 2019, which by then, will have moved from Buies Creek to Fayetteville.

3-Sport Star

Perhaps to flee the temptation a Magic Mountain annual pass might have on his education, McKenna slid down the Pacific coast to attend Bishop Alemany High School in the San Fernando Valley suburb of Mission Hills, just 15 miles down I-5.

McKenna lettered in football and basketball as a freshman, and football as a sophomore, excelling at the quarterback position.

As a junior, with a laser focus on baseball, McKenna hit .320 with four doubles, four triples, and three home runs under head coach Randy Thompson at Alemany, the same school that produced 1970s “counter-culture” comedian and actor, “Cheech” Marin (Cheech & Chong).

McKenna hit .402 as a senior, with seven doubles, two triples, three home runs, and 15 RBIs, with a .541 on-base percentage and .646 slugging percentage, while swiping eight of 11 bases.

McKenna earned first-team All-Mission League, second-team all-state and Max Preps, and third-team All-USA honors. He was invited to the USA Baseball 17-Under National Team Development Program and was invited to the USA Tournament of Stars. He wrapped up his career with the Warriors as a four-time All-Mission League Scholar-Athlete and was drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the 38th round in 2015.

“Felt Like Home”

During his senior year, McKenna was recruited by UNLV, UC Santa Barbara, Long Beach State, California, Duke, and Cal State Northridge. McKenna chose Cal Poly, three hours up the coast on the scenic 101, because, in his words, “It truly felt like home when I set foot on campus. I believe that Coach [Larry] Lee and the coaching staff will develop me further. I love the area, the academics and we have an excellent chance to get to Omaha [for the College World Series].”

Majoring in communication studies, McKenna has promised his family that, at some point, he’ll gladly return to Cal Poly to complete his studies for graduation, a proposition that will be accompanied by his reunion with his favored gastronomical indulgence, SoCal’s renowned In-n-Out Burgers. Motivation, Alex is discovering, can come from anywhere.

As a freshman in 2016, he hit .261 in 184 at-bats with 37 runs scored, six home runs, 27 RBIs, 24 walks, and 38 strikeouts.

The following summer, he played for the Eau Claire Express in the Northwoods (College Summer) League where he hit .269 in 167 at-bats, with 27 runs scored, eight home runs, 32 RBIs, 20 stolen bases, 17 walks, and 40 strikeouts.

That propelled him to a big sophomore campaign in which he garnered scouts’ attention by hitting .356 with a .420 OBP to go along with 45 runs scored, 11 doubles, five home runs, 31 RBIs, 13 stolen bases, 21 walks, and 45 strikeouts.

Those numbers were good enough for him to be named a First-Team All-Big West Conference selection. McKenna also finished No. 30 in the nation in hits per game (1.50) and produced hitting streaks of eight, seven, and six games. He hit .389 in Big West games and, for the season, did not commit an error in 145 chances in center field.

In the summer of 2017, proving his prowess with a wood bat, McKenna continued his success with the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox of the Cape Cod League. He hit .298 in 124 at-bats with 16 runs scored, nine doubles, 16 RBIs, seven stolen bases, six walks, and 29 strikeouts.

In this, his junior season, McKenna was the lone player from a Big West Conference school to land on Baseball America‘s 2018 Preseason All-America Team, after hitting a solid .339 in 239 ABs. Gap power was in evidence, as he hit 15 doubles, with five triples and homers. His walk and strikeout ratios improved from last year to this season: Walks, 21 last year up to 27, and K numbers, 45, down to 39, this season, are a good start.

In 2018, McKenna led the conference with 81 hits and 51 runs while committing just one error all season.

In three seasons in San Luis Obispo, McKenna hit .323 with 16 home runs, 32 doubles, nine triples, and 89 RBIs in 158 games. His career OPS was .874 for the Mustangs.

Related: McKenna’s Tri-City ValleyCats teammate Gilberto Celestino Making Noise

The Close Call

McKenna was involved in a traffic accident in October 2017 that virtually totaled his blue 1981 Ford F-150 pickup, a gift from his great-grandfather after his passing. Alex was going home from school and was stopped at a light at an intersection near Highway 1 in SLO. When the light turned green, he started to move.

“I looked to the right and didn’t see the guy flying at me,” McKenna told the San Luis Obispo Tribune at the time. The other car slammed into his front end. McKenna’s truck spun around three times before stopping.

He said that a few bystanders rushed over to his truck and got him out.

“My first reaction was just to check my body and make sure nothing was too serious,” McKenna said. “I obviously had a lot of adrenaline going and everything, and couldn’t really feel anything.”

Thankfully, he was able to walk away with just a two-inch gash on the back of his head [hitting his truck’s rear window], but he’s mature enough to put it into perspective: “I walked out with just a cut on my head,” he said. “That was the only thing that happened. It could have been way worse.

“Just super thankful to walk away from that with nothing too serious; it’s nice to still be playing baseball, ’cause something like that could derail someone’s career really easily.”

The Tools

Alex McKenna has a relatively short, compact swing with an upper body that stays very still, but lower body movement that may need to be reeled in. He possesses a very powerful swing –an almost all-effort swing– which leads to more strikeouts than necessary, even though he currently possesses a manageable K-rate. Toward season’s end, he was sitting on a modest 15% strikeouts over 227 at-bats.

His combination of speed and power will make him an exciting player to watch rise through the ranks, as he was one of the best outfield prospects chosen in the recent draft.

McKenna’s 2018 OPS of .932 cracked the Top 100 in Division-I baseball. As Sodomojo.com recently observed, “Overall, he’s slashing .345/.425/.523. For someone of his frame, you’d expect more over-the-wall power. The relatively low slugging percentage is indicative of some of the power concerns scouts have about McKenna.”

Hinting at his power projection, though, McKenna’s Cal Poly coach, referencing the just-finished season, recently told the San Luis Obispo Tribune, “[McKenna] had a real good year for us, and his potential is still untapped,” Larry Lee said. “Now he has to develop into more of a power guy at the next level.”

As D1Baseball weighed in recently, “McKenna is a loose-bodied athlete whose power may arrive later, and some scouts project him to have 55 (on the 20-80 scale) future power.” D1Baseball also had McKenna listed as the No. 11 college outfielder eligible for the June draft.

The Projection

McKenna was pre-Draft ranked (by MLB.com) at #97. Having slipped, though, to the 132nd overall pick may have momentarily disappointed him, but the good news for the Astros is that he’s got the innate talent and, more importantly, the dogged perseverance and drive to improve and succeed.

Which would mean, then, that Houston has uncovered a potential hidden treasure in the fourth round. The boy who grew up an LA Dodgers fan, and had to watch his beloved Dodger Blue blurred and smeared by the Astros’ march to the pennant last fall, is now anxious to begin his trek to Astro prominence, setting his sights doggedly on Minute Maid Park.

Video: See and hear Alex reflect on his Cal Poly years, and his reaction to being drafted by the Astros: