It's been two years since the college baseball world has experienced the joys of watching this Parker Chavers — the fully healthy, unencumbered Chavers who is one of the most exciting players in the country. As a freshman All-American for Coastal Carolina in 2018, Chavers did it all, hitting for average and power, stealing some bases, and playing great defense in center field. Then four weeks into his sophomore season in 2019, a freak accident altered the path of his career. Chavers was returning to the dugout at T-Mobile Park in Seattle after a loss to San Diego, and he stumbled on the dugout steps, catching himself with his right arm in an awkward way, causing his shoulder to pop out of joint. It turned out, the episode also caused a tear in his labrum, which had already been surgically repaired in 2014 as a result of a high school pitching injury.

The Chanticleers prepared to be without Chavers for most of that season, but he returned quicker than expected and served as the team’s DH while attempting to rehab his shoulder. Remarkably, Chavers managed to put up even louder numbers despite playing through the injury, finishing that 2019 season by hitting .316/.435/.612 with 15 homers and 10 steals in 57 games.

Chavers went to the Cape Cod League that summer and continued to play through the injury while trying to rehab, and he threw the ball well when he returned to campus that fall. But the pain kept flaring up, and eventually he faced the reality that he needed surgery at the end of the fall heading into his junior season — his draft year. He never saw the field in 2020 before the season was canceled, and he went unselected in the shortened five-round draft.

“I had to have my labrum repaired in two different spots. They disconnected my bicep and then reattached it so it wouldn’t continue to pull on the labrum — pretty extensive surgery,” Chavers said. “No one ever wants to get hurt, and for me, the way it happened was a bummer, a freak accident, something not even really baseball related. It’s kind of easy to ask, ‘Why’d that have to happen, why me?’ And then to have surgery going into your junior draft year, something you worked so hard for since you were a freshman, it was disappointing. I was super-bummed to have surgery going into last year, and then obviously everything got canceled and it was hard for everyone. I just wanted to come back and prove how healthy I was and how good I could still be.

"Obviously the timing was unfortunate, but now I feel better than I have in probably two years, as far as being healthy. If you would have told me last December that I’d come out of surgery and feel this good right now, I don’t know that I would have believed you.”

It was clear in the fall that Chavers was back to his old self. After catching an intrasquad in November, I wrote: A quick-twitch 5-foot-11, 190-pound lefthanded hitter who coils and explodes, Chavers was a hard contact machine this fall, and I saw him hit three balls that came off the bat at 104 mph or harder, highlighted by a towering solo homer to right on a 93 mph fastball that exited at 106 mph.

Through 15 games this spring, Chavers’ home run power hasn’t really shown up yet — he has gone deep just once through 61 at-bats. But even without the long balls, he’s still providing serious value in a whole bunch of different ways, hitting .344/.453/.557 with six doubles, two triples 14 RBIs and five steals in five tries. 

“He made some swing adjustments over the break and has had to go back and figure some things back out,” Coastal Carolina coach Gary Gilmore said. “He’s missed probably five or six balls where, a quarter of an inch on the bat difference and all of them are home runs. He’s been so close, and I think he’s gonna hit his stride somewhere along the way where he catches back up with the home runs, I truly believe he’s going to. But the greatest testament to him is the amount of positive things he is doing for us offensively without hitting home runs. He is a tough bird to strike out, and I’ll tell you what man, any time he fungoes that thing around in the infield, it’s a challenge to throw the guy out. He really gets down the line — he’s getting down the line in 4-flat or under just about every time. That’s putting a lot of pressure on defenses.”

Chavers said two of his greatest points of emphasis heading into this season were to show better plate discipline and put his speed to use more often on the basepaths. He posted a 39-54 walk-strikeout mark as a freshman, then a 39-47 mark as a sophomore, but this year he has 10 walks against just seven strikeouts.

“Going through my first two seasons here and obviously that summer in the Cape, kind of the biggest thing I saw in me was, I had dynamic tools but it was the swing and miss, the inconsistency at times in the box,” Chavers said. “So this year I’m just trying to focus on being a pure hitter, show that I can do it all, cut down on my strikeouts, be as well rounded as possible. The other thing for me is using my legs a lot more. I think I’m very underrated in the speed department because I didn’t run a whole lot my first two years. But I’m trying to showcase what I can do on the basepaths and in center field with my defense.”

That’s the other big difference between this Chavers and the 2019 Chavers: now that he’s healthy, he’s back in center field, where he can provide so much more value than he could as a DH. As a prep in Alabama, Chavers was an undersized infielder (“I would say I was the smallest kid on my team growing up and still wasn’t physically mature in high school,” he said). He originally committed to play at East Tennessee State for Tony Skole, whose son played on Chavers’ travel ball team. 

But after Skole left for The Citadel, Chavers eventually got his release, and he said Coastal was looking for an infielder. Chavers was still flying under the radar as a prospect, particularly since an elbow injury his senior year resulted in UCL surgery that May. But a scout buddy of CCU pitching coach Drew Thomas passed along a tip that Chavers could really hit and had been overlooked in the recruiting process. Chavers said he made his first visit to Coastal in the third week of July after his senior year, and a few weeks later he was on campus for the start of school. He worked in the Coastal infield that fall, but with Cory Wood and Seth Lancaster back in the middle infield, it soon became clear that Chavers’ path to playing time would be in center.

“He thought he could be a shortstop, and we recruited him as one, but the throwing action and some of the things were going to be a real struggle to make him an adequate infielder,” Gilmore recalled. “It took one day watching him run around in center field to realize that’s where God meant for that boy to be.

“The bar here for center fielders is really high, and he definitely is as good as anybody that’s ever played here. You look at [David] Sappelt and Rico Noel and Billy Cook, there have been some of the better center fielders in the country that have played here, and he’s as good as all of them.”

When you put it all together — the defense, the speed, the lefthanded bat speed and the increasingly mature approach — Chavers ranks as one of the most dynamic players in college baseball. Gilmore knows how fortunate his club is to have a healthy Chavers back leading his Chanticleers as a fourth-year veteran.

“We don’t ever talk about it, I don’t ever mention it to him by any means — he has enough internal pressure on himself with the draft and the pressures of trying to be a high draft pick on top of being the straw that stirs the drink type of guy — but our success and failure over the course of the season will largely depend on how he’s able to play all year long,” Gilmore said. “If he has a career year, that will help cover up some of the issues and challenges we have in offensive areas as well as pitching areas. The kid’s an unbelievable player. If you asked me how he’s played the first 15 games, I’d tell you he’s played very good. Has he been great? No, but he’s been very good. You’d look at his numbers and say, ‘Coach, how is that not great?’ But he’s one of the best hitters and players that I’ve had the pleasure of coaching. There’s more upside to him than about anybody we’ve ever had. He’s an athletic Tommy La Stella — he’s a guy that’s got power but doesn’t strike out very much, and his athleticism is insane, it really is.”

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