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VENTURA, CALIF. - The Uncommitted Spotlight Series returns after a jam packed summer of Prep Baseball California events, summer travel baseball, and other opportunities to evaluate players we will be recognizing some of the top remaining uncommitted players around the state. We will be looking at players from the 2026 class and 2027 classes across the upcoming weeks/months. 

We invite you to get to know them through the eyes of our Prep Baseball California staff of scouts both through our in person looks at players and/or the data-backed numbers collected at our events with our partnered companies. TrackMan, Blast Motion, and VALD Performance provide comparable data to project and evaluate players. All of these systems come together to give a clear picture at what colleges will get when a players steps onto their campus.

Today, we put the spotlight on an impressive 2026 player who is featured inside our 2026 California rankings and making a rise after a loud spring high school season and travel ball summer. We are looking at SoCal '26 C Cole Studt from Highland High School in Lancaster, Calif.. Studt has been a consistently strong performer on the Prep Baseball California platform in 2025 first at the Central California Preseason All State in January and then again this summer with a strong showing at the Future Games Tryout: Central California before putting up another strong showing at the 2025 California State Games both during the workout and the three games he played in.

Studt has consistently demonstrated his strong offensive profile from the swing quality to his batted ball data. A LH hitter Studt starts from a relaxed taller posture with his feet close together and his hands around his shoulder. From there he starts with medium leg lift and hover with his front side before taking a controlled forward move into the launch position. Once at launch Cole shows a quality ability to generate torque in his swing through his lower 1/2 with a peak rotational acceleration of 13 Gs while using quick strong hands with a 20.9 MPH peak hand speed and solid present bat speed at 72.1 MPH in his swing operation. The consistent and quality swing for Studt mix with his solid present approach, rhythm/timing to be on time for his swing and the strong barrel feel during batting practice to produce max exit velocites up to 97 MPH while averaging 88.5 MPH on his exit velocity with a max distance of 369' at the FGT: Central California event. The deeper metrics provided by Trackman during batting practice confirm the quality of Studt's offensive ability including 57% hard hit rate, 80% sweet spot rate while showing solid feel for driving the baseball in the air including 79% and 100% fly ball/line drive rates during batting practice sessions.

Studt is far from a workout warrior with his offensive toolset having it show up in live looks for myself across the high school season and summer travel season. Plus during his JR. campaign at Highland Studt produced a slash line of .476/.520/.714 with a strong approach that produced an 11 BB to 11 K ratio over 28 games played, 100 plate apperances and 84 official at bats. Studt showed his hit tool with a total of 40 hits on the spring while flashing the impact in his profile by drilling eight doubles and four homers. The LH hitter is productive with runners on base plating 29 RBIs and scored 25 runs himself. His doubles, homers, average, OBP, SLG, RBIs, walks and total hits were all tops on the Bulldogs squad. Behind the plate Studt showed his solid defensive profile with a .995 fielding percentage on the year committing just one error in 187 chances. 

Cole is strongly built at 6'2 207.3 lbs. presently and has consistently improved his frame over the last 8+ months. In addition to his consistent improvement to his strong frame he has shown steady improvement to his athleticism over the last 8+ months clocking a personal best in the 60 at 7.67 at the California State Games. He is strong receiver behind the plate who has a soft glove while showing strong wrists to stick velocity and move with spin to present it for strikes while being solid on balls in the dirt. His pop times go as low at 2.03 while generally being accurate to the bag with a 76 MPH C velocity. Should a move out from behind the plate be in Studt's future his bat and defensive profile can handle a move to 1B which could even increase his offensive production with the rigors of catching removed and more focus being able to be placed on offense.

With an impressive performance from his JR year high school stats, live looks by myself and our scouting staff, event performances and more there is plenty of reasons for college programs to be jumping into the recruiting mix for Studt as a impact profile LH hitter for their 2026 classes.

College coaches and fans be sure to click on Studt's profile to see full video and information.

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