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VENTURA, CALIF. - The Uncommitted Spotlight Series continues 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 2027 player who is featured inside the Top 50 of our 2027 California rankings. We are looking at SoCal '27 C Carson Kinnick from Upland High School in Upland, Calif.. Kinnick popped on our radar prior to his Soph. season at Upland with a strong showing at the Inland Empire Preseason ID event held at Santiago High School. From there he put up a solid first varsity season for a Scots team which scuffled a bit in the competitive Baseline League. But, this summer Kinnick made his presence known with a strong performance across the entirety of the summer circuit including his time with the Brewers Underclass team at the Area Codes Games.

Kinnick's offensive profile showed very well during his batting practice session at Santiago High School. The LH hitter starts from a wider set up with a lower/deeper hand set up. He uses a simple load with body control employing a small toe tap stride while keeping his hands relatively quiet to reach launch. His turn utilizes the lower half of his body effectively while sinking into his rear leg and employing an uphill bat path geared to generate leverage/loft. His turn has a solid ability to generate torque with a peak rotational acceleration of 15 Gs while using quick strong hands with a 21.6 MPH peak hand speed and strong present bat speed at 75.7 MPH in the swing operation. The simplicity of his operation in the load, strong feel for contact out front and on the barrel of his bat was consistent during batting practice to produce max exit velocites up to 95.3 MPH with a max distance of 369' at the ID event. The deeper metrics provided by Trackman during batting practice show his consistency for elevated contact with a 63% fly ball rate trending to his power/impact LH hitting profile while still displaying a solid hit tool.

The 2025 spring season was a bit down for the Upland program as a team, but Kinnick took advantage of consistent playing time to produce a solid first season. Carson played in 25 games while taking 89 plate appearances with 72 official at bats posting a slash line of .250/.375/.389 including 18 total hits with five of those going for extra bases (two doubles, one triple, two homers). He drove in seven runs while scoring another 12 runs himself and drew 13 walks on the spring. He posted a .986 fielding percentage in 25 games played. 

Kinnick has an intriguing present build at 6'1 187.2 lbs frame that has some solid present strength to it, but continues to develop and add physicality as he is maturing. A decent athlete he posted 7.4 60 yard sprint speed with a top end 18.6 MPH run speed. But, his acumen behind the plate has been well regarded especially during the summer circuit with his feel to receive, strong blocking profile and the arm plays at a high level. He showed 77 MPH catcher velocity with a 1.98 personal best pop time at the IE Preseason ID, but during Area Codes I had him as low as 1.87 between innings and he threw extremely in game with quickness/accuracy to the bag.

With a solid first season of stats on the varsity level in a competitive league, the upward trend to his overall profile this summer and the intriguing LH hitting backstop profile with real offensive potential Kinnick should be a name college programs are keeping close tabs on for their 2027 class.

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

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