Nolan Santos’ baseball career has been all about Florida ... and a little bit of Iowa

CEDAR RAPIDS — Nolan Santos is a Florida kid.

He played high school baseball in the state. He played college baseball in the state. He played junior college baseball in the state.

The first two seasons of his professional career had exclusively been spent there, too: last year with the Rookie-level Florida Complex League Twins and this year with low-Class A Fort Myers. It was two weeks ago when the righty relief pitcher finally got a chance to play ball somewhere else, as he was promoted to the high-A Cedar Rapids Kernels.

On to Iowa. No, actually back to Iowa.

Santos’ only other real non-Florida baseball experience came the summer of 2021 pitching for the Waterloo Bucks of the summer collegiate Northwoods League. The Kernels own the Bucks.

Kind of a unique deal all the way around.

“Waterloo was great, my first time being here in the Midwest for real, for real,” said Santos, whose Kernels lost Sunday afternoon at Veterans Memorial Stadium to Great Lakes, 3-2. “I have family in Ohio, so I’d been there. But this was my first experience in the Midwest without my family. It was cool to get away from home and get a different understanding of the country and where I was at. From there to here, it seems like everybody is very giving and very nice people. So it was good. It’s been fun.”

Santos, 23, was lightly recruited out of high school and ended up at Bethune-Cookman on scholarship. Bethune-Cookman is a smaller Division I program and an HBCU (Historically Black College & University) in Daytona Beach, Fla.

The school shut down its baseball program in 2021 because of COVID concerns, so Santos pitched that season with Miami-Dade Community College. He thought about maybe finding another D-I home after his junior college stint, but went back to Bethune-Cookman for two more seasons and was taken in the seventh round of the 2023 Major League Baseball Draft by the Minnesota Twins.

“(Bethune-Cookman) is definitely a different culture than a lot of bigger, Power Five schools and all that stuff,” Santos said. “But I want to say it’s more family like, tight knit. It’s a smaller campus, so you know everybody. Everybody in the athletics department will support you, no matter what sport you are playing. The people there are good people. You’ve just got to get to know them a little bit. Once they figure out you, and you figure out them, everybody is good. It’s no different than going to a regular school.”

Santos went 3-2 with eight saves and a 2.39 ERA in 29 games for Fort Myers this season. He has given up just one hit and no runs in his first four Kernels appearances, spanning 6 1/3 innings, and has a save.

He features a fastball that can get to 93 and 94 miles per hour, a slider, a curveball and every now and then a changeup.

“I’ve always kind of said to myself that if I’m going to come out of the bullpen, closing is ideally what I want to do,” Santos said. “I feel like that’s the most fun role. You’ve got that adrenaline, everybody is on their feet whether you are at home or away. If you have just a one or two-run lead, everybody is locked into the game, everybody is paying attention. Closing is a way different mindset than starting. But it’s fun.”

The Kernels (55-45 overall) lost the final five games of this six-game series and have dropped eight of their last 10 overall. They fell back to the .500 mark in the Midwest League’s second half at 18-18, with a six-game series on tap this week at Peoria, the first of those games coming Tuesday night.

Great Lakes scored three runs in the fourth to go ahead for good against unlucky losing and starting pitcher Ty Langenberg. The Urbandale resident and former Iowa Hawkeyes right-hander deserved better, giving up just six hits and one earned run in six innings.

Two of the fourth-inning runs against him were unearned.

Cedar Rapids pulled within 3-2 in the top of the eighth with a run but stranded the bases loaded. The tying run also was on base in the ninth.

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