The Seattle Mariners drafted pitcher Jurrangelo Cijntje out of Mississippi State with the No. 15 overall pick in the 2024 MLB Draft. Cijntje hails from the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao, and his father was a professional baseball player as a catcher in the Netherlands. That’s a cool backstory already, but it’s hardly what makes Cijntje so fascinating.
Cijntje is the rare “switch pitcher,” a phenomenon that has rarely been seen throughout baseball’s eternal history. As the story goes, Cijntje was born a natural lefty, but he wanted to be like his dad, who threw with his right hand. Cijntje learned how to do both. He played in
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