USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
Texas Tech's Jack Cebert pitches against Cincinnati during a Big 12 baseball game, Friday, April 4, 2025, at Dan Law Field.
On Sunday, the Nationals traded Luis Garcia Jr. to the Yankees for a haul of players that included minor league pitcher Jack Cebert. The latter’s arrival may not have seemed super notable at first glance, but it turns out it came more than a decade after he urged Washington to acquire him in a DM he sent when he was just 13 years old.
Teams around the MLB spent the first few days of August focusing on potential transactions in anticipation of the arrival of the trade deadline on Monday evening. That included the buyers hoping to firm up their rosters in anticipation of a playoff push and the sellers looking to offload assets in the hopes of setting themselves up for the future.
The Yankees fell in that first category as they angle for the top spot in the AL East, while the Nationals landed under the second umbrella as a squad that’s currently sitting under .500 and more than a dozen games behind the leader in the NL East.
On Sunday, the Bronx Bombers added a hot hitter to the roster after acquiring Luis Garcia from Washington in exchange for a quartet of right-handed pitchers. That haul included Jack Cebert, a minor league prospect who manifested a dream that was 11 years in the making.
Jack Cebert told the Nationals to trade for him in a DM he sent as a 13-year-old before his wishes came true
I feel like you have to be a pretty diehard baseball fan to be familiar with Cebert, a Florida native who spent three seasons pitching at USF before wrapping up his college career at Texas Tech last year.
The Yankees drafted him in the 15th round of the MLB Draft in 2025, and he joined the Hudson Valley Renegades (their High-A affiliate) before being promoted to the Somerset Patriots of the AA.
The Nationals didn’t exactly stage a coup by landing him, and while there’s no telling what the future holds for the 24-year-old, we did get a glimpse at his past courtesy of the screenshot of a DM he sent the team in 2015, where he hyped himself up while urging them to “trade for this kid” and pledging “he’s going somewhere.”
imagine OUR surprise when we open our DMs with jack to see he’s been locked in since middle school pic.twitter.com/ybcnctR9ep
— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) August 3, 2026
We were also treated to a “Proud Mom Moment,” as his mother, Nancy, was understandably moved after seeing how things have panned out for the son who sent those messages when he was just 13 years old.
What a world.