BLOOMINGTON – Jeff Mercer will admit now he felt sheepish, walking over to the middle school games at Grand Park in Westfield.

It was Mercer’s first week on the job at Indiana. When Fred Glass hired him from Wright State, Mercer outlined a philosophy he believed in to his core: the best college baseball teams were built through elite high school recruiting. It took time — recruiting in the sport tends to happen early in high school — but he believed this way, not JUCO recruiting or loading up on transfers, was the right way.

That brought Mercer to the Futures Games at Grand Park. And with it in mind, when Jordan Chiero, the scouting director at Prep Baseball Ohio and an old friend, told Mercer he needed to go check out an eighth-grader from Cincinnati, Mercer made the walk.

As he reached the field in question, he observed two things in succession. First, he was the only college coach there. And second, the player in question, Devin Taylor, was worth the walk.

As Taylor unloaded a base hit to center field with his first at-bat, Mercer watched his swing form, the way he rotated his body and where he pulled his natural and impressive power from.

Devin Taylor became an immediate recruiting priority.

“He had a chance just to be a dominant offensive player,” Mercer said. “His physical tools were going to give him a chance to be an elite prospect.”

Mercer’s patience proved prophetic. Taylor, now an outfielder at Indiana, is the only freshman in the conference’s top 10 in both home runs and OPS. He leads the Hoosiers in both, as well as slugging percentage.

He has almost a 1:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio hitting third for a team with a conference title now in view, and Taylor is a — if not the — frontrunner for Big Ten freshman of the year.

“He has a terrific baseball acumen,” Mercer said. “He has an awareness of the game, the nuance of it — cuts and relays, base running, two-strike approach— the finer points a freshman typically struggles with, he understands those things.”

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Taylor grew up playing basketball and baseball. He lettered once in the former, at La Salle High School in Cincinnati, but understood quickly the latter meant more to him, and would take him farther.

La Salle competes in the prestigious Greater Catholic League in south central Ohio. Some of the state’s best athletes have come from GCL schools, baseball no exception. Jim Bunning pitched for St. Xavier before going on to a hall-of-game career. Ken Griffey Jr., Barry Larkin, and both Buddy and David Bell all played at Moeller.

Devin Taylor won GCL South player of the year as a freshman.

“I’ve had the opportunity to put a lot of eyes on Devin,” said Roosevelt Barnes, who met Taylor when he was 10 and coached him through high school. “It’s almost like he was built for it. It’s like God made him to be a professional hitter.”

Barnes, now the head coach at Wilberforce University and a recommending scout for the Reds, saw the same qualities Mercer did that day at Grand Park, just at a younger age.

It wasn’t just Taylor’s bat-to-ball skills that set him apart. He was more mature than the average player. He could take good pitches confident in working for better ones. He understood the many nuances before almost any of his peers.

And he could hit. Oh, he could hit.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a kid more poised. He’s probably one of the most sophisticated and experienced hitters at a young age, and he’s been that way since 13,” Barnes told IndyStar. “Devin Taylor has a line-drive, compact swing. It just so happens because he has such a keen focus on seeing the baseball and is such a student of the game offensively, his compact, line-drive swings go out of the park at 450 feet.”

Taylor’s sophomore season was canceled due to COVID, but Barnes worried ahead of his junior year whether the pressure might dig into that unflappable poise.

After all, GCL baseball isn’t a small thing. Winning player of the year as a freshman would mean getting pitched around routinely as a junior.

Nothing fazed him.

“He manages to stay within himself,” Barnes said. “He adjusts to pressure very well. I’ve never seen his temperament waiver. It didn’t matter if it was bases load and two outs, and he’s at the plate, that’s a lot of pressure, or if we’re blowing a team out 10-1, he’s the same guy. …

“There’s sometimes I’ve been coaching third base giving signs and I’ve been more nervous than he’s been.”

All the while, Mercer built a relationship with Taylor and his family.

Taylor’s father, Carey, played collegiately, and a younger brother behind him, Chandler, has broken onto the Cincinnati high school scene as a member of the class of 2026. Baseball is a throughline in Taylor’s life, and the conversations he had with Mercer always felt different from his interactions with other college coaches.

“With him, it was just like I’m talking with a normal person,” Taylor said. “I felt like there were a lot of formal calls. Talking to coach Mercer, he just treated me as one of his own.”

Mercer persisted with his long-game recruiting strategy, prioritizing players like Taylor. Patience didn’t come easy. After winning the Big Ten regular-season title in 2019, the Hoosiers finished fourth and eighth, respectively, in 2021 and 2022 (their 2020 season also canceled by COVID).

The payoff came on nights like the one when Mercer stepped out onto his front porch to answer a Zoom call. On the other end of the line sat the Taylors, Devin with his back to the camera. As he turned to face his future coach, his t-shirt came into focus, a large block IU etched across the front.

“I hollered so loud my wife ran out and asked if I was OK,” Mercer said. “I was like, ‘Yea, we just changed the program.’”

College came with some adjustments for Taylor, like they do for anyone.

He felt self-conscious about leaving fall workouts an hour early because of conflicts with his class schedule. He made up lost work in the evenings at Bart Kaufman Field batting cages, and he filled volunteer assistant coach Zach Weatherford’s text inbox with questions about things he might have missed in base running drills.

It was hardly out of character for the player who once asked Barnes to hit him 300 fly balls behind the center field fence one day in high school, when practice was canceled because rain had flooded the diamond.

And the same analytical, level-headed player who excelled so far above his peers in high school didn’t need long to flatten the same learning curve in college.

During fall scrimmages, looking to expand his freshman’s defensive versatility, Mercer moved Taylor from the outfield to first base. Even from a new position, Taylor still saw the game in an advanced way.

“I tried to get Devin to play some first, and there were times when he would call time and go talk to the pitcher about how to hold the runner at first base better,” Mercer said. “That’s unique for a young guy to be able to do that.”

Taylor will admit to freshman moments, like an 0-for-3 day at the plate in his first-career start, at Texas. But Mercer can also point to his 4-for-4 performance with two doubles just three games later, against Bellarmine, or the three home runs Taylor hit in the Morehead State series one week after that, for evidence of a player beyond his years.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a freshman get pitched around,” Mercer said. “How many freshmen have you seen teams, at least once or twice a game, try to walk him without giving him an intentional pass? I’ve never seen it before.”

Taylor has become a mainstay for one of the best offenses in the Big Ten. Brock Tibbitts, Josh Pyne and Phillip Glasser have all scattered their names across the same individual leaderboards this season, with the Hoosiers collectively top four in the conference in doubles, triples, home runs, slugging percentage, walks and total bases.

All of which has helped build toward the opportunity in front of IU this weekend. With three games left in the regular season, the Hoosiers sit tied atop the Big Ten standings alongside Maryland. Match or beat the Terrapins’ results this weekend, and stay ahead of a four-team cluster between 1.5-2 games back, and Indiana will win its second Big Ten title in Mercer’s four full seasons in charge.

That patience Mercer preached and then practiced has built a team capable of competing for top prizes. One that — whatever the next two weekends hold — will be playing in its seventh NCAA tournament in 11 years, after just two such berths in its entire history before 2013.

A testament to five years of program building. Not least the time Mercer followed the advice of an old friend, and walked over a field when no other coach would, to watch a player now crucial to his program’s success.

“He is a great player today,” Mercer said, “but there’s a lot of game left for him to grow into, to become that four- and five-tool kind of guy he’s capable of being.”

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana Hoosiers baseball: Freshman Devin Taylor a program changer