Kevin Parada
Parada attended Loyola High School in Los Angeles, California. He finished his high school career with a .390 batting average, nine home runs, 66 RBIs, and 24 doubles. He was considered a top prospect for the 2020 Major League Baseball draft, but went unselected, and enrolled at Georgia Tech to play college baseball. Parada was instantly put into the starting lineup at catcher as a freshman in 2021. Over 52 games , he slashed .318/.370/.550 with nine home runs and 42 RBIs alongside twenty doubles which led the Atlantic Coast Conference, earning Freshman All-American honors. Parada played nine games in the Cape Cod Baseball League with the Chatham Anglers over the summer. He was also named to the USA Baseball Collegiate National Team with whom he spent part of the summer. Parada entered the 2022 season as a top prospect for the upcoming draft. On March 1, 2022, he was named the National Player of the Week by "Collegiate Baseball Newspaper" after a week in which he went 12-21 with five home runs and 17 RBIs. On March 29, in a 17-3 win versus the Charleston Southern Buccaneers, Parada had his first ever two-home run game. After he hit his 26th home run of the season, he set the Georgia Tech single season home run record, breaking the previous record set by Anthony Maisano in 1990. Parada ended the season having played in sixty games, compiling a .361/.453/.709 slash line with 26 home runs and 88 RBIs. Following the season's end, he traveled to San Diego where he participated in the Draft Combine. He also returned to play with Chatham in the Cape Cod Baseball League. Parada's mother, Darlene, played college softball at Woodbury University.
Career
Kevin John Parada (born August 3, 2001) is an American college baseball catcher for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.