In a matter of months, Oliver Dunn went from a top prospect to an injured one. 

Such is the life of the professional baseball player, one where you take the lumps where they come and press on. 

For Dunn, that happened immediately after the Milwaukee Brewers of Major League Baseball not only placed the Cottonwood High star on the club’s 10-day injured list with a back strain in June—they put him on the 60-day
injured list. 

It was one of many obstacles that the former Utah Utes infielder has had to deal with in his professional baseball career. 

The next was that Dunn would be replaced by someone else on the Brewers’ 40-man roster, ending what had been his best year as a pro—one that even saw him play for the first time in his career on Opening Day back in March.  

Though that season nearly led to being assigned back to Triple-A Nashville, it did not for Dunn, who hit .221 and had .282/.316 splits at the plate for Milwaukee in 104 at-bats. 

The Cottonwood High School graduate was an 11th round draft pick of the New York Yankees in 2019 who started his career a long way from home, two years prior to that. In 2017, Dunn played for the Peninsula Oilers in Kenai, Alaska. He hit .233 with 17 hits in 73 plate appearances there before returning to the University of Utah to finish his collegiate baseball career. 

With the Utes, Dunn took that unique experience in Alaska and improved his overall game. He hit .319 with 31 RBI and wrapped up his time at Utah with a .426 on-base percentage his junior year, up from a .250 average and 19 RBI as a sophomore. 

From then, Dunn played for the highly regarded Wareham Gatemen in the instructional Cape Cod League where he hit .243 with eight RBI in 70 plate appearances. 

And from that point forward, his career as a professional baseball player officially began after Dunn hit a whopping .366 with 28 RBI and eight stolen bases at Utah, wrapping up his senior season with the Utes with a tidy bow. 

Having been drafted by the Yankees, Dunn was assigned to single-A Charleston where he hit .226 in 118 plate appearances. That had the 21 year old demoted to rookie-league Pulaski deep in the Appalachian League where the Colts legend hit .240 with 12 singles and
11 RBI. 

But, something that has been in Dunn’s glove since he was a kid has proven to be a fail-safe way to keep him swinging, even in the dog days of the minors—his fielding. 

Even as Dunn’s hitting was not on par, his glove was. At Charleston as Pulaski, his fielding percentage was literally off the charts at three positions: 91, 95 and 100 in Charleston; and a flat perfect 100 at Pulaski at the two spots Dunn played. 

That prowess on the field grew to five total positions that Dunn played at Double-A Somerset [Massachusetts] where he had a letter-perfect 100 at three of them, hitting .182 with
17 RBI. 

At A-plus league Hudson Valley [New York], Dunn’s fielding percentage dipped to 98, 96 and 87—but his hitting improved to .209 in 2021. That slight improvement propelled the Yankees to promote Dunn to AAA ball to start the 2022 season. 

Facing a do-or-die year for this Cottonwood High alum on America’s Team, Dunn started the year at AAA Wilkes-Barre [Pennsylvania] and hit just .071 in seven games. That dip in form despite a great glove at three positions [100, 100 and 97] saw the Colt demoted once again, this time back to AA Somerset, where his glove betrayed him. Playing at four different positions, his trusty fielding percentage plummeted to 85, 95 and 95 and only yielded one perfect defensive score. 

That was all she wrote for the Yankees, who placed Dunn on waivers immediately following the 2022 season. 

But, the Philadelphia Phillies picked up the Cottonwood alum on Dec. 7, 2022. It was a nice Christmas gift for Dunn, who hit a career-high .333 at AA Somerset and had something that the Phillies liked. 

Philadelphia sent Dunn to AA Reading, where for the first time in his career, the Colt played more than 80 games at any one stop. Dunn also had 417 at-bats, also the most for any team, hitting .271 with 21 home runs and 78 RBI. 

Those numbers and the fact that Dunn’s fielding was literally on point at three of the four positions he was playing on the field caught the attention of the Arizona Fall League, Major League Baseball’s primary instructional league. It assigned the Cottonwood standout to Scottsdale, where Dunn would shine on second and third base and hit .343 with 12 RBI in just 70 at-bats. 

For his efforts, Dunn would be named the League’s Breakout Player Of The Year after he led the Fall League in batting average and three other categories as a slugger. 

Dunn was on a literal high in his life—when he got traded to Milwaukee this
past November. 

At the age of 25, the Cottonwood High alum was going on his third MLB team and his ninth team in total if you count all the teams Dunn’s played for in the minors. 

It would be foolish, however, to count Dunn out. λ