As MLB Draft begins, Golden Spikes winner Daniel Jackson is ready for the next challenge: 'I'm just curious to see where my name goes'

Since 1978, the Golden Spikes Award has been given annually to the best amateur ballplayer in the country. High school players are technically eligible, the occasional underclassman qualifies as a finalist, and there have been outliers along the way, such as a 17-year-old Bryce Harper demolishing the junior college competition en route to winning the award. But the overwhelming majority of honorees have been the most impactful draft-eligible Division I players in a given season. 

As such, it’s easy to look back at past recipients of amateur baseball’s most prestigious accolade and spot a clear trend: Win the Golden Spikes Award, and you probably won’t have to wait long to hear your name called on draft day. In fact, more Golden Spikes winners have been selected first overall (8) than have been selected outside the first round (7). Of the 32 primary position players who have won the award, more than half of them (18) were drafted in the top five. And of the 42 winners from inaugural honoree Bob Horner to Adley Rutschman in 2019, 40 have made it to the majors, and many have gone on to accomplish big things at the highest level, from Will Clark to Tim Lincecum to Stephen Strasburg to Kris Bryant.

Of course, winning this award is not a stamp of guaranteed big-league success, but it’s awfully close. And that brings us to Georgia catcher Daniel Jackson, this year’s Golden Spikes winner following a magnificent campaign leading the Bulldogs to their first Men’s College World Series appearance since 2008. Jackson is the fifth catcher to win the award, joining Jason Varitek, Buster Posey, Mike Zunino and Rutschman, but he’s the first catcher in Division I history to hit 25 home runs and steal 25 bases in a season.

In total in 2026, Jackson hit .379/.473/.803 with 32 homers and 26 stolen bases, driving in 87 runs across 67 games. Thanks to that outstanding production in the SEC, by far college baseball’s toughest conference, Jackson won the Golden Spikes Award over UCLA shortstop Roch Cholowsky, arguably the top prospect in the 2026 class, and Arizona State outfielder Landon Hairston, a potential fourth-generation big leaguer who is projected to be a top-10 pick in 2027.

Yet as draft day nears, Jackson is not considered within the industry to be in the inner circle of the best prospects in this year’s class, along with the likes of Cholowsky and Georgia Tech backstop Vahn Lackey. Enough evaluators express skepticism about his defense behind the plate and his swing-and-miss tendencies to push him closer to the back of the first round, despite his eye-popping stats. 

“Truthfully, I'm surprised sometimes when I don't see my name up higher,” Jackson told me last month at the MLB Draft Combine, where he was scheduled to meet with more than 20 teams. “But at the same time, there's only so much that I can do, and I feel like I did everything that I could. I'm pretty content with that.

“I'm just curious to see where my name goes,” he added. “So many possibilities.”

Unlike his fellow Golden Spikes finalists, Jackson has not been a household name for long. His achievement was not the culmination of a three-year build toward inevitable superstardom. Rather, it was the product of a rare athlete raking to an unprecedented degree for his position after spending two years at two different schools and learning the lessons necessary to achieve this breakout.

Jackson was not a highly touted recruit at North Springs High School just north of Atlanta. But Wofford, an ascendent mid-major program a few hours across the border in South Carolina, took interest in him thanks to his uncommon athleticism for a catcher, and Jackson jumped at the Division I opportunity to begin his collegiate journey. He made an instant impact for the Terriers, posting a 1.057 OPS with 12 home runs as the lone freshman starter in a lineup loaded with upperclassmen.

But while Jackson’s bat played immediately, his plus wheels did not. Despite being one of Wofford’s fastest players — and in an offense renowned for its baserunning, as the Terriers racked up 147 steals in 62 games — Jackson stole only four bases as a freshman, as his instincts on the basepaths lagged far behind the standards Wofford expected of its players. 

Jackson’s lack of swipes that season is amusing in retrospect, considering his historic feats on the basepaths this spring, but it was also a minor hiccup in the grand scheme of his development. More importantly, his bat seized the attention of teammates and competition alike. And to no one’s surprise in the era of the transfer portal, bigger opportunities than dominating the Southern Conference began to surface.

“As much as I would have loved to spend more time at Wofford, because I really don't have any negative things to say about it,” Jackson explained, “I just wanted to play the best baseball there was.” 

Interest from the flagship school in his home state and the chance to compete in the SEC was a no-brainer for Jackson in the portal. So after spending the summer in the Northwoods League — where, in a great bit of 2026 draft trivia, he shared catching duties for the Traverse City Pit Spitters with another rising sophomore named Vahn Lackey — Jackson headed to Athens to begin the next chapter.

Hassan Ahmad/Yahoo Sports

A reality check came quickly. Jackson wasn’t in Spartanburg, South Carolina, anymore. The jump from the Southern to the Southeastern Conference is a big one. As a sophomore, Jackson had effectively vaulted from Double-A to the big leagues of college baseball.

“I remember the first bullpen I caught when I got to Georgia — it was JT Quinn,” Jackson recalled of the hard-throwing right-hander who went on to become a second-round pick by Baltimore in 2025. “And he's throwing 97 in a bullpen, throwing bowling-ball sinkers, and it was just like, oh my gosh … and we had some bad shadows at the time. I can barely see the ball, and he's throwing the craziest fastball I've ever caught in my entire life.

“I was definitely fighting for my life for a little bit, but I got acclimated pretty quick.”

As Jackson got up to speed behind the dish — he also spent time at first base and in both corner outfield spots as a sophomore — the humbling continued at the plate. That season, he hit .203 with a 34.2% strikeout rate in SEC play. He put up some impressive power numbers for a newcomer in the conference (.612 SLG%, 14 homers), but the whiffs became too problematic for him to be deployed as an every-day player. And Jackson knew it.

“I just think I played my worst baseball last year. That was just not me at all,” he said. “I knew I had to make an adjustment. I just knew I had to put the ball in play more and go from there.”

As Jackson started to dial in his approach, first in the Cape Cod League that summer and then during the fall, he found value in positive self-talk, even as his prospect stock had soured entering his draft year. He saw the opportunity ahead of him to deliver a much-improved season, and staying confident was key. 

“I kind of needed to tell myself, like, I'm the man,” Jackson said. “I got back to campus after the Cape, [and] from that point on, I just pumped myself up.”

A brief break in the fall due an ankle injury threatened to derail the progress he was making with both his game and his positive mindset, but Jackson returned in time to be reenergized and ready for the spring season. 

“When I got back in the box, I was thankful to be playing,” he said. “I was happy. I wasn't worried. I wasn't thinking about any negatives. And then I started going with my approach and putting balls in play, and it all kind of just came together.” 

That it did. Jackson homered in his first game of the season and never looked back. He had 14 homers before conference play began. 

And this time, once the top-tier SEC competition arrived, Jackson was ready for the challenge. The bat stayed scorching hot all spring, en route to his becoming just the third SEC hitter to win the triple crown, joining Mississippi State legends Rafael Palmeiro and Brent Rooker. Jackson’s strikeout rate plummeted to 22.9% in conference play and 20.1% overall. And while the epic power display drew the headlines, the strides he made behind the plate and on the basepaths were also paramount in restoring his chances of being an early-round draft selection.

By the end of the season, there was no doubt: Jackson was the best player in college baseball, and he was bestowed the hardware to prove it. Whether that portends a draft selection commensurate with so many Golden Spikes winners of the past — let alone a long, successful career in the majors — remains to be seen. But Jackson’s journey exemplifies a player undaunted by any circumstance suggesting he’s anything less than what he believes he can be. As has always been the case, he’ll take what the game gives him and go from there. 

“You got to be able to remove the bad and just take from the good, and you’ve got to learn from everything,” Jackson said. “You’ve just got to build off everything.”