A spoonful of honey, consumed precisely 13 minutes before the start of each game, opens a window into Matt Shaw’s baseball soul.

Sure, Shaw was a fearless “freak” of a hitter from the moment he arrived in College Park. Matt Swope, then a Maryland assistant coach, took notice when the kid scorched a double off the wall against future Chicago White Sox draft pick Sean Burke in the fall of his freshman year.

But talent and nerve are not the only reasons Shaw has a chance Sunday evening to become the highest draft pick ever from Maryland’s baseball program.

“He’s the most diligent human I’ve ever met,” said Swope, who’s now Maryland’s head coach. “Just a savage when it comes to attention to detail. There’s a lot of good college baseball players, who, when they get to pro ball, they don’t have that diligence.”

Hence the honey, which Shaw determined would give his physiology an appropriate pregame boost.

“There’s purpose with everything he does,” Swope said. “He showed up that way; I’ve never seen anything like it.”

To become the highest-drafted Terp in history, Shaw, 21, will have to beat outfielder Gene Hiser, who went No. 19 overall to the Chicago Cubs in 1970 and played in the majors from 1971 to 1975. Pitcher Brett Cecil was the last Maryland player to go in the first round, a supplemental selection at 38th overall in 2007.

Shaw’s elite prospect status is another marker of the program’s rise under Swope’s predecessor, Rob Vaughn, who left for Alabama last month. The Terps made the NCAA Tournament in each of Shaw’s three seasons, and his teammates — catcher Luke Shliger, infielder Nick Lorusso and pitcher Jason Savacool — are also draft candidates.

On top of his feats at Maryland, where he became the program’s all-time home run king this year, Shaw bolstered his draft resume by being named Cape Cod League Most Valuable Player with a slash line of .360/.432/.574.

Jim Callis of MLB.com described Shaw as “at the forefront of the available college bats” and sent him to the Tampa Bay Rays at No. 19 overall in his latest mock draft. ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel has him at No. 14 to the Boston Red Sox, writing of Shaw: “At first, his swing looks to be too busy, but then you see that he can repeat it to put up numbers.”

The Athletic’s Keith Law, a former executive with the Toronto Blue Jays, might be most smitten of all with the Maryland slugger, whom he has going to the Chicago Cubs at No. 13. He sees a prospect with an unusually high floor who could handle second base, hit for a high average and approach 20-home-run power. In other words, a potential All-Star.

“I think I’ve planted a flag a little bit in saying he’s what everybody says they want,” Law said. “He checks pretty much every box for a college hitter. It’s a good swing. He’s got a good idea at the plate, doesn’t whiff a lot. He makes very hard contact, and it looks like a lot of his power will carry over, even if some home runs become doubles. It’s going to be more than enough to make him a premium offensive player at second base.”

Shaw was not drafted after a stellar prep career in Worcester, Massachusetts, in part because New England is still a relatively under-scouted region and in part because the coronavirus pandemic wrought havoc on all levels of the game the year he graduated from Worcester Academy.

He lists as his baseball heroes others who were underestimated for one reason or another. We know Mike Trout as one of the greatest of all time, but he was not drafted until late in the first round in part because he hailed from New Jersey rather than a traditional baseball hotbed. Dustin Pedroia was a 5-foot-9 second baseman projected to hit for power by roughly no one, but he delivered 73 extra-base hits in his 2008 AL Most Valuable Player season for the Red Sox.

Like those guys, Shaw did not plan to let his point of origin or his 5-11, 185-pound frame limit his professional prospects.

He wasted no time making an impression on his Maryland teammates and coaches. Swope recalled that scrimmage double off Burke as if it happened last week: “It was about 15 feet off the ground, absolute laser. I think everybody just kind of perked up, and it was like, ‘Oh goodness!’ ”

Shaw did not hit like a typical freshman — his .332 batting average easily led the team — or prepare like a typical freshman.

“A lot of times with freshmen or with the transition to pro ball, you’re going to get some feeling out, some hesitation,” Swope said. “That’s not how he operates. He just goes all in.”

Shaw’s power emerged his sophomore year when he hit 22 home runs, and he was an all-around masher as a junior, hitting a career-high .341 and slugging a career-best .697.

“He’s just a freak,” Swope said. “He’s the best player I’ve coached at this level, and we’ve had some really good ones — Brandon Lowe, who’s an All-Star, and LaMonte Wade, who’s had a couple good years — but at this point in his career, he’s the best hitter I’ve coached from a talent standpoint, a progression standpoint, a tools standpoint. He’s got it all.”

It’s difficult to poke holes in Shaw’s resume as a hitter, Law said, noting that his performance against top opponents and measures such as contact percentage and exit velocity support his raw statistics.

“It was performance but also his batted ball data,” he said in explaining why Shaw shot up draft boards this spring. “He’s really strong.”

Shaw does not abide slights. This year, for example, he “took personally” scouts’ questions about his speed and made a point of stealing a team-high 18 bases on 19 attempts. Before his sophomore season, he told Maryland coaches he wanted to play shortstop, even though most evaluators say his arm strength will fit better at second base.

“Just let me compete,” he said before winning the job.

Swope brought a different twist to Maryland baseball two years ago when he traveled to Switzerland to learn from researchers how to tailor players’ workout programs to their specific physical traits. No one on the team inhaled this new data more enthusiastically than Shaw.

“We coach them to their strengths and empower them to know what they should be doing,” Swope said. “He’s bought into that more than anyone, and I think it helped take him to the next level.”

The higher Shaw is drafted, the more he will help Maryland double down on its recent success. Vaughn built a consistent winner by signing underestimated prospects from the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. (Law said Maryland is a team national scouts need to see every season, a status the program did not hold for much of its history.)

Swope’s recruiting pitch will be that much more potent after one of those prospects is a top-15 or top-20 draft pick.

“We’ve created a niche,” he said. “I think it’s huge from a recruiting standpoint and from a program standpoint to our fans. I played here 20 years ago when we were a doormat and had five scholarships. It’s definitely something where he can be a poster child: If you’re a Northeast kid, you can come here and develop.”