One of the missions of UNINTERRUPTED, a multimedia company that empowers athletes as creators and storytellers, is, as producer Jackson New-Smith puts it, to “be really intentional about giving voices a platform that hadn't previously gotten that opportunity.”

With a two-part series, New Wave: Baseball’s Next Generation, the filmmakers do just that through the lens of an historic 2022 Draft class that had nine Black players taken in the first round. New Wave follows four Black high school players -- Termarr Johnson, Justin Crawford, Jayson Jones and RJ Austin -- through everything that happens leading up to and during the Draft. Produced by New-Smith and directed by former Minor League catcher Matt Paré, the docuseries is executive produced by LeBron James, Maverick Carter, CC Sabathia, Amber Sabathia and Nick Trotta (from Major League Baseball) and takes viewers through all the ups and downs, family dynamics and life-changing decisions each of these athletes have to make along the way.

The 2022 Draft class was exciting for baseball, not only because of the high level of talent, but that it brought in a larger group of young Black players to the professional level. Major League Baseball has been working in trying to bring Black youth back to the game, and Johnson and Crawford joined Druw Jones and Elijah Green as four Black high school players taken in the top 17 picks. UNINTERRUPTED threads the needle well on this topic, not hitting viewers over the head with it while not ignoring its significance.

“We went back and forth a lot on how explicit vs. implicit you make it,” New-Smith said. “The reality of the situation is baseball, and Major League Baseball in particular, has gotten 'criticized' for the lack of diversity and whatnot in the game at the major league level, for a number of years now. I think the response has been, ‘Hey, we're working on it.’

“What we wanted to do with New Wave was kind of show, ‘It's here.’ We don't have to talk about it, you can see it.”

“I think it’s the stories that happen on the field that then continue off the field …  It’s a great example of how you can grow this game through storytelling,” Paré added.

The stories told in New Wave are full of hope, excitement and even some disappointment. The MLB Draft is an exciting time for amateur players. It is, after all, the time they can start a new chapter and begin their journey towards fulfilling their dreams of playing in the big leagues. This series gives fans an inside and personal look at what it was like for four high school players from the Draft class of 2022 to go through that process.

“Both Matt and I grew up in baseball in different ways,” New-Smith said in a recent conversation with MLB.com, referring to Paré’s time at Boston College and parts of five seasons in the Giants’ system and his own time in the game, first as a bat boy with the Giants and then working for Major League Baseball in baseball operations and also economics and labor relations before doing some scouting with the Rays and Cubs. “I was a complete Hollywood novice, but I loved baseball so it was like, ‘How can we merge these two things together?’”

It wasn’t easy, as the first iteration of this concept didn’t really get off the ground. But in conversations about how they could tell the story about the Draft experience that led them to MLB and Trotta, they were able to build it around the relatively new concept of the MLB Draft Combine and the 2022 Draft.

The quartet of players had very individual experiences, even if they all knew each other from playing together back home (Johnson and Austin are from Georgia) or on the showcase circuit. And with them giving UNINTERRUPTED full access, viewers can see their individual paths and how they diverged.

Johnson is gregarious and the one who was clearly going to be a top Draft pick, and viewers get to see just what it was like for him to go No. 4 overall while attending the Draft. It takes a matter of seconds to recognize his magnetism, and New Wave does a fantastic job of capturing that wherever Johnson was at the moment.

“Termarr’s personality is just electric,” Paré said. “He walks into a room and everyone turns their head to look at him. That’s exactly what happened at the Combine. He just has this aura, this presence. It’s just an incredible personality and an amazing family. It’s contagious, just seeing him get into a room with everyone.”

Crawford also attended the Draft and has the added storyline of being the son of former big league star Carl Crawford. His path diverges from Johnson's -- while he knew he was going to go pretty early, there was some tension as to when he would actually hear his name get called. Crawford ended up going No. 17 to the Phillies, and the documentary digs into what it’s like to have a famous last name, showing how the younger Crawford figured out in his amateur career that he needed to stop trying to be just like his dad.

“It’s even just the idea of sports, with your name on the back of the jersey,” Paré said. “That idea of having that carry in a way that holds weight for these guys that we don’t necessarily talk about a lot. Justin flips it, owns it and is like, ‘No, I’m my own person.’ But you look at his swing and everything feels so identical. But it’s really about finding yourself as a person and as an individual, not so much about the things that happen on the field.”

Jones’ story might carry the most dramatic weight as a prospect who had high hopes entering the summer showcase circuit before his senior year but didn’t perform as well as hoped over the summer, and he wasn’t quite able to regain the buzz he had when the showcase season started. The Jones family deserves credit in allowing the cameras to keep rolling as they sit watching the Draft unfold without his name being called, and the filmmakers do an excellent job of showing the disappointment followed by the resoluteness of deciding to head to the University of Arkansas.

“I think an aspect of getting people to open up and be vulnerable and trust you is also sharing that same vulnerability and trust on your end,” said Paré, who believes telling the subjects about how things didn’t go his way when he was at Boston College (he was drafted out of high school, but injuries led to him signing as an undrafted free agent) helped them feel comfortable. “Me sharing my story with them helped them be honest, open and vulnerable to share their stores as well.

“I think Justin Crawford says it: There’s no wrong path; we all have our different paths. That’s so true; there’s no wrong way to the big leagues.”

Austin chose his path, to head to college, earlier on in the process than Jones did. He took his name out of the Draft before it started. Like with Johnson, the filmmakers were captivated by Austin’s personality, his integrity and his maturity.

“The thing that jumped off the page with RJ was the infectious nature of his energy,” New-Smith said. “And then the friendship between RJ and Termarr was just so infectious and so supportive. If every team could have someone in their clubhouse like [RJ], how much better would they be? Watching what he’s been able to do thus far at Vanderbilt, as a freshman, that’s made it all that much more special.”