By Jon Cooper | The Good Word
There’s not a whole lot you can ever REALLY count on when it comes to sports drafts.
That certainly should have been especially true in last week’s Major League Baseball Draft.
Adding to the usual unpredictability that comes with every draft was the limit of five rounds — it’s usually 40 — and that teams had an extremely small window to scout players, a window that slammed shut on March 12 due to the Coronavirus.
Yet, evidently, even with the most unpredictable of unpredictable events, one thing has proven something of a given. That’s that at least two Georgia Tech baseball players will be selected by the time it’s over.
When the 2020 Draft was over — even with only five rounds — left fielder Michael Guldberg (Third round, No. 98 overall by the Oakland A’s) and right fielder Baron Radcliff (Fifth round, No. 146 overall by the Philadelphia Phillies) were off the board. It marked the 20th consecutive year that more than one Yellow Jacket was selected. It’s the nation’s seventh-longest current streak.
That left Georgia Tech baseball head coach Danny Hall with mixed emotions.
“I had a number in my head that we’d lose more than we lost for sure, but it was a crazy draft — only five rounds — and it looked like it got really crazy late (Thursday) night,” said Hall, who has now had 128 players selected some 145 times during his tenure. “We had a lot of guys in the mix and it just worked out that we only had two of them get the opportunity to go.”
Right-hander Jonathan Hughes would make it three late Monday evening, signing a free agent contract with the Phillies.
The opportunity to get drafted was a dream-come-true for Guldberg and Radcliff, yet both were left with different perceptions of this draft night as Guldberg, who’d never been through a draft, couldn’t wait, while Radcliff, who was selected by the Braves in the 40th round in 2017, couldn’t wait any more.
“I felt going into the Draft that things were looking good but that Draft was an absolute roller coaster,” said Guldberg, a Marietta native who never batted below .355 in any of his three seasons, led the Jackets in hitting his last two seasons, was second in the ACC in 2019 and was leading the conference at a .450 clip in 2020 when the season was called. “With it cut down to five rounds, we didn’t really know exactly how all the teams were going to approach the situation. It was very back and forth the whole time and so I just had to stick with it, try not to worry about it too much and just enjoy it.
“When I heard my name called, I was just glad to be there with my family and a few friends,” he added. “It’s so much excitement. I’m so excited to get started with the A’s.”
Guldberg admitted he had his nerves calmed with an approximate 10-minute heads-up when his name was about to be called. Radcliff, on the other hand, endured round-by-round “any second now” calls from his agent. It resulted in his going from excited anticipation to exasperated anxiety, even wondering if he’d hear his name at all.
“I kind of slid way down lower than they were expecting me to go from talking to my agent beforehand,” said Radcliff, who was setting career-highs in batting average (.259) and slugging (.550) when ‘20 was cancelled — a 79-point jump in average and a 198-point spike in slugging from freshman year. “Once those picks were kind of flying off the board, it turned into, ‘Alright, who’s going to realize that I’m still sitting here?’ I got that Phillies call and that was a huge relief. It’s an opportunity for me to have a foot in the door in professional baseball. So I’m excited.”
Thoughts about what team they’ll represent have now been replaced by where — and maybe more important, when — they’ll begin representing.