University of North Carolina Athletics
In Baseball, Draft is Different
May 31, 2004 | Baseball
May 31, 2004
By Adam Lucas
Andrew Miller knows he was one phone call away from spending this spring in some far-flung, one-stoplight town. As a lefthanded flamethrower, he was in high demand from professional scouts as a high school senior. Despite being a third-round pick, he chose to attend college.
That decision means it will be three more years before he is eligible for the draft. In college baseball, players who don't enter the pros directly out of high school must be three years removed from their prep careers before they are eligible again. That can create some high drama for college coaches each August, because once a player attends a college class, they forfeit the chance to sign with a pro team. A coach can think he has a player on campus and ready to contribute, but some players have drawn out the negotiations to the last possible day before inking their contract. For Miller, however, there was no such production.
"I had to decide how much I thought it was worth to take away the college opportunity," Miller says. "The Devil Rays really didn't contact me much over the summer. It wasn't a situation where we were going back and forth a whole lot, and it turned out not to be worth it."
The Tar Heel coaching staff has lately done a stellar job of finding talented prospects who consider college a high priority. Daniel Bard also had professional opportunities but turned down the Yankees to attend Carolina.
"I told pro teams my expectations money-wise and round-wise," he says. "My expectations weren't met, so I came to college. This program is really on the rise, which was important to me."
ard and Miller won't be draft-eligible until June 2006, which is doubtless a disheartening thought for the rest of the ACC. But their catcher, Chris Iannetta, will be draft-eligible this June and will have a difficult decision to make. The draft setup means that a player's leverage is at its peak after his junior season, because he can threaten the team that drafts him with the prospect of returning to school for his senior season. There is no such advantage when a player is picked after his senior season, because he has exhausted his eligibility and has no fallback option.
That doesn't mean, though, that there won't be an Iannetta in a Carolina uniform next spring. Chris's brother, Matt, has already inked with the Tar Heels and will be a freshman. It's not entirely inconceivable that his brother might return to school to play one season with him.
"I've seen kids hit .260 with 12 home runs and get drafted in the third round, and last year I saw (Carolina's) Jeremy Cleveland hit .426 with 20 home runs and get picked in the eighth round," he says. "The most important thing scouts tell you in the fall is to just help your team win. So that's what I want to do. It's so unpredictable that I can't think about it until it happens."
