By Marc Mullen
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft has been shortened from its normal 40 rounds to just five this year. Day 1 started Wednesday night at 7 p.m. and consisted of just the first round, a total of 37 picks, while Day 2 begins at 5 p.m. tonight, with the second through fifth rounds (123 picks). In all, only 160 players will hear their names called – more than 1,000 fewer than in previous years. Both days will be broadcast live on the MLB Network and on ESPN (Day 1on ESPN; Day 2 on ESPN2).
Despite the abbreviated draft, several Hokies have put themselves in great position to be drafted this year, including junior pitchers Ian Seymour, Zach Brzykcy and Anthony Simonelli and sophomore catcher Carson Taylor. Seymour, Brzykcy and Taylor all appear on MLB.com's Top 200 prospect rankings, while Simonelli's name has popped onto the radar over the past month heading into the draft.
If one or more Hokies are picked in the 2020 draft, they will join a very select company of Virginia Tech baseball players who have been drafted within the first five rounds (or top 160 overall – the numbers vary depending on compensation picks). In all, there have been just 10 Hokies taken inside the top 160 and four in the first round – two of which are household names; Joe Saunders, the highest Tech player ever drafted (12th, 2002, Angels), and Franklin Stubbs (19th, 1982, Dodgers).
Brad DuVall is the only Hokie to be picked in the first round twice, both in 1987 (15th, Orioles) and in 1988 (23rd, Cardinals), while Denny Wagner was a supplemental first-round selection of the Oakland Athletics in 1997 (42nd).
Denny Wagner, The 1997 draft
For those who don't remember, the 1997 draft was infamous for a couple of reasons. First, a southpaw high schooler out of Dearborn, Michigan named Ryan Anderson – nicknamed "the Little Unit" – told teams he would not play for anyone but Detroit (who had the first pick) or Seattle (the 19th pick). Also, that year, Florida State's J.D. Drew, represented by Scott Boras, was "demanding" a large signing bonus, which created uncertainty as to where he would be selected.
"I was at home during the draft," Wagner recently said in an interview. "I had actually gotten a call from the Boston Red Sox at school. They were talking to me and told me to be prepared because they had planned to be taking me with the 17th pick in the first round. So I was like 'OK, I'll be a Red Sox.' But I heard that anything can happen during the draft.
"That year, Ryan Anderson was supposed to be the No. 1 pick. He was being compared to a Randy Johnson-type clone. Something happened, and he ended up slipping in the draft, and I think that messed up everyone's draft board. So I was just sitting at home, and I was waiting for this really early call and it just kept going on and on. More than a couple of hours had gone by, and of course, I finally get a call, and I'm the 42nd pick.
"That's one thing I do remember – something happened up near the top, and there was a domino effect. So at 17, where the Red Sox were supposed to take me, there was probably another guy on their draft board that they wanted to take instead of me, and all of a sudden, he was available where they didn't expect him to be there."
Detroit ended up selecting Matt Anderson, a pitcher out of Rice, while the Phillies rolled the dice on Drew – who would never sign with Philadelphia, and as the story goes, because of Drew, Major League Baseball changed the name of the draft after that from the "amateur" draft to the "First-Year Player Draft."
Boston ended up taking Chesapeake, Virginia native John Curtice with its choice – a lefty pitcher who pitched in just 62 games over a four-year minor league career – while Ryan Anderson did go to Seattle at 19.
"There was some internet back then, but it was nothing like today, and cell phones, there were those bag phones, so you just didn't have all that information at your fingertips like you do today," Wagner said. "So I was just sitting there by the phone. I gave them my home phone number, and I was just sitting around waiting for a phone call.
"When it finally rang, I picked it up, and it was Oakland scout Ron Elam. He just said, 'I just wanted to let you know, congratulations, we've selected you with the 42nd pick in the first round.' And I was like, 'OK.'
"I talked to so many people, and Boston even called me and told me, ' Hey, expect this in the first round,' so it was in shock when I went to Oakland and not Boston. Then, I found out the whole stuff later about how everyone's draft board got shuffled up and got out of order. The funny thing is that I ended up playing with Ryan Anderson in the Fall League."
Wagner came to Tech from Castlewood High School, a couple of hours down Interstate 81. He struck out 334 batters and led the Blue Devils to two state tournament appearances over the course of his final two seasons at Castlewood. As a senior in 1994, he was 11-0 and tossed three no-hitters. He was actually a 47th-round selection by the Cleveland Indians in the 1994 draft, but ultimately chose Tech.
Heading into the 1997 draft, the junior was coming off a Tech season in which he led the team with 110 strikeouts in a team-high 112.1 innings. In 17 starts, he posted a 10-4 record, with six complete games, and he was second on the team in ERA at 4.41.
"I don't think you're going to find any guy out there, especially one that's playing at the college level, that their dream isn't to play in professional baseball, so turning pro, especially if you get selected in the first round, is almost certain," Wagner said. "Yes, I would have loved to come back and play another season with the guys that I basically grew up with at Tech. I would have loved to have done that, but you can't turn down first-round money and your dream of playing professional baseball."
Wagner played professionally for seven seasons, reaching as high as Triple-A in Charlotte during the 2002 season. He appeared in 156 games and struck out 435 batters in 656 innings. He was 32-41 in his career, with two complete games and five saves.
"I had a shoulder injury, and it bothered me for a few years," Wagner said. "I finally went to have things checked out and found out I had some damage in there that needed to be surgically repaired. So I got fixed up, but I had a little girl at the time, so I kind of just hung them up [his cleats] because I was tired of being on the road and missing her growing up."
Wagner actually married his high school sweetheart just days before that 1997 draft, and he and wife Mary have two daughters, Haley and Natalie. The oldest, whom the couple had between Wagner's sophomore and junior years at Tech, will be turning 24 next week and played golf at Tennessee. Natalie, her father assuredly pointed out, wants to be a Hokie.
The family lives in Gray, Tennessee, just down the road from Johnston City, and Wagner works at East Tennessee Chemical, Inc., but he'll always remember that day 23 years ago when he became just the third Hokie taken in the first round.
"The night before, it was still hard to sleep because my life was about to change the next morning," he said. "I had some anxiety because of really not knowing. I had heard from others that it's a crapshoot, and it all depends. You may think you're going to be here, but end up there. So there was some anxiety, but a lot of excitement as well – kind of like the night before Christmas."
Austin Wates, The 2010 draft
If it was hard for Wagner to sleep the night before the 1997 draft, imagine being Austin Wates, who had hopes of having his name called on Day 1 of the 2010 draft and then having to sleep another night before having his dream come true.
"I had my family there with me on both days," Wates recently said in an interview. "We were obviously really hoping that I would go on Day 1. That's always kind of the dream – to have your name put up on the big board on stage at the draft headquarters. But my name wasn't called, and there was obviously a bit of disappointment there, but I knew that wasn't the end of the draft.
"I was pretty hopeful I would go relatively high, so after night one was over and I didn't hear my name called, we kind of reconvened with my advisor at the time. He just laid out the path and what it looked like and the calls that they had gotten about me on Day 1. After we had that conversation, I was a lot less anxious than I had been at the end of the night once the Day 1 stuff had ended."
Wates is just one of nine Hokies to be drafted within the first 100 picks of an MLB draft, as he was the 90th overall choice in 2010 by the Houston Astros. He would be the first Tech player taken in the first three rounds since Saunders in 2002 and the highest pick for Tech since Jeff Landing in 2004 (12th round, 344th overall selection by the Mets).
"The next day, when the draft came around, we were getting phone calls back and forth from different teams, and we were talking through numbers stuff," Wates said. "And finally I just saw my name pop up on the draft ticker, and so we celebrated for about 30 seconds and the advisor called and congratulated us. At that point, there was a little bit of a weight lifted off my shoulders. We celebrated – it wasn't champagne; it was apple cider – but we did that in the living room, and so I got to share that moment with my family and that was pretty cool.
"There were a lot of congratulatory text messages, and the family made the rounds of making the phone calls to people that aren't direct family or aren't listening to the draft. We were able to get in contact with all those people and it was cool to have that type of outreach from all your support system."
A 2010 All-ACC first-team selection and all-tournament team player, Wates did it all at Tech. For his career, he batted .367, with a .554 slugging percentage and .439 on-base percentage. He had 233 hits, 46 doubles, 14 triples, 15 home runs, 129 RBI, 146 runs scored, and stole 49 bases.
Wates was part of the largest draft class ever at Tech, as eight Hokies were taken overall, with four picked in the top 10 rounds – Jesse Hahn (sixth round), Mathew Price (eighth) and Steve Domecus (ninth). It broke the record of the 1982 draft class, which had three in the top 10 and five overall.
"I think we were on the bus back from South Carolina either a day or two before the draft, and it was kind of a weird time because we had a really good team, and we were all disappointed that we didn't get past South Carolina, but we all knew that there was some kind of cool stuff on the horizon," Wates said. "And thankfully, the draft was only a few days later, so we could get our minds off of that. But we definitely talked about it, and we knew there were going to be a lot of guys in the mix that were going to be selected in the top 10 rounds. I don't remember actually how many of us went on that second day, but we knew there was potential for a lot of us to be taken pretty early and that was cool."
Wates, who played his final two seasons of high school baseball at the same high school as current Tech sophomore Nick Biddison – St. Christopher's in Richmond – came to Blacksburg as one in former head coach Pete Hughes' first recruiting class and pretty late in the process as well. His family had moved to the area from Seattle, so Wates did not get to play any baseball between his sophomore and junior years.
"I committed and signed pretty late in the process because I was late in the game in general," he said. "My only track record of playing was that spring of my junior year going into that summer. I don't think I even committed to Virginia Tech until the fall of my senior year.
"Coach Hughes was a big reason why I went there, and he's always kind of been a guiding light and a mentor for me. After I got drafted and starting playing professionally, we always kind of stayed in touch, and then when I was playing in Triple-A in Oklahoma City, that's when he was in Oklahoma and I stayed with his family for a while. We groomed our relationship even more then."
Wates played professionally for six years, climbing as high as Triple-A with both Oklahoma City (Astros) and New Orleans (Miami). He played in 491 minor league games and sported a career .288 batting average, with 510 hits, 274 runs, 199 RBI and 108 stolen bases.
Married to wife Christine, Wates has two children, Grace (3) and Carter (six months), and he is currently an assistant baseball coach at Kansas State, joining his former head coach when Hughes took over the Wildcats program in 2019.
Chad Pinder, The 2013 draft
It seems like the MLB draft changes its format almost every year. In 2013, the first two rounds of the draft were broadcast from Studio 42 of the MLB Network in Secaucus, New Jersey on Day 1 as opposed to just the first round in 2010 or this year – or not at all, like when Wagner, Saunders, Stubbs or DuVall were chosen.
With that, Chad Pinder became the first Hokie baseball player to see his name on the television screen during the draft when he was taken in the second round with the 71st selection by the Oakland Athletics.
"I remember everything vividly from that whole day," Pinder recently said in an interview. "I tried to make the day as normal as possible, because I was a little nervous, anticipating what was going to happen. I had zero clue of where I was going to go. I knew a few teams that were interested in me, but no one that really talked to me or my agent about picks or anything, but we knew there was a chance of me going on Day 1.
"All my family was over at the house – both my grandmas, all my siblings, everyone was home. As the first round went by, we weren't too optimistic that I was going to go then, there was a small chance, but we were really looking at the second round. But as time kept going, we just kept getting bummed out, and eventually I just had to get out of there and I just went to hang out by myself for a little bit."
Pinder recalled an instance in the middle of the second round, it was the Orioles pick at No. 61 when the family got a little prematurely excited and why not. Pinder's father had played in the Orioles' minor league system and how awesome it would have been to play in the same organization – but Baltimore had chosen Chance Sisco.
"So, they come on to make the announcement and the name started with a 'C-H' and everyone started freaking out, but it ended up not being me, which, looking back, was really funny," Pinder said. "I remember a few picks before I went, I got a call from my agent, at the time, and he told me 'the A's were going to take me here, would you take the offer?'
"I told him 'Absolutely!' I just wanted to go, get signed and go play. I had gone into the bathroom to take the call, because I had a feeling that was what it was going to be about and I didn't want anyone else to know. But my little brother Chase up followed me and saw my face and started freaking out, but I told him to be quiet about it, because I just wanted to see the family's reaction to it.
"I walked back into the room and acted bummed out and just sat in back behind everyone on a chair and when the A's pick came on, I just sat there and watched the whole family freak out and jump up off the couch. It was really a cool moment for sure.
Pinder's career mirrored that of Wates' as he was a 2013 ACC All-Conference First Team selection and All-Tournament team player, while adding NCAA Blacksburg Regional All-Tournament Team to his resume as well. For his career, he batted .322 with a .509 slugging percentage and .389 on-base percentage (numbers slightly down from Wates' but Pinder did play his entire career with the BBCOR bat).
He finished with 179 hits, 38 doubles, six triples, 18 home runs, 101 RBI, 106 runs scored and stole 15 bases. Much like in 2010, the 2013 Hokies had just fallen in the NCAA regional play a few days before the draft. Day 1 of the 2013 draft, Pinder became Tech's seventh highest MLB selection, and he was the first of three Hokies taken in the Top 10 rounds and one of six overall.
"I was optimistic that I was going to go, but I had no clue, so I didn't want to put too much into it," Pinder said. "I just wanted the chips to fall where they may and take that day as normal as possible. It's definitely something you want to enjoy. It's a special moment and when you get tied up in the worry, and try to control the draft, it's not going to make it a fun experience.
"I remember one of the best pieces of advice I got from a scout was 'When you start worrying about the draft is when you don't need to worry about the draft,' because that will affect everything and I always kept that in mind. I'm not going to worry about it and take my day and enjoy it. I was going to get drafted, it didn't matter where, I just wanted to play pro ball.
"However, still to this day, some of the most fun I had playing baseball was at Virginia Tech. I will forever remember the moments and times we had there. We tried to prolong that season and my career there as long as possible, but sadly we did not, because we had such a special team in 2013."
Pinder quickly climbed the minor league ladder, while earning numerous recognitions for his play – including MILB.com Organization All-Star in both 2014 and 2015, Player of the Year (2015) and spent about a year at each level. He made his pro debut with Oakland on August 20, 2016 in Chicago against the White Sox.
Since, he had played in 343 games with the Athletics and has put up solid numbers – a .245 batting average with a .432 slugging percentage. He's hit 42 home runs, second only to Stubbs (104) in a Hokie MLB career, while adding 120 RBI and 128 runs to his totals.
He is currently living in Charlotte, North Carolina with his wife, Taylor, and is waiting on the resumption of the Major League season, which has taken numerous steps towards starting this year. Pinder did recognize a bit of a blessing in disguise during this layoff.
"Luckily, this past offseason, I put together a little home gym in my garage and it has everything I could possible need to work out, so I'm able to do a ton of stuff in that regard," Pinder said. "I even have a net down there for throwing and hitting, but about three, four weeks ago our hitting facility opened back up so I've been able to sprinkle some time in there in order to stay as prepared in that way.
"And then, if there is a silver lining in all of this, my wife and I have a little one on the way, so I've been able to do things at the house that I would have never been able to do if the season were underway. I've been putting together furniture, getting the baby room ready, painting things and helping her as she goes through this. And we've got all our Hokie gear ready as well. I would not have been able to help with, so I try to take that positive out of it, but I do want to get back to baseball."
Some interesting stories from three Hokies who all experience the draft in different ways, but all ended up with their dreams coming true. As Wagner said, "Anything can happen during the draft" and with year's being just five rounds, who knows how it will shake out. For a few Hokies, the next few days could change their lives.