Bearcats’ Andrew Zellner Not Selected in 2016 MLB Draft
The return of UC’s pitching ace instantly makes Bearcats baseball infinitely more of a contender in 2017.
Major League Baseball’s 2016 First-Year Player Draft has come to a close after 40 rounds over three days, and Cincinnati pitcher Andrew Zellner was not selected by any MLB club, despite being eligible to be selected early as a Junior. Zellner led the UC pitching staff in wins (7), ERA (2.32), innings pitched (108.2), strikeouts (66), complete games (4), and shutouts (2), so it came as a surprise to me that the first-team all-AAC selection went undrafted completely as a Junior. In fact, no Bearcats were taken in this year’s draft, which makes you wonder if perhaps Butch Jones had a hand in assembling the roster that UC head baseball coach Ty Neal inherited from ex-coach Brian Cleary in 2014.
Neal had to completely rebuild the roster, and the 2016 team was heavy on underclassmen, so the draft shutout wasn’t really a surprise, except for Zellner. The only thing I can possibly think of that caused all 30 clubs to avoid Zellner is that he expressed to the clubs that his intent was to stay at UC for his senior season. Clubs aren’t going to waste picks, especially high ones, on guys who aren’t willing to sign.
For those of you unfamiliar with the MLB Draft process, here’s how it works in a nutshell: American and Puerto Rican players are eligible to be selected out of high school. If selected, a player can then either a.) sign a contract to play pro, b.) enroll in a 4-year college, or c.) enroll in a junior college. If a player enrolls in a four-year college, he is then eligible to be drafted again after three years in college (usually as a junior, occasionally a redshirt sophomore) by a new team. He can then (again) decide either to sign a contract and leave school early, or return to school. If he returns to school, the MLB club who drafted him loses the rights to him, and he can be drafted again the following year by yet another new team.
My sense is that Zellner informed clubs of his intent to return to school at UC, and thus clubs avoided selecting him, knowing that it would be a waste of a draft pick. A player of his caliber would have figured to be selected at least somewhere in the top 10-15 rounds otherwise. Perhaps he feels that he can improve his stock with one more year in Clifton and climb into the top five rounds, which would net him a substantially larger signing bonus.
Zellner’s return to UC in 2017 is huge for the program, and makes the Bearcats an instant competitor in the conference race. UC loses only three seniors, and two of those are a utility infielder who stat line was .241, 1 HR, 7 RBI and a seldom-used bullpen arm who only threw 1.1 innings in 2016. So Zellner’s return means that the entire core of the team is intact and primed to ascend to new heights. The only notable vacancy that UC will have to fill is that of starting catcher Woody Wallace. With a starting rotation of Zellner, J.T. Perez, and David Orndorff returning, UC will have a shot to take every 3-game weekend series in conference play next season, provided that the Bearcats’ young position players can generate more runs.