Getting drafted by the Oakland Athletics is more than a dream come true for Virginia’s Zack Gelof. It’s also an opportunity to prove some evaluators wrong.
The question about Gelof entering this week’s MLB Draft wasn’t whether he could hit well enough to be a prospect. After all, he batted .316 while starting every game the Wahoos played the last three seasons, and at least one scouting report credited Gelof with some of the best raw power in the draft. Instead, the question was where he might play?
Gelof was primarily a third baseman at UVa. Several evaluators questioned whether he would stick at the hot corner in professional baseball or possibly need to shift to a corner outfield spot or potentially across the diamond to first.
Those scouting reports caught the infielder’s attention.
“What I think about them is the people who are saying ‘Will he be able to stick there anymore?’ don’t have to evaluate me anymore,” Gelof told CavsCorner on Wednesday. “I love third base and it does matter to me. I want to prove everyone that’s saying that wrong.”
Those defensive questions didn’t dissuade Oakland from selecting him with the No. 60 overall pick in Monday’s second round. Based on feedback Gelof had gotten leading up to the draft, that was right in the window where he was confident he’d come off the board. He said he also knew that the A’s were one of the teams that liked him most.
Still, seeing his name pop up relieved the nerves he’d spent all morning Monday trying to downplay.
Gelof was the second of six Virginia players selected across the final two days of this week’s three-day, 20-round MLB Draft. He and his family were still celebrating lefty Andrew Abbott’s selection just seven spots prior by the Cincinnati Reds when the A’s made their pick. A pair of UVa right-handers also came off the board on Monday, with the Philadelphia Phillies taking Griff McGarry in Round 5 and Mike Vasil going to the New York Mets in Round 8.
When the draft resumed with Round 11 on Tuesday, it only took eight picks for the Colorado Rockies to grab UVa shortstop Nic Kent. Right-hander Zach Messinger was the final Wahoo selected, going to the New York Yankees in Round 13.
With those final two selections, this year marked the ninth time UVa had at least six players taken in the MLB Draft. All nine of those seasons have come since 2007; five have come since 2014.
Getting drafted is the first step. The next is signing a contract and officially turning pro. Abbott and McGarry, a pair of seniors who were back with the Cavaliers this spring in large part because the COVID-19 pandemic shortened last year’s draft from 40 rounds to just five, both expect to get deals done in short order. Gelof, a potentially rising-senior who still has two years of college eligibility remaining because of the extra COVID year, is hopeful his advisor can reach a deal with Oakland within the next week.
“I know I’m going to be getting a phone call, and I know I’ll be given pretty much two days’ notice when I need to pack up everything that I want to take with me and go somewhere,” he said. “I don’t know if that means Oakland or Arizona.”
The Wahoos also had a pair of players sign as undrafted free agents: Catcher Logan Michaels with the Baltimore Orioles and right-handed reliever Kyle Whitten with the Tampa Bay Rays. Michaels, a fifth-year senior this season, had exhausted his college eligibility; Whitten would have been eligible to return for a fifth year at UVa next spring.
Vasil is also likely to sign with the Mets and turn pro. The same goes for outfielder Benny Montgomery and right-hander Shane Panzini, the two UVa recruits selected in the draft. According to Jim Callis of MLB.com, only six total players taken in the first 10 rounds of the 2018 and 2019 drafts didn’t sign pro contracts. Montgomery was the No. 8 overall pick on Sunday night by the Rockies; Panzini went in the fourth round to the Kansas City Royals.
Despite slipping to the draft’s third day, it’s also unlikely that Kent or Messinger, both juniors with at least one more year of eligibility remaining, will be back with the Wahoos next spring.
Only one player in program history, outfielder Cam Simmons in 2018, returned to school after getting drafted in one of the top 15 rounds. Simmons had missed that entire season with a shoulder injury and passed on signing with the Texas Rangers as a 15th-round pick. He was taken by the Chicago White Sox in Round 20 the following year.
With his selection on Monday, Gelof joined Doug Johns in 1990, Sean Doolittle in 2007, and Branden Cogswell in 2014 as UVa players drafted by Oakland. Gelof says Athletics legend Rickey Henderson was one of his dad’s favorite players, and he is a fan of Matt Chapman, the team’s current third baseman. He also knows “they develop players like crazy, they want to win, and I feel like I’m a winner.”
For Gelof, the biggest highlight of being drafted on Monday came when he saw the pride on his parents’ faces. Now, he’s eager to get to work on making them proud again.
“When you sign, it’s a job,” he said. “Like everything else, you want to be really good at your job. You want to do everything you can to be the best at your job, so that’s something that I plan to do. But it’s a dream come true and it’s another step toward where I want to be.”
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