ODU Could Have as Many as Six Players Selected in Major League Baseball Draft

By Harry Minium
 
If Old Dominion University's baseball roster remains unchanged over the next few weeks, the Monarchs would be overwhelming favorites to successfully defend their Conference USA title.
 
In fact, they would also have a good shot at making their first trip to the College Baseball World Series in Omaha.
 
All but three players are eligible to return and outfielder Kyle Battle is the only starter among those who are definitely leaving. Everyone else technically could return from the team that won 44 games and advanced to the championship game of the Columbia Regional in South Carolina.
 
But if you're a baseball fan you know the roster will change, and perhaps drastically, over the next week or two. The Major League Baseball draft begins Sunday, and goes 20 rounds over three days.
 
It's likely that three or four Monarchs will get drafted and perhaps has many as half a dozen.
 
Here's the good news: regardless of how many players ODU loses to the draft, the Monarchs will be good next season. A lot of talent returns. Potentially, this could be a championship team.
 
ODU was one of the nation's top offensive teams and that should not change. Pitching is a question mark but ODU has a ton of good prospects.
 
More on that later.


Tommy Bell  

Two players will certainly go in the early rounds. Pitcher Hunter Gregory, a hard-throwing, 6-foot-3 righthander who was 8-2 and had a .295 ERA in 16 appearances, will go in the first seven rounds, predicts ODU Coach Chris Finwood. He already has Major League a major league fastball, and is considered a top prospect.
 
So, likely, will Tommy Bell, the sure-handed shortstop to who was second on the team with a .343 batting average, hit eight home runs, drove in 49 runs and had 134 assists. Bell made playing shortstop look easy and when ODU needed big plays in the clutch, he provided.
 
Battle hopefully will also go high in the draft after a successful season in which he hit .319, led the team with 18 home runs, was walked 56 times and seemed to make big plays at the plate and on the field when the Monarchs most needed them.
 
His tenth-inning home run led the Monarchs past Louisiana Tech in the Conference USA championship game.
 
An aside here: Battle is a good lesson in why it's sometimes good to stay in college for your senior season. He played well in the spring of 2020, when play was drastically shortened by the pandemic.
 
He might have signed a free-agent contract last season but elected to stay and it was the smart choice. In my opinion, he was the MVP of a team seeded 11th in the NCAA tournament and definitely raised his stature among pro scouts.
 
Another player almost surely to go is outfielder Andy Garriola, a 6-4, 225-pound junior from Sierra Madre, California, who hit .318 and 14 home runs and led the nation with 72 RBIs. He belted three home runs in one game, the semifinals of the Conference USA Tournament.
 
Finwood thinks right-handed pitched Ryne Moore should also be drafted but says for whatever reason, the 6-4 junior from Limerick, Pennsylvania, isn't as high among pro scouts as he should be.


 Kyle Battle after the game-winning home run in C-USA title game.

His stats speak for themselves: he was 9-1 with a 3.16 ERA and struck out 80 while walking just 22. He was 5-0 in his last five starts, and while doing that, had a relief appearance in ODU's victory over Louisiana Tech in the Conference USA championship game.
 
What more could you ask?
 
I'll never forget his masterful performance against South Carolina in the Columbia regional, in which he struck out eight and allowed just one run in seven innings in ODU's 2-1 victory. That came with a crowd of more than 7,000 Gamecock followers screaming their lungs out at him.
 
"It was awesome," I remember him saying about the crowd that compared him to unsightly parts of the human anatomy.
 
Talk about performing under pressure.
 
He surely will get his chance in the pros, though it may not come this spring.
 
The final player garnering a lot of attention is sophomore pitcher Aaron Holiday. After a rough start this season, in which he had control problems, he settled down and threw well late in the season.
 
Holiday had a 3.21 ERA and 4-2 record with a save, but his 32 walks led the team. Yet his fastball is, well, really fast, and some scouts drool when they think of his potential.
 
According to Major League Baseball rules, players are eligible to be drafted they are seniors in high school or, if in college, 21 years or older and have completed three years of eligibility in college.
 
Finwood says he worries a little about both Holiday and Garriola in that essentially, they played just two years, with the COVID-shortened 2020 season counting as the third.


Andy Garriola 

But he says he won't advise any player to sign or not to sign.
 
He said he will explain their options to them in a real-world fashion. As Finwood said, MLB officials are trying to sign prospects as late in the draft as possible for the least amount of money.
 
"This is an exciting time for our kids," he said. "People are thinking about their dreams of playing professional baseball.
 
"But you also have to be careful. We have to remind them that playing in the minor leagues isn't the goal. The goal is to play in the Major Leagues. And that's hard.
 
"Don't devalue yourself or your experience here."
 
He said if a player goes in the top 15 rounds, that player likely should sign. If you go lower, then perhaps not.
 
There's another issue that players are facing this season. MLB did away with 40 minor league baseball teams during the pandemic. It was a cruel blow to the 40 cities who lost their teams, and I think in the long run, it will damage the game.
 
It was also a blow to hundreds of players hoping to play minor league baseball.
 
There are 120 minor league teams to feed into the 30 MLB teams. Finwood says that means a lot of good players will have no place to play.


Ryne Moore 

There will be 600 players drafted and MLB.com predicts about half will be high school players, including five of the first ten prospects.
 
There are 299 Division I baseball programs, which means an average of about one per school will be drafted.
 
"These kids are getting calls from scouts and they are talking about rounds and money," Finwood said. "Like I said, this is the exciting part of the draft. But there tends to be a lot of disappointment on the other side of it."
 
By this time next week, we should know a lot more about who's coming back and who's hopefully moving on to a productive pro career.
 
Regardless, there's plenty of talent left at ODU and the schedule is challenging – home and home series with Virginia, VCU and East Carolina highlight the non-conference schedule. All three played in the NCAA tournament and U.Va. knocked ODU off twice in the Columbia regional.
 
The team's best hitter, second baseman Carter Trice, returns after a standout freshman season. Trice hit .355 with 14 home runs and 54 RBIs and had a .426 on-base percentage. He's a consensus freshman All-American and is playing this summer for the USA Baseball team, the first Monarch to do so in nearly three decades.
 
Three other freshmen started for ODU – third baseman Kenny Levari (.298, eight home runs, 36 RBIs), DH Robbie Petracci (.299, eight home runs) and Lincoln Ransom (.261, .552 slugging percentage and four home runs in just 69 at bats).
 
Catcher Brock Gagliardi (.316, nine home runs, .561 slugging percentage) is back, and he's not only a very good hitter, he's good behind home plate.
 
First baseman Matt Coutney (.282, 10 home runs), Thomas Wheeler (.271, 15 stolen bases) and Ryan Teschko (.275, seven home runs) return, as does second baseman Chris Dengler, who appeared headed for great things before an injury knocked him out last season.


 Aaron Holiday

Dengler's injury forced Trice to play second base – he was a shortstop in high school. Dengler's return to could allow Trice to go to the outfield, where he is playing this summer for USA Baseball.
 
"We've got a good group back," Finwood said. "I'm not worried about scoring runs. We just have to get the pitching shored up."
 
Let's start with the bullpen, where Jason Hartline (5-0, 1.88 ERA, three saves, 60 strikeouts in 48 innings pitched) and Noah Dean (4.64, nine saves 44 strikeouts in 21 innings pitching) anchor a solid group of returnees.
 
If you recall, Hartline and Dean combined with Jacob Gomez to shut out Jacksonville over the last eight innings of ODU's 4-3 victory in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
 
Gomez, a freshman, was 6-1, largely in relief, and had a 4.75 ERA. "He showed what he's capable of against Jacksonville," Finwood said. Gomez will get a shot this fall to prove that he can start.
 
So will Levari, the third baseman, who was forced to play in the infield because of injuries. He threw 91 miles per hour plus in high school.
 
"He's going to pitch for us," Finwood said. "He may start once a week or could play third base and come in as a relief pitcher. But he's going to throw for us. He's a great pitcher."
 
Nick Pantos (4-2, 4.82 ERA, 63 strikeouts in 11 starts) and Tommy Gertner (2-2, 4.95 ERA) both return and will obviously compete to be starters.
 
Brad Dobzanski, a transfer from Kentucky who was 2-0 with a 1.42 ERA in 12.2 innings pitched, has potential, as do a dozen or more other returnees.
 
I won't mention them all. Just know that Finwood and his coaches have recruited well.


Noah Dean
 
Ten freshmen are on campus, already taking classes and one or two likely will step up and play next season. So, likely, will some junior college transfers.
 
I contend that baseball is the must underfunded of sports in college athletics. Coaches must split 11.7 scholarships between 27 players. In all, teams can have 40 players on their roster.
 
That means that not even Carter Trice is on a full ride – his parents are paying tuition, fees and room and board. Because of the uncertainty of the draft, Finwood was forced to tell some players that he may not have scholarship money for them or room on his roster next season.
 
Those were tough but necessary conversations. Depending on how many guys get drafted, some and perhaps most will return after all.
 
Finwood is a traditional guy and he doesn't like going to the transfer portal. Philosophically, he likes to recruit high school and junior college players.
 
But he has two players from the transfer portal committed to ODU, one from a Power 5 school. "We asked them to wait a week or so to see what happens in the draft," he said.
 
More than 3,000 players are in the baseball transfer portal and as with football and men's and women's basketball, a lot of them will be forced either not to play or to transfer down to Division II or Division III.
 
"I'm not hugely in favor of the whole culture of the portal," Finwood said, "But Charlotte completely turned their program around in one year getting kids from the transfer portal.
 
"They got Austin Knight from Tennessee. He wasn't playing as much at Tennessee as he wanted and he came into our league was the conference Player of the Year.
 
"We're looking at the portal. You have to these days."
 
If all six Monarchs get drafted, "you have to say they all went out with a bang," Finwood said.
 
But he mentioned pitcher Ryan Yarbrough, who was drafted in the 20th round of his junior year and returned to ODU. "He went in the fourth round as a senior," Finwood said.
 
He's now a starter at Tampa Bay with a reported salary of $2.3 million.
 
"He was more ready after the additional year here. It's not just 'are you going to be drafted?' he said. "It's also, 'but are you ready?'
 
"And not every kid's ready."
 
Minium worked 39 years at The Virginian-Pilot, where he was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and won 28 state and national writing awards. He writes news stories, features and commentaries for odusports.com and odu.edu Follow him on Twitter @Harry_MiniumODU, Instagram @hbminium1 or email hminium@odu.edu