A year after winning a Pac-12 championship in baseball, the Utes had three players drafted in the MLB Draft. The baseball team and the women’s softball teams have had a great couple of seasons, with a couple deep runs into the NCAA tournament for the softball team.
Per the press release on UtahUtes.com:
“SALT LAKE CITY - Utah baseball players Riley Ottesen, Jayson Rose and Dallas Carroll were all selected on the second day of the 2017 MLB Draft on Tuesday afternoon. Ottesen was a fifth-round selection to the Los Angeles Dodgers (160th overall pick) while Rose and Carroll both went to the Milwaukee Brewers, Rose in the eighth round (234th pick) and Carroll in the ninth round (264th pick).
It is the first time that Utah has had three players drafted in the first nine rounds, and Utah has had 10 total players drafted in the first 10 rounds in Utah head coach Bill Kinneberg's tenure at Utah. Ottesen is the Utah's highest draft pick since 2014, when Tyler Wagner was a fourth-round selection.” Read the rest here.
Bill Kinneberg has done some great things with this program, and on top of winning that shocking conference title a year ago, he’s validated even more when he has multiple players drafted. With players like the ones drafted today, or like others like CJ Cron, who is having a very nice MLB career (along with some stops back in SLC with the Bees), Kinneberg has shown he can identify and bring talent to SLC.
It’s especially cool that both Rose and Carroll are going to be in the Milwaukee system together, hopefully both making it to the big show one day. Hopefully, with the additional of an on campus (which the U is working toward right now) field Kinneberg can continue to find talent, and hopefully take the program up a notch. Now, Utah will never be a perennial power in the conference, but I don’t see why they couldn’t jump up and win the occasional conference title when the stars align.
One heck of a day for those three young men that will hopefully get to get their chances in the league.