Jeff Yoder can relate to the emotions and anxiety that Travis Blankenhorn will be experiencing today.
Yoder was the last Pottsville Area High School baseball player selected in the Major League Baseball Amateur Player Draft, which begins tonight and continues through Wednesday.
Yoder was in the Pottsville High auditorium for the school’s awards ceremony when he found out he was taken in the third round of the 1995 MLB Draft by the Chicago Cubs with the 63rd overall pick.
“For me, I knew I was getting drafted,” Yoder said Sunday from his Wayne Township home. “Going into the night before the draft, I was told I was going to be a late first-round, early second-round pick.
“That morning, we had the awards ceremony at the school. My dad was at home manning the phones. I found out in the auditorium of the high school with the entire school and my family there for the awards ceremony.
“Joe Opalenick, the assistant principal at the time, stopped the ceremony to say that I was drafted by the Chicago Cubs. We had graduation later that night. It was a pretty busy day for me.”
The MLB Draft begins at 7 tonight and will be held at the MLB Network’s studios in Secaucus, New Jersey. The first two rounds (picks 1-26, 43-70), plus first-round compensation picks (27-36) for teams that lost a free agent to another after they made a qualifying offer and two competitive balance rounds (A, 37-42; B, 71-75) for small-market teams will be held tonight.
Tonight’s picks will be broadcast live on MLB Network (Comcast 280, DirecTV 213) and MLB.com.
Rounds 3-10 will be selected Tuesday, beginning at 1 p.m., and can be viewed online at MLB.com. The remainder of the draft, rounds 11-40, will be Wednesday starting at noon and available on MLB.com.
Like Yoder on that June 1995 day, Blankenhorn has a busy schedule ahead of him today.
Before the draft even begins, Blankenhorn and his Crimson Tide teammates will take on District 2 champion Abington Heights in a PIAA Class AAA state semifinal at 4 p.m. at
Easton High School. A Pottsville win advances the Crimson Tide to the PIAA state finals for the first time in school history (see capsule preview, Page 15).
Blankenhorn, the Crimson Tide’s senior shortstop, was ranked as the No. 75 overall prospect in Baseball America’s Top 500 released last week and was listed as a “sleeper prospect” at third base in a recent Bleacher Report story. Bleacher Report said Blankenhorn could be taken as high as the compensation picks (27-36) or in the Competitive Balance A (37-42) round.
Other scouting services predict Blankenhorn to be a second- or third-round pick.
Pottsville grad Chris Nabholz went the highest of any local player selected in the MLB Draft over the past 45 years, going No. 49 overall (second round) to the Montreal Expos in the 1988 draft after pitching three years at Towson State.
“I’m pretty excited,” Blankenhorn said Sunday, “but I’ve got to worry about the game first. We have a chance to do something special, something that’s never been done before that’s pretty important for the school and the community.
“I’m going to focus on the game (today) and winning, then let everything else fall into place.”
Yoder, a hard-throwing right-handed pitcher, garnered the same attention from pro scouts during his senior season in 1995 that Blankenhorn did this spring.
After pitching the Crimson Tide to the 1994 District 11 Class AAA crown and throwing a no-hitter against Valley View in the first round of the state playoffs, Yoder was the MVP of the Pennsylvania American Legion East-West All-Star Game and excelled at a Team One showcase held in Kentucky over the summer.
The quarterback of the Crimson Tide football team, Yoder guided Pottsville to a 6-5-1 mark on the gridiron in the fall, then helped the Tide win the Schuylkill League basketball title over the winter.
He remembers taking the mound for Pottsville’s first game of the 1995 baseball season and being greeted by a horde of major league scouts.
“The first game we played was at Dieruff, and it was cold. It was flurrying out,” Yoder recalled. “There were 20 scouts with guns behind the backstop. I only pitched four innings, but I did well.
“Every game, the hype increased with the scouts. Sometimes there were 20-30 per game. I remember when we played at Pine Grove, the entire bank behind home plate was full of scouts sitting all over it. Those were exciting times.”
Yoder holds the Pottsville school records for career victories (25) and strikeouts (365), winning eight games as a sophomore, nine games as a junior and eight as a senior. He went on to pitch for five years in the Cubs’ minor league system (1996-2000) before his career was derailed by injuries.
Now 39, Yoder is the branch office manager of the Allentown office for Eastern Lift Trucking Company. He and his wife Melissa have two children, 6-year-old Addison and 5-year-old Chase.
Also an assistant coach for his brother Grant at Penn State Schuylkill, Yoder said Blankenhorn has all the tools MLB teams look for in a player they’re going to make a high draft pick.
“He has what you can’t coach,” Yoder said. “He has IT. He has the intangibles you can’t coach.
“Obviously, he’s a great athlete. He has the instincts. He can run, throw, hit, but the best way to sum it up is that he has IT.”
The hype surrounding the MLB Draft was totally different in 1995 than it is now. There wasn’t any TV or Internet coverage, newspapers weren’t provided complete lists of team’s draft picks until several days later and since cellphones weren’t invented, players weren’t immediately notified.
Regardless, Yoder said Blankenhorn should cherish the moment, whenever it comes.
With 75 selections being made tonight, it’s probable that Blankenhorn will see his name flash across the TV screen and his phone ring with a major league team on the other end.
And another draft day memory will be made.
“It’s a fun time,” Yoder said. “Getting drafted, it’s surreal. You’re living out a childhood dream.”
MLB Draft
Major League Baseball
Amateur Player Draft
When: Today through Wednesday
Where: MLB Network Studios, Secaucus, New Jersey
Media: Today’s round live on MLB Network (Comcast 280, DirecTV 213) and MLB.com. Tuesday and Wednesday on MLB.com
Schedule
Today — 1st round (1-26), Compensation Picks (27-36), Competitive Balance A (37-42), 2nd round (43-70), Competitive Balance B (71-75). Begins 7 p.m.
Tuesday — Rounds 3-10, 1 p.m.
Wednesday — Rounds 11-40, noon