The Cleveland Guardians selected Australian second baseman Travis Bazzana with the first overall pick in Major League Baseball’s amateur draft on Sunday night.
Bazzana is the first Australian selected in the first round of the MLB draft and the first second baseman to be drafted with the first overall choice.
The 21-year-old, who came to play baseball for Oregon State after playing rugby, soccer, and cricket, hit.407 this season with 28 home runs and 66 RBIs. With his 84 runs scored and slugging percentage, he set an Oregon State single-season record.9-1-1. Bazzana had an on-base percentage of.568 and swiped 16 bases.
Bazzana played baseball and cricket growing up, but after coming to the US at the age of 15, she switched to baseball full-time. “I had more enthusiasm for it,” Bazzana said to ESPN Australia. “I enjoyed baseball and I think I was a little better at it than I was at cricket. If I had additional time to train, I would definitely put it into that sport. Thus, it somewhat simplified things.
This year’s top choice in baseball had a $10.6 million slot value under the bonus pools system, which was implemented in 2012.
Cleveland, who had a 2% chance of winning the weighted lottery in December, won the top choice for the first time since the draft’s inception in 1965. The lottery was implemented last year as a means of discouraging struggling teams from purposefully seeking to trade veterans in order to obtain a top draft choice.
Right-hander Chase Burns of Wake Forest was selected with the second round by Cincinnati. Over 100 innings in 16 starts, the 21-year-old went 10-1 with a 2.70 ERA, 191 strikeouts, and 30 walls. Rhett Lowder of the Demon Deacons was selected by the Reds with the seventh overall pick in the previous season.
