Ryan Casteel was a no-show for the Hardee’s Tennessee-Georgia all-star baseball game Monday night, but the Bradley Central High School catcher had a good excuse.
He was on his way back from Detroit, where he had a Monday workout for the Tigers preceding the major league baseball draft today. The draft will continue through Thursday.
Casteel, a University of Tennessee signee, has had individual workouts also with the Cincinnati Reds, the Colorado Rockies and the New York Mets. With the exception of the New York trip, Casteel has worked out at the clubs’ home fields.
“It has been pretty exciting although it also has been nerve-racking,” he said. “It was fun being on a big-league field, but it’s baseball.”
Casteel has been projected by some as a possible sixth- through 10th-round draftee and by others as a 10th- to 20th-rounder.
“I haven’t really heard a whole lot,” Bradley coach Travis Adams said. “I know his workouts went pretty well and that he hit one out at Colorado. I’d say he’d go in the top 10 rounds, but I don’t know what money numbers he has told them, and I don’t know how they responded to what he told them.”
Casteel is in a good fallback position after signing last fall with the Volunteers. He’ll have a phone but doesn’t plan to track the draft. He has an adviser who has given him an idea of what to say and how when talking with club representatives and what kind of offer he should accept or decline.
“I guess I could go as early as the fifth round and as late as never,” he said.
Ward Gossett is an assistant sports editor and writer for the Times Free Press. Ward has a long history in Chattanooga journalism. He actually wrote a bylined story for the Chattanooga News-Free Press as a third-grader. He Began working part-time there in 1968 and was hired full time in 1970. Ward now covers high school athletics, primarily football, wrestling and baseball and University of Tennessee at Chattanooga wrestling. Over a 40-year career, he has covered ...
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