Hewitt-Trussville graduate Steele Hall’s name was called on Sunday night in the first round of the MLB Draft.
With the No. 9 overall pick, the Cincinnati Reds took the 17-year-old shortstop who reclassified to be able to graduate a year early.
“If you stacked him up against juniors out there, we thought that if you lined him up at the end of the summer and into next year’s Draft, he might be a guy you’re talking about at the No. 1 overall pick,” Reds amateur scouting director Joe Katuska told MLB.com.
“That’s what we do when we project these players – we’re talking about what they are at the big league level,” he added. “Obviously [with] a younger kid, we’re not surprised to see significant gains year after year with them, and that’s what we saw over the course of the year every time we saw him.
Hall was committed to play at the University of Tennessee, but he would have to turn down the Reds to go the collegiate route. The slot value for the ninth pick is $6,513,800, meaning he would have to turn down a deal around that amount to stick with his commitment.
“It means a lot, thanking [the Reds] for taking a chance on a 17-year-old, and it’s an honor,” Hall told MLB.com. “Going to the workout in Cincinnati, moving around and talking to everybody, I think that’s when I first knew they were pretty much on me.”
He said of being drafted, “It was a little bit of a sigh of relief, but also I kind of teared up a little, so a lot of happiness happened. And I thought it was cool, and [I] definitely wanted to be a Cincinnati Red.”
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