The University of Illinois is now a baseball school. It used to be a basketball school for the longest time. Obviously, not anymore. Illinois was also a football school a long time ago; well before most of us were born.
However, the Illini just got shut out of the NFL Draft for the second consecutive year. Illinois was the only Big Ten school not to have anyone get drafted this year. The NBA Draft in a couple weeks will not feature any Illini either. No Illini basketball players were even invited to the NBA Draft combine. No Illinois hoops players has been drafted since Meyers Leonard in 2012.
However, Illini baseball won 50 games this season and ascended to the #6 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament Closer Tyler Jay is the top notch MLB Draft prospect on this team; and he’s going to make whatever team that selects him very very happy on MLB draft night.
Tyler Jay will start today for Illinois with the season on the line against Vanderbilt in the NCAA playoffs. In order to justify his high position in the draft, we have him going 3rd overall in our latest mock, Jay will likely have to convert a starter. Jay is slotted third in pretty much all mock drafts out there.
The left-handed closer from Lemont, IL leads the Big Ten in batting average against. He’s second in the nation in ERA, and is also first nationally in WHIP. He’s a bit of a late bloomer; he added weight, and further developed his skills set as his college career progressed. However, he has the distinct advantage of being the most likely to pitcher to be fast-tracked to the majors. He really is the “Pro Ready Teddy” of this draft.
In Champaign, we’ve seen Jay add some significant velocity to his fastball. Which now tops out at 96 m.p.h. Tyler Jay has shown some over-powering stuff at times, and he may just help save Illinois in their bid to reach their first ever College World Series in Omaha.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports Digital. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes to the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. He also appears regularly on numerous sports talk radio stations all across the country.
Follow him on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook