INDIANAPOLIS – The fourth and fifth selections in Great Midwest Athletic Conference history were called by the Toronto Blue Jays and the Detroit Tigers in the 2018 Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft.
The three-day event with 40 rounds and over 1,200 players concluded on Tuesday as hopefuls from the NCAA, high school and JUCO levels, had their random computer-generated numbers chosen.
Ohio Dominican had two student-athletes drafted, starting pitcher Brad Wilson and corner infielder Justin Childers.
Wilson was off the board in the 13th round with the 386th overall pick to Toronto, who took the hard-throwing righty with the intention of turning him into a starter. Childers was taken 20 rounds later with the first pick of the 33rd round, going 975th overall to Detroit.
Wilson and Childers join the likes of David and Ryan Ledbetter, former Cedarville pitchers taken in the 2013 draft by the Texas Rangers and Hunter Newman, ex-Trevecca slugging standout picked by the St. Louis Cardinals in 2016.
Wilson will report to Dunedin, Fla., while Childers will be sent to Lakeland, Fla., to await their respective minor league assignments.
In their lone year with the Great Midwest, Wilson and Childers were impact players for an Ohio Dominican program that won the conference’s North Division title and advanced to the NCAA Championship Midwest Region final as an at-large selection.
Wilson was tabbed a D2CCA All-Midwest Region Team selection on the first team while grabbing second-team recognition on the ABCA/Rawlings All-Midwest Region Team.
Wilson dialed up to mid-90’s in a workout with the Cincinnati Reds last week leading up to the draft. He was a dominant reliever in high-leverage situations for the Panthers, recording nine saves in 25 appearances.
He held opposing hitters to a .192 average while striking out 61 in just 39.1 innings pitched. His ERA sat at 2.52 and he walked only seven.
Childers’ banner season was highlighted with Great Midwest Player of the Year honors and All-American status from both the D2CCA and NCBWA. He was most recently selected a Google Cloud Academic All-American by CoSIDA for the second consecutive season.
Childers was the 2018 Great Midwest league leader in runs scored, doubles, triples, walks and on-base percentage.
Wilson and Childers join several former Great Midwest institutional affiliates in the minor leagues including Lake Erie’s Ryan Rua (Texas Rangers) and Luke Raley (Tulsa Drillers – AA), Kentucky Wesleyan’s Matt Pobereyko (Las Vegas 51’s – AAA) and Chris Smith (Syracuse Chiefs – AAA), Alderson Broaddus’ Randy Dobnak (Cedar Rapids Kernels – Class A), and ODU’s Ryan Colegate (Lake County Captains – Class A).
Tiffin’s Logan Sendelbach is also with the Altoona Curve in Double A. The Dragons will officially be full members of the Great Midwest starting in the spring of 2019.