The 2012 Major League Baseball Draft is in the books and, as always, plenty of names from Cape League summers had their names called. The league will have the official number for all 40 rounds at some point (I’ll let them count), but we know at this point that the first round was full of Cape Leaguers. Twelve of 31 picks — and 12 of 14 collegiate players — selected in the first round spent some amount of time on the Cape. Some just made cameos, like Mark Appel, Mike Zunino and Kevin Gausman, but there were also some Cape League veterans like Andrew Heaney, Kyle Zimmer and Victor Roache.
The 12 players in the first round was up significantly from the last two years. Eight went last year and only six the year before. Twelve was the most in the first round since the banner year of 2008, when 14 CCBL’ers were picked, including future Major Leaguers Buster Posey, Gordon Beckham and Justin Smoak.
Zunino, who played briefly with Y-D last summer, was drafted third overall, the highest for a Cape Leaguer since 2009, when Dustin Ackley went second. Mark Appel, who also played for Y-D, was in the running for the top overall pick but dropped to eighth. He would have been the first Cape Leaguer to go 1-1 since Luke Hochevar in 2006.
Here’s the first-round list:
3 – Mike Zunino – Y-D ’11 – Seattle
4 – Kevin Gausman – Harwich ’11 – Baltimore
5 – Kyle Zimmer – Cotuit ’11 – Kansas City
8 – Mark Appel – Y-D ’11 – Pittsburgh
9 – Andrew Heaney – Falmouth ’11 – Miami
20 – Chris Stratton – Harwich ’11 – San Francisco
22 – Marcus Stroman – Orleans ’10 & ’11 – Toronto
23 – James Ramsey – Y-D ’11 – St. Louis
24 – Deven Marrero – Cotuit ’10 & ’11 – Boston
25 – Richie Shaffer – Chatham ’11 – Tampa Bay
28 – Victor Roache – Cotuit ’11 – Milwaukee
31 – Brian Johnson – Y-D ’11 – Boston
Eight other former Cape Leaguers were selected in the supplemental first round, bringing the total to 20 of 60 picks. Reigning MVP Travis Jankowski went in the supplemental round, 44th overall to San Diego.
A few other notes on the draft: