Chants’ Paez, Remillard selected in MLB Draft

As the Coastal Carolina baseball team was going through final preparations for its NCAA super regional series at Louisiana State on Friday afternoon, two Chanticleers did their best not to get caught up in the other business of the day after being selected in Major League Baseball’s First-Year Player Draft.

Junior shortstop Michael Paez was drafted in the fourth round by the New York Mets shortly before the Chants took the field at LSU’s Alex Box Stadium for practice and senior third baseman Zach Remillard got the call after that session as the Chicago White Sox took him in the 10th round.

They are the 13th and 14th players in program history to be selected in the top 10 rounds of the draft.

“It’s been exciting. It’s good for my family and all my friends and teammates and coaches that have been a part of it, but at the same time I’m at Coastal right now and these super regionals are what matters to me right now,” Paez said. “I’m just looking toward LSU and their team and that’s it.”

Said Remillard: “After practice we were on the bus and heading to the football stadium and I got a call that I was going to have the opportunity [to get drafted]. It ended up happening in the 10th round, everybody was there, we were refreshing Twitter feeds and it’s just a pretty good feeling to experience that with my teammates.”

Paez, who ranks second among all NCAA Division I shortstops with 15 home runs this season while also batting .291 with 17 doubles, two triples and 50 RBIs, is the Chants’ highest draft pick since outfielder Jacob May went in the third round in 2013.

Paez was the 130th overall pick while Remillard went 296th overall.

And that left side of the infield has certainly been a key reason the Chants (47-16) have advanced to the super regionals for the third time in program history.

“I was on Twitter on the tracker and my family was texting me and stuff and my friends too, so that’s how I found out,” Paez said. “But we were in a meeting so I wasn’t really super into [following the draft].”

It would seem most likely that Paez will sign and forgo his senior season, but he said Friday he had not made any decisions yet. He was able to speak briefly with the Mets, and he reiterated later that his focus is on this best-of-three super regional series with LSU.

“They gave me a call just to congratulate me, but they told me to just keep my mind on this game and the rest of the way. So this is my priority right now,” he said, while acknowledging that the news was definitely something of a relief.

“It’s a big weight lifted and [I can] just focus on our road to Omaha, our process and winning one pitch at a time.”

Said Chants coach Gary Gilmore: “I was just so happy for him. Here’s a kid, I don’t know if he had [any scouts] ever talk to him out of high school. A 5-foot-9, 145-pound kid, and now he’s a fourth-rounder. You tip your hat to him. He’s worked very hard, he’s a very skilled young man and we’re just happy for Mike. It’s a great moment in his life.”

Remillard, meanwhile, is batting .348 with a team-high 18 homers and 67 RBIs in what has been a breakout senior season.

The third baseman had been drafted out of high school by the Houston Astros in the 38th round of the 2012 draft before electing to follow through on his commitment to Coastal Carolina.

The news of his selection came after Gilmore had commented earlier about Paez, but Remillard spoke by phone later in the evening about the significance of the moment.

“It’s definitely exciting. We work our whole lives to have the opportunity to play at the next level,” he said. “... The bigger picture is right now and the team, and we’re just excited heading into this super regional and hopefully we can keep it going.”

This story was originally published June 10, 2016 at 8:37 PM with the headline "Chants’ Paez, Remillard selected in MLB Draft."