{"id":6591,"date":"2011-07-07T16:09:02","date_gmt":"2011-07-07T21:09:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=6591"},"modified":"2014-05-20T13:24:02","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T18:24:02","slug":"former-sinclair-pitcher-drafted-by-the-reds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2011\/07\/07\/former-sinclair-pitcher-drafted-by-the-reds\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Sinclair pitcher drafted by the REDs"},"content":{"rendered":"

And with pick No. 625 in the 2011 MLB First-Year Player Draft, the Cincinnati Reds select: <\/em>former Sinclair Community College and University of Cincinnati pitcher Daniel Jensen.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first, I had a big smile on my face,\u201d Jensen said of his thoughts when he got the call from the Reds telling him he was drafted.\u00a0 \u201cIt was all of this hard work paying off.\u00a0 It was a dream come true.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jensen pitched at UC his last three seasons and before that at Sinclair.\u00a0 He credited coach Steve Dintaman and pitching coach Rick Castle with helping him get to the point he is at today.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout them, I wouldn\u2019t be here,\u201d Jensen said.<\/p>\n

Major League Baseball has two drafts every year.\u00a0 One, called the \u201cRule 5\u201d draft, occurs every December and features players already in organizations.\u00a0 The second, called the \u201cRule 4\u201d or \u201cFirst-Year Player\u201d draft, features entirely amateur players from the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s First-Year Player Draft featured more than 50 rounds and more than 1,500 players drafted.<\/p>\n

Jensen was drafted and signed his contract two days later.<\/p>\n

The Reds officials he dealt with asked him if he wanted to play professional baseball, and he said he did. They slid him a contract and he signed it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere wasn\u2019t much negotiation,\u201d Jensen said.\u00a0 \u201cI was a senior and didn\u2019t have much leverage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jensen is pitching for the Billings Mustangs (Billings, Mont.) in the Rookie Pioneer League.\u00a0 He\u2019s thrown 3.2 innings, has a 2.45 ERA, walked one batter and struck out 5.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy first inning at Billings, I was really nervous,\u201d Jensen said.\u00a0 \u201cMy first hit allowed was a home run.\u00a0 But my second inning I settled down.\u201d<\/p>\n

The quality of competition has gone up at Billings, Jensen said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost college teams have five or six guys that are easier to get out,\u201d Jensen said.\u00a0 \u201cNow it is much tougher.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the Reds told him to work on getting exposure on the mound to begin his career.\u00a0 Part of that will be getting used to playing in front of a bigger crowd.<\/p>\n

Jensen said more than 2,000 people appeared at his first home game in Billings.\u00a0 That experience made him realize that he was a professional baseball player.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had goosebumps,\u201d Jensen said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And with pick No. 625 in the 2011 MLB First-Year Player Draft, the Cincinnati Reds select: former Sinclair Community College and University of Cincinnati pitcher Daniel Jensen. \u201cAt first, I had a big smile on my face,\u201d Jensen said of his thoughts when he got the call from the Reds telling him he was drafted.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":229,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-1Ij","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/229"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6593,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6591\/revisions\/6593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}