Bryce Rainer took questions from the media after being taken 11th-overall by the Detroit Tigers in last Sunday’s amateur draft, and there was a bit of
Triston Casas in his answers. Much like the always-engaging Boston Red Sox slugger — Casas was likewise a first-round pick out of the prep ranks — Rainer came off as a combination of confident, refreshingly honest, and entertainingly quirky.
The Athletic’s Cody Stavenhagen led off the questioning by asking the 19-year-old shortstop out of Los Angeles’s Harvard-Westlake High School what it was like to hear his name called.
“I honestly don’t think there’s a word to explain how I felt,” Rainer replied. “If there is anything I could compare it to, I’d say it’s almost like a kid at Christmas… I’m still kind of in a state of shock, per se. It still doesn’t really feel real, but it’s been pretty cool.”
Rainer mentioned Santa Claus in his response, and regardless of how real old Kris Kringle truly is, the young infielder is indeed Detroit-bound. It’s not what he anticipated come draft day.
“I did not think it was going to be the Tigers,” admitted Rainer, whom Eric Longenhagen had projected to go the Chicago White Sox six picks earlier. “I’m going to be honest with you. We had some ideas. The draft’s crazy — crazy things happen — and time went on, getting phone calls, then it was ‘Tigers.’ I was like, ‘All right. Let’s go. Looks like I’m going to be a Tiger.’”
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