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BLACKSBURG – On the final day of the 2015 Major League Baseball First-Year Draft, Virginia Tech baseball heard four of its players’ names called which ran the Hokies’ streak of having multiple players selected in a single draft to seven straight years.

The four Hokies chosen today included departed seniors Brendon Hayden, Alex Perez and Sean Keselica, while redshirt-sophomore Saige Jenco was also selected.

Hayden was the first Tech player picked in the 2015 draft and was taken with the ninth pick of the 16th round by the Philadelphia Phillies, the fourth time the organization has chosen a Hokie player.

However, this was the second time Hayden was drafted by the Phillies, as he was also chosen by Philadelphia out of high school in the 36th round with the 1,111th overall selection – 637 picks later than he was taken on Wednesday.

Of note, over the past seven drafts, Tech has seen six of its players selected before arriving on campus, either out of high school or junior college. Of those players, all of them improved their draft choice by at least 500 picks and have averaged more than 700 selections better after playing with the Hokies.

Perez, the first of three Hokies taken for the first time in the MLB draft, was a 23rd round selection by the Minnesota Twins. The 680th overall selection became just the third player selected by the Twins – with the last being Charlie Gillian almost 20 years ago (1996).

The Boston Red Sox took Jenco in the 27th round with the 801st overall pick and he became the fourth Hokie taken by the organization. With the pick, it also marked the sixth straight year a Tech undergraduate had been selected in the draft.

The final Tech player taken in 2015 was Keselica, by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 33rd round with the 997th pick. He is only the second Hokie ever taken by the organization, as the first was George “Sandy” Hill in the 36th round back in 1977.

The seven straight years with multiple choices is the longest ever stretch in the program’s history. The longest prior to the current stretch was a pair of three straight drafts with multiple choices – the 1981 through 1983 drafts and the 1988 through 1990 drafts.

Also, since 2009, Tech has seen 24 players chosen in the draft with 18 of them never being drafted prior to their arrival in Blacksburg. In the 50 years of the MLB draft, Hokies have been chosen a total of 83 times.

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