Congratulations, Henry Davis. The first University of Louisville baseball player to be picked No. 1 in the Major League Baseball draft.
The Pittsburgh Pirates seeing Davis as the most valuable player in college baseball during the 2021 season. The Pirates, currently mired in sixth place in the National League’s Central Division, wanting him to help make them competitive again.
The UofL junior is the ninth Cardinal taken in the first round of the MLB Draft and the seventh in the last six years. Davis is also the 88th student-athlete drafted during Dan McDonnell‘s 15-year tenure at Louisville.
He is the fifth all-time top selection from the Atlantic CC and first since Pat Burrell was taken with the top pick out of Miami in 1998.
Davis capped off an outstanding three-year career at Louisville with a solid 2021 campaign. The catcher was a unanimous All-American after hitting a team-best .370 with 15 home runs and 48 RBIs, while throwing out better than 46 percent of base stealers. Davis was a Buster Posey Award finalist, as well as a semifinalist for the Golden Spikes Award and Dick Howser Trophy.
In three seasons at Louisville, Davis held a .337 batting average with 21 home runs and 84 runs batted in.
Davis joins Pervis Ellison (NBA, 1989), Angel McCoughtry (WNBA, 2009) and Andrew Farrell (MLS, 2013) as No. 1 picks from UofL.