Once again, while not official, it's apparent 10th round RHP Greg Miller, out of Seton Hall, will be signing.

Link while active, text follows:

Brewers draft Hammonton alumnus Greg Miller
By MICHAEL McGARRY, Atlantic City (N.J.) Press Staff Writer

Greg Miller wasn't even 2 years old when he used to wake his dad, Gene, up at 6:30 a.m. for batting practice with a Wiffle ball.

Those early mornings paid off for the Hammonton resident Friday afternoon.

The Milwaukee Brewers selected the Seton Hall University standout in the 10th round of Major League Baseball's First-Year Player Draft. Miller, a 2005 Hammonton graduate, was the 308th pick.

"It's a great day for me and my family," Miller, a pitcher, said. "It's always been a goal of mine to be a professional baseball player. I'm glad it came true."

Miller, 21, was watching the Georgia-North Carolina State college baseball game on television at the Red Bank home of friend and Seton Hall teammate Corey Young when his advisor/agent Jon Pridie called to tell Miller the Brewers had selected him.

Young had reason to celebrate a few moments later as the Texas Rangers selected him in the 12th round.

The Brewers selected the 6-foot-4, 205-pound Miller as a pitcher. He was 3-4 with a 3.63 ERA in nine starts and 12 appearances this season.

Miller also excelled as an outfielder, however, batting .340 and earning third-team All-Big East honors.

"I don't care what they need me to do," Miller said. "I'll still get to hit some because I'm with a National League team."

Miller first rose to prominence at Hammonton High School, where he was a Press All-Star in 2004 and 2005. Miller batted .373 for the Blue Devils as a senior and knocked in 31 runs. He hit .403 as a junior.

Miller first worked out for the Brewers while still in high school.

"Ever since then, they've been looking at me while I was in college," he said.

The Brewers have a history with local players. Milwaukee took Darren Ford of Vineland in the 18th round of the 2004 draft. Ford is with Milwaukee's high single-A team, the Brevard County Manatees. The Brewers signed George West, a former Buena Regional and Monmouth University standout, as a free agent in 1998.

Miller said he and Pridie planned to speak this weekend with the Brewers. Miller probably will soon be headed to Milwaukee's Rookie league team in Helena, Mont.

Miller can't wait.

"I'm ready and excited to go there and do something that I've always wanted to," he said. "Playing before fans, having little kids come up to ask for your autograph, that's what it's all about."

Much more, including colbyjack's Brewerfan.net Scouting Report on Miller, can be found here

More official "unofficial" turning pro updates --

Link

VMI junior pitcher Michael Bowman was taken by Milwaukee in the ninth round, the highest a Keydet has been drafted since Ryan Glynn went in the fourth round in 1995.

"It's crazy," Bowman said. "It shows how VMI has taken off."

Bowman said he will skip his senior season and turn pro,

Bowman wasn't the only Keydet that Milwaukee liked. The Brewers took junior catcher Michael Roberts in the 38th round.

Bowman and Roberts became the first VMI juniors to be drafted since Glynn.

Roberts said he is leaning toward skipping his senior season to turn pro.

Much more on Michael Bowman, including colbyjack's Brewerfan.net Scouting Report, can be found here

Michael Roberts Photo:

Please keep in mind we have posted several day-after-draft newspaper links and updates on other Brewer draftees who may or may not sign. Those updates can be found in the threads on the Draft Forum discussing specific rounds of picks.

We are hopeful that you are enjoying both our pre-draft coverage, courtesy of colbyjack's efforts, and our post-draft updates, which we are striving to make as timely and informative as possible. Thanks to all who continue to contribute to our effort.

I'd also be remiss in not thanking again several of our moderators (you know who you are) who were all over the "during draft" coverage. So pre-, during-, and post-, we've got you covered.

Thanks to Brewerfan poster "Bambi's Bombers", who placed this initially in our draft forum as well.

Looks like 31st rounder Brandon Rapoza will be signing with the Brew Crew

Rapoza taken in MLB draft

Rapoza to Brewers

By STUART KORFHAGE
stuart.korfhage@staugustine.com
Publication Date: 06/07/08

Former Bartram Trail and Flagler College pitcher Brandon Rapoza was taken in the 31st round (938th overall) by the Milwaukee Brewers.

For Rapoza, Friday was a long, stressful day. The Flagler College closer said he followed the draft for a while before growing annoyed and going out with some friends. When the Brewers called his name, Rapoza wasn't even by his computer. He found out about his pick when a friend called him. And then the calls kept coming in, congratulating him on the accomplishment.

"It's real nice. I can't even really explain it," he said. "Honestly, I just wanted to keep playing."

Rapoza said he's meeting with a member of the Brewers organization today and expects to sign a contract.

It will mark a whirlwind courtship by the organization, which didn't really scout Rapoza during the season. However, when the team learned that others were interested in him, Rapoza was asked to throw in the bullpen for a scout. Clearly, they liked what they saw from the 6-foot-1 right-hander who throws in the 90s.

With the senior season Rapoza had, it's no wonder he drew interest. He had nine saves with an ERA of 0.97. He struck out 42 in 37 innings of relief.

"He's a competitor; he really goes after hitters," Flagler baseball coach Dave Barnett said. "He certainly deserves the opportunity. He was pretty much lights out if we were ahead late in ballgame."

More, including colbyjack's Brewerfan.net Scouting Report, can be found here

Link for official signing # 5:

Cimarron-Memorial High School graduate Mark Willinsky, a redshirt sophomore at Santa Clara, signed a contract with the Milwaukee Brewers. Willinsky, a right-handed pitcher, was selected in the 15th round of last week's major league draft. He went 4-2 with six saves last season for Santa Clara.

More, including colbyjack's Brewerfan.net Scouting Report, can be found here

As our reader "battlekow" was kind enough to post elsewhere within our forums (thanks!), we'll archive the text of this article here for future reference:

Bucci a Brewer
SARNIA NATIVE SIGNS WITH MLB TEAM
Posted By BY DAVE BORODY, THE OBSERVER

Until yesterday, Sarnia's Nic Bucci was a Toronto Blue Jays fan.

That all changed Tuesday night.

The 18-year-old pitcher signed a professional baseball contract with the Milwaukee Brewers.

Jay Lapp, a Brewers major league scout from London (ON), came to the Bucci home on Southern Avenue with a contract in hand.

Bucci signed a six-year contract (commonly referred to as a standard minor league contract - Mass Haas) with the Brewers along with a signing bonus. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"This is a dream come true," said the soft-spoken Bucci. "It's a little bit overwhelming. It's been a long process and to finally have this happen is very exciting."

Bucci will graduate from St. Pat's in a week's time and then report to the Brewers rookie team in Phoenix, Ariz., where he will begin play in the rookie league there.

A few months ago Bucci signed a national letter of intent to attend Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., on a full baseball scholarship.

Then came the major league draft a week ago where the Brewers selected Bucci in the 18th round of the 50-round draft, 549th overall.

"I was at home following the draft on the computer, but after the 15th round I went out on the porch. But my dad kept watching and then I heard a big yell a few minutes later. I knew then something had happened."

As for signing with the Brewers, Bucci admitted it was a tough decision.

"This was the biggest decision of my life to sign with the Brewers. My family and I went over the pros and cons of everything and we decided to sign with the Brewers and to get into their system as quickly as possible." Bucci knows the journey to the major leagues is just beginning.

"For most players it takes four to five years to move through the system. Hopefully if I keep working hard it will just be a matter of time."

Bucci stands six feet, two inches tall and weighs 180 pounds. He says he throws three pitches, a fastball between 87 and 90 mph, a curve ball and changeup.

Last year he played for Team Ontario and the Canadian national junior team and played in tournaments throughout the United States.
Lapp said he saw Bucci pitch many times.

"Nic is different than a lot of other players in that he has a competitive nature you can't teach. He has no fear on the mound and goes right after players. In Canada I have the unique opportunity to see high school kids like Nic play against players who have already been drafted and signed."

Lapp added, "I've been watching Nic since he was 15. He's made steady progress each year and as a scout that's what you like to see."

Parents Maurizio and Sandy Bucci are proud of their son.

"It's very exciting," said Sandy. "I'm going to miss my baby, but it gives us somewhere new to visit. It's always been his dream since he was a little boy to play professional baseball. The next step is up to him."

Maurizio said Father's Day came early this year.

"It's all a little overwhelming. Nic has always excelled in baseball and after he made the Canadian national junior team there were a lot of major league scouts and schools calling him. I'm glad this part is over. We are very proud of him."

Bucci says pitchers Dustin McGowan of the Toronto Blue Jays and Tim Hudson of the Atlanta Braves are his favourite players.

Bucci had several people to thank. "First my parents. The Sarnia Braves program where I grew up. Murray Marshall, coach of Team Ontario, and Greg Hamilton, coach of the Team Canada juniors."

More, including colbyjack's Brewerfan.net Scouting Report, can be found here

I'm guessing after reading this, we'll all be pulling even more for UNC senior closer and future Brewer, 13th rounder Rob Wooten, in the College World Series in Omaha.

By the way, we've emailed the author, Adam Lucas, to let him know we appreciated him putting together the story.

Link while active, text follows:

Pitching Through The Pain
One of Rob Wooten's biggest fans won't see him pitch in Omaha
By Adam Lucas, Publisher -- Tar Heel Monthly

When Rob Wooten went to one knee, opened the box, and asked Katie Thomas to marry him, she didn't say yes.

The Tar Heel relief pitcher had been planning for this day for two weeks. He'd kept the ring out of sight of everyone, secure in his room. He'd lit candles, he'd arranged roses. But on the chosen day--December 15, 2007--Katie didn't see the flowers. She just saw the glittering ring in her boyfriend's hand, and she knew exactly what it was.

Her eyes widened and her heart skipped a beat, and all she could say was, "Is that my mom's ring?"

The ring did indeed belong to Markie Thomas, Katie's mother. It was a gift the previous Christmas, and it was gorgeous.

And now, if she could ever stop crying, if she could ever stop thinking about the past 38 days--"I had gone from one day having the perfect life to the next day having the worst day of my life, and I had to know that things weren't ever going to be OK again," Katie says now--it was going to be Katie's ring.

She knew she wanted to say yes. And she would, eventually. As soon as she stopped thinking about the heartbreaking--and heartwarming--events that had landed that ring in the hands of the man who was seconds from becoming her fiancé.

If you're a Tar Heel fan, this has happened to you before. An arch-rival is playing in a televised game -- any sport. Said arch-rival, say Duke, loses. Instantly your phone rings, and it's a Carolina buddy wanting to revel in the glory of the loss.

Rob Wooten had that buddy -- his girlfriend's mom.

That's the kind of fan Markie Thomas was. Wooten and Katie Thomas, a Sanford native, had started dating in 2005. Sometimes years run together and get jumbled. Not for Wooten, who was a loyal Carolina fan long before he ever became a Diamond Heel when he enrolled in the fall of 2004. He knows exactly what year he started dating Katie. "The same year we won the national championship," he says, and he's talking about Roy Williams's 2005 basketball Tar Heels.

Katie wasn't quite as committed to the Tar Heels, but her mother--a 1973 graduate--was fanatical.

"They would call each other during games," Katie says. "At the end of last season Rob and I were watching a game together. Duke was playing Clemson. Duke made a shot to win it but there was something funny with the clock and Rob's phone rang right away. I heard my mom say, `I can't believe that happened.' And Rob said, `They cheated.' That's the kind of fans they both were."

It's hard not to appreciate that kind of fandom. At some point, we've all made that call. You're not watching the game with someone, but you know they're watching it, too. No need to ask if they saw it. You know them, and you know they were as exasperated as you were.

In 2006, Katie had taken virtually every dollar of her babysitting money to buy a plane ticket to Omaha to watch the 2006 College World Series. Her father was skeptical. Her mother was excited: "I'd do it," she said to her daughter. When the Tar Heels made a return trip in 2007, Markie Thomas joined her daughter in Omaha. She wanted to see Katie's boyfriend pitch at Rosenblatt Stadium, yes. But she also went because she loved the Tar Heels and that's just what fans do.

On Nov. 7, 2007, Wooten was sitting in class when he received a text from pitching coach Scott Forbes, a Sanford native: "Call me right now."

Wooten's first thought: "What did I do?"

He stepped into the hall to call Forbes and heard his coach say, "You need to come by here." At the same time they were talking, Wooten missed a call from Katie's sister and a call from Katie's best friend. Three calls in the span of five minutes. That's when he knew something was wrong.

What Forbes knew, and what was making its way quickly through the close-knit town of Sanford, was that Markie Thomas had been on her way to work that morning at the same dentist's office where she had worked for 34 years. Somehow, her car left the road and slammed into a tree. She died instantly at the age of 54. In the ensuing days, Sanford-area florists would run out of flowers and 1,500 people would turn out at her funeral.

When he finished his conversation with Forbes, Wooten prepared to go see his coach.

"I got my stuff and left class," he says. "My sister called and she was crying. She told me what had happened. Life stopped right then. Katie didn't know, because she was at work. I called her best friend back in about 10 minutes, and I could hear Katie screaming and crying in the background. That was by far the worst moment of my life. I could hear her, but I couldn't imagine what she was feeling. It was awful."

Wooten left Chapel Hill immediately and drove straight to Sanford. He wouldn't leave for nearly two weeks.

"What Rob did for me that meant so much was that he never tried to tell me things were going to be OK," Katie says. "People say a lot of stupid things when something like that happens, and soon you get tired of hearing it's going to be OK, because you know it's not going to be OK. Rob understood that."

Shortly after the funeral, Katie's father approached Wooten. He asked the question that has shaken the hearts of even the most stout of males over the generations.

"Do you and Katie have any plans for the future?"

Right then, every possible answer rattles through your mind. Is he saying he wants there to be plans? Or maybe he doesn't want there to be plans? Maybe right now he needs his girl and doesn't want me to take her away.

The couple knew they wanted to be together. But Wooten knew he wanted a steady job, wanted a way to provide for his wife. He was just a college senior with a fairly uncertain professional future that could involve living anywhere in America and would likely include a significant amount of bus rides.

As it turned out, Katie's father wasn't trying to be intimidating--he was trying to be helpful. He wanted Rob to have the ring Markie had been given the previous Christmas, the one that was an upgrade on her original engagement ring.

"I had been thinking a lot about it," Wooten says. "Right then, that ring started burning a hole in my pocket."

With the help of Tim Federowicz and Federowicz's girlfriend, he began planning the proposal. Katie never suspected anything. For 38 days after her mother's death, she grieved. On Dec. 15, the clouds finally lifted. It wasn't that Katie stopped feeling sad. It was that she remembered it was OK to be happy. It was one month, one week, and one day after Markie's death.

"All I knew was that we were going out to dinner that night," she says. "I tried to convince him we didn't need to go to Chapel Hill, that we should go somewhere close to home because for that entire month, I never wanted to leave home. But I remember thinking that day when I was getting ready for dinner that I wanted to tell Rob thank you for everything he had done. I didn't want to thank him for anything more than being there for me, because he didn't have to do that."

When he proposed, with that ring, there were tears--and eventually there was a "yes."

Slowly, life moved on. Two months later, he was standing on the third-base foul line in Boca Raton, Florida, listening to the national anthem before Carolina's season opener against Florida Atlantic. He closed his eyes, said a brief prayer, and suddenly felt a strong presence he hadn't expected.

"I felt Katie's mom there so strongly," he says. "And when the anthem was over, I went straight into the dugout, grabbed the Sharpie that Coach Fox uses to make out the lineup, and wrote her initials on my hat."

That's where they've stayed for the remainder of the 2008 season. The Tar Heels have a host of different uniforms, and on every one of them, you'll find the initials "MT" just above the brim of Wooten's cap.

Katie wasn't in Boca, so she didn't see his uniform alteration. It wasn't until the Tar Heels played a home game that she wandered down to the fence after the game to exchange their usual postgame greetings and saw her mother's initials staring back at her.

"That's just like Rob," Katie says. "He didn't do it to impress anybody. He didn't tell anybody he did it. He did it because he wanted to and because she loved him like he was her own son."

Katie picks dresses and samples cake without the mother of the bride. She goes to work every day in the same dentist's office where her mom worked for over three decades. Occasionally, a patient will wrap her in a hug without saying anything, and she knows what they are thinking.

The wedding date has been set for October 25, 2008, which as Rob can tell you without hesitation, "is the day we play Boston College at home." Like Markie Thomas, he's the type of fan who has the football schedule committed to memory four months before the first kickoff.

She's also the type who might have tried to squeeze in both a football game and a wedding on the same day. The thought makes Wooten smile.

"You know what?" he says. "She just might."

Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.