UNC Football: Jordyn Adams and the MLB Draft

When looking forward to football season in Chapel Hill later this year, one of the most exciting aspects is the addition of Jordyn Adams to this year’s team. The five-star (if you like 24/7’s rankings, four-star if you prefer the composite) wide receiver made a real splash last year at Nike’s The Opening where he eventually committed to the Tar Heels.

It was stated pretty much immediately that Adams would also play baseball for UNC as a two-sport athlete. He is a center fielder on the Green Hope team in Cary. Most players are forced to pick a sport when they head to college, whether because of the time commitment or because they just aren’t D-1 good at two different sports. Adams doesn’t have that problem.

As the Green Hope team continues to succeed on the diamond, rumblings about Adams entering this year’s MLB Draft get a bit louder. Speculation that he may never make it to Chapel Hill this fall has already started. However, that seems unlikely to be the case.

Adams’ father is an assistant coach on the football team, and it seems unlikely that Adams, who changed high schools to be closer to his dad, would pass up the opportunity to join his dad at Carolina. Family ties aside, Adams is not currently listed on Baseball America’s Top 200 list for the draft this year. That is usually a pretty good metric for determining when or if a player would be selected by an MLB team.

Baseball has a unique rule when it comes to declaring for their draft. A player can declare right after high school if they want, but if they go to college they can’t declare again for three years. There are some exceptions to this rule based on birthday and junior college situations, but for the most part it’s a three-year hard line.

All of this means that if Adams 1. decides not to declare for the draft 2. declares for the draft but isn’t drafted 3. declares for the draft but is drafted very late in the draft to the point that he feels he can do better later on, he will be in Chapel Hill this fall. At that point, we wouldn’t have to worry about having this conversation again for a couple of years.

Unless something drastic changes between now and June, there’s every reason to expect we’ll see Adams playing in Kenan later this year and at The Bosh early in 2019 as well.