Senior shortstop Jack Dunn selected by the Washington Nationals in the 20th Round

For only the second time ever, the Northwestern Wildcats have seen a trio of players selected in a single draft.

After his teammate on the left side of the infield and fellow First Team All-Big Ten honoree Alex Erro was picked just minutes earlier, Jack Dunn was selected by the Washington Nationals in the 20th round of the 2019 MLB Draft on Wednesday.

The senior shortstop had a remarkable career in Evanston. He started all 211 games the Wildcats played in his four years with the program and led the team this past season with a .340 average. He totaled 230 hits over the course of his career with Northwestern, making him ninth all-time in that category for the purple and white.

The key part missing from Dunn’s playing capability is power at the plate (one HR in four seasons), but he makes up for that flaw in his game with speed and consistency. Dunn recorded clutch hit after clutch hit throughout his senior season, driving in a team-best 36 RBIs and leading the team with 43 runs scored as well.

His glove has also proved to be elite over his impressive career, with the Alpharetta, Georgia native flashing impressive range and a slick glove en route to a fielding percentage of .980 in his final two seasons.

Dunn’s brother, David, and his cousin, Michael Trautwein, are both rising sophomore starters for Spencer Allen and Northwestern. The family’s Evanston baseball lineage is impressive: Michael’s father and Jack and David’s uncle John Trautwein led the Wildcats in ERA in his senior season before earning a cup of coffee in the MLB with the Red Sox.

The 2019 MLB Draft is proving to be a groundbreaking one for a Northwestern program seeking to improve its national reputation and legitimacy.

NU hadn’t had a player drafted since 2015, and now they have three off the board in the first 20 rounds. The only other time the Wildcats have accomplished that feat (as far back as publicly available records go) was in 2004, when J.A. Happ (you may recognize the name), Dan Polman, and Dan Konecny were selected in the third, 15th, and 17th rounds respectively.

According to Baseball Reference, this also marks the first time Northwestern has ever had two position players selected in the same year. In their three years on the field together in Evanston, Alex Erro and Jack Dunn broke plenty of records, and they are continuing to do so as they transition to the next level.