Indiana Shortstop Phillip Glasser Selected by Washington in 10th Round of 2023 MLB Draft
Phillip Glasser is the second Hoosier off the board in the 2023 MLB Draft, joining right-handed pitcher Craig Yoho, an eighth-round pick by the Milwaukee Brewers.
The Washington Nationals selected Glasser in the 10th round, No. 285 overall.
Glasser is the first Indiana shortstop drafted since Ethan Wilson in 2010, and he's the highest-drafted Hoosier shortstop since 1997, when Brian Harris was taken in the 8th round.
Glasser transferred to Indiana before the 2022 season, following three years at Youngstown State, where he was a second-team All-Horizon League shortstop in 2021. And as soon as he joined the Hoosiers, he impacted the team in many ways.
He started 47 games for Indiana in 2022, reaching base safely in 43-of-47 games across the entire season. He finished the year with a .346 batting average, three home runs, 65 hits, 25 RBI and six stolen bases. Indiana went 27-32 and missed the NCAA Tournament that year, but Glasser was determined to spark the Hoosiers' turnaround.
Indiana coach Jeff Mercer often spoke of Glasser's work ethic and leadership throughout the 2023 season, which marked a few program milestones. The Hoosiers increased their win total by 16 games from 2022 to 2023, finishing the year 43-20 overall, good for their first 40-win regular season since 2013. Indiana finished second in the Big Ten and made its first trip to the NCAA Tournament since 2019, ultimately losing to Kentucky in the Regional Championship.
Glasser played an integral role in Indiana's success in 2023. Starting all 63 games at shortstop, Glasser again showed his on-base prowess as he reached safely in 61 games as Indiana's leadoff hitter. Earning second-team All-Big Ten honors, he finished the year with a .357 batting average, seven home runs, 48 RBI, 36 walks and 14 stolen bases.
Following Indiana's season-ending loss to Kentucky in the Regional Championship, Mercer shared an emotional moment with Glasser in the dugout and raved at length about the shortstop's impact on the program.
"That guy gave his heart and soul," Mercer said. "He gave everything he had. And I know at the end of the season everybody talks about stuff and how great guys are. And all of a sudden we lose the reality of what it actually means when you have a great leader. Like everybody's the best and everybody's awesome and everybody works really hard and it's like you lose the sense -- it doesn't mean anything anymore. Except for that guy. That guy's different. He's different. He's the most passionate. He's the most focused. He's the most motivated.
"When guys get to their fifth year, this guy's played every day for five years and turned the draft down two or three times. He's played every day for five years, and he's still the most motivated, laser-focused, dutiful player I've ever coached. It doesn't happen. It's not normal. He's just wired different. He's elevated everybody else around him to be like that and to understand when you're trying to explain what it's like to work and to be invested and to be the absolute best that you can be at something, to pour all of yourself into something and you don't have a role mold that says, that's what it looks like, it's really hard."
"And you come across, as a coach, you come across that you're asking something that's outlandish or you're asking for something that's too much or it's too hard. Then you have a player like Phil, and it's like he's not supposed to be doing this. Like physically he doesn't have the ability to do some of these things that he does but he's so diligent and he works so hard. And it's, like, when you can say, be like Phillip Glasser. Work like that. Think like that. Be invested like that. It changes everything. And so that's what is difficult."
"When you're looking at this guy who is broken and now you have to try to console him in this moment and you know how much he's invested and how much he's given to everybody around him, and you just wanted to give him one more thing. You just wanted to give him one more. It's just I just wanted it for him. I wanted it for those guys. You wanted to send him away in his last college baseball game to go to a Super Regional. You wanted that. If we got to a Super Regional, you would say at the end of that I wanted one more game for Phillip Glasser to get to the World Series. You're selfish, you're greedy. We all are. That's what's hard for him."
"I know how much he's changed everybody around him, how much he's blessed me to coach him. To see him hurt that, it hurts you as a coach because you love him and you care about him. And sometimes we throw those things around too loosely. But with that guy, he's the real deal."
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- YOHO DRAFTED: Indiana right-handed pitcher Craig Yoho became the first Hoosier off the board on Monday, when he was selected by the Milwaukee Brewers with the No. 242 overall pick in the eighth round of the 2023 MLB Draft. CLICK HERE