Jul. 14—CULLOWHEE — With the final pick of the 2023 Major League Baseball Draft, Western Carolina junior shortstop Pascanel Ferreras was selected by the Houston Astros. Ferreras was selected in the 20th round on Tuesday with the 614th overall pick.
Ferreras is just the second Catamount baseball player drafted by Houston all-time, joining fellow infielder Tyler White who was selected in the 33rd round back in the 2013 draft. White went on to make his Big-League debut with the Astros in 2016.
Ferreras is also the third Catamount drafted in the 20th round of the MLB Draft all-time joining another shortstop in Aaron Attaway (2014) and second-baseman Kenny Smith (2007).
Ferreras has been a staple up the middle for the Catamounts over the past three seasons, starting 160 games, including 158 at shortstop. He batted .339 over three years for the Purple and Gold, eclipsing the 200-career hit mark this past spring to amass 223 base knocks, including a career-best 85 as a sophomore.
Of his 223 hits, 97 went for extra bases, including 49 doubles (17th in program history), five triples and 43 home runs, a mark that ranks him eighth in the school ledgers.
A product of Stone Mountain, Georgia, Ferreras scored 164 runs over the past three seasons to rank just outside of WCU’s all-time top 20, while his 169 career RBI put him 11th in program history. He boasts a career on-base percentage of .433, a mark that ranks him sixth in the WCU record books.
Ferreras was a three-time All-Southern Conference selection, garnering second-team plaudits as a freshman in 2021 in addition to Freshman All-America honors from both Collegiate Baseball and D1 Baseball.
He collected first-team All-SoCon honors in both 2022 and 2023, claiming the program’s Triple Crown as a sophomore — the first for WCU since 2017 — leading the team in batting average (.362), home runs (15) and RBI ( 60).
Ferreras was twice picked as the preseason player of the year in the SoCon, doing so prior to the 2022 and 2023 seasons. He also collected a pair of SoCon weekly plaudits during the 2022 campaign while also gracing the national watch list for the Brooks Wallace Award.
Six Southern Conference players were drafted through the 20 rounds of this year’s MLB Draft, including two from Samford and one apiece from ETSU, Mercer, WCU and Wofford.