Goshen's Rob Hensey drafted by Cincinnati Reds in 2022 MLB Draft
Goshen’s Rob Hensey wanted to thank those in his corner.
Naturally, the 6-foot-4, 215 pound southpaw pitcher was feeling grateful after he was selected in the ninth round by the Cincinnati Reds in the 2022 Major League Baseball Draft with the 273rd overall pick.
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Hensey woke up at 9 a.m. the morning of July 18 to the phone ringing. He had been getting calls frequently, but they started to really ramp up a week before the draft.
“I really had a good feeling that something was going to happen that day,” he said. “My advisor told me after my last game this season that I was going to have a shot to be picked in the top 20 rounds for sure. But I really wanted to be picked in the top 10 rounds, just based on being protected and being able to say that I went in the top 10 rounds.”
Around 2 p.m. Monday, Hensey and his family and a couple of friends from home were dining at Tequila Grill in Monroe, where his brother, Joe, is a manager, and they watched the draft. His sister, Vanessa, has also been an outstanding role model, Hensey said.
In a heart-racing sequence, Hensey heard from the Reds, Red Sox and Royals before the Reds finally selected him with the 273rd pick.
“I really just wanted to get it over with just to see my name up there," he said. "And it happened and I kind of almost blacked out a little bit. I didn’t really remember what was going on. I just remember my name being put up on the board and very loud screaming coming from everybody.”
Despite it being a Monday and not the most busy of times, there was another big name in the restaurant, who had himself his own victory over the weekend in UFC — fighter Shane Burgos, sitting at another table with his family. By chance, Hensey knew of Burgos because he trained with John Rahn, the same trainer Hensey uses at Believe Elite in Monroe.
The two only had time to exchange a quick handshake.
“I really wasn’t able to talk to him," Hensey said. "I wasn’t able to congratulate him on his victory over the weekend. But the respect was there and he knows where I’m coming from. He’s a guy that I looked up to for sure and we trained with the same guy and he’s a workhorse. I’d like to say that I work pretty hard and we’re just grinders.”
The 2021 MAAC Pitcher of the Year just finished his senior year at Monmouth University in New Jersey. But he has fond memories of Goshen. He lives in Campbell Hall, adjacent to Goshen, and has lived there his entire life. Has born in Yonkers, as the third of three children. The family moved a little while after he was born.
“Growing up here, it’s a small town, but it’s a very beautiful town,” he said. “I had a great childhood growing up here. My parents voiced to me that they wanted me to do anything in life that I wanted to. My mother specifically told me from a very young age that I could do anything that I set my mind to. She had some of the biggest effect on me in terms of how my mindset and work ethic came about. My parents wanted me to try every sport and see which one I liked the best, maybe multiple sports. I grew up playing baseball and basketball. With baseball I started when I was four years old. Right when I picked up a baseball, whether it was playing catch with my dad and brother in the backyard or starting tee-ball, I just loved it. I don’t know why, but I absolutely loved it. I had a ball when I was out there. Just growing up in Goshen, and being at Craigville Park for Goshen Little League on a Saturday, there was nothing better for me. I just absolutely loved it. I loved the atmosphere and loved the environment as a little guy.”
Hensey pitched in the 2018 Section 9 Class A semifinals, which helped the Gladiators advance to the finals for the first time since 2002. His senior year was really "something special," Goshen high school baseball coach John Mardyniak said. He struck out 44 batters in 33⅓ innings. At the plate, he hit for .439 with five home runs. Hensey pitched and played the outfield for the Gladiators.
“I was just talking yesterday with one of my colleagues at how amazing this is,” Mardyniak said. “I’ve been in Goshen for 25 years and I don’t recall any athlete being drafted to any professional sport with the exception of maybe one some time ago. It’s amazing to think that you had a player come through that you had some influence with. I’ve known Rob since he was in seventh grade in middle school when I was teaching then. He’s just got such a great head on his shoulders. To say that I saw this coming when he was in high school would be a little bit of a stretch. You never really know if something like this is going to happen. But in terms of now looking back you can see how it happened, because he was very determined and he didn’t let the little high school things that people can get caught up in bother him. And he just kept working hard. And now here he is as a 6-4 left-hander in the Cincinnati Reds organization. He really is a great kid. It’s not a surprise.”
Hensey leaves Thursday for Goodyear, Arizona, where he will be attending draft camp, which begins Saturday and ends on Aug. 4. Following camp, he hopes to be assigned to the Reds’ Low-A affiliate, the Daytona Reds. That season finishes up at the end of August. In September he will return home for a few weeks, before heading off to instructional league.
This week, he fondly remembered those who guided him along the way.
Right around seven years old, Tom Giordano, who coached little league and football for a long time in the area, approached Hensey’s mother and told her that he should play travel ball and that there was a new team for him in Goshen — the Goshen Storm. The team was coached by Tim Gansrow and Jim Wierzbicki.
“Those two gentlemen really just instilled the love of the game into me, right on from seven years old,” Hensey said. “They taught me about many life lessons that I look back at now and I’m so grateful that they were able to bestow that kind of knowledge on me. And the fact that the game of baseball is a game of failures and to have a short-term memory with this game. They taught me the idea of toughness and the fact that at the end of the day, baseball is just a game and to have fun with it.”
Gansrow specifically bestowed the idea of relentless determination in his life journey. The former NYPD police officer, who helped clean up the wreckage on September 11, 2001, was later diagnosed with cancer while coaching the Storm, around the time Hensey was around 9.
“He was going through chemotherapy at that time, but he was still working and still coaching us and coming to the field and just being able to be exposed to that level of toughness,” Hensey said. “He wanted to continue to do the things that made him happy during this time. And it didn’t matter if he was sick as a dog on chemotherapy or healthy as can be, he still went about doing his thing because he knew he could handle it. He ended up beating it and going through remission.”
Everybody on the team made and wore red bracelets that said "Relentless."
“I’m looking down at it right now, because I found a bag of these bracelets, I think it was last year, and I put one on and I haven’t taken it off since,” Hensey said. “So I feel like that was just something that at this point in my career, I always remember him and remember the lessons that he taught me, but finding the bracelet and being able to wear it every day, it really put those ideas into perspective in the fact that I’m so close. He told me when I was a little guy that I could make it, I could make it to college ball and make it to the next level after college. Just having that kind of memory with a man like that, he definitely made me love this game very much.”
The southpaw said the guy who really brought him to the level he is at now and has stuck with him since he was a freshman in high school was Willie Fraser. Fraser played six full seasons in the major leagues and eight total. He also went overseas for three years to play in Japan. The first-round pick out of Concordia College, who graduated high school from Newburgh Free Academy, coaches kids now and he currently works with the Washington Nationals.
Fraser found out about Hensey before he was a freshman in high school. He invited Hensey to come throw for him. From then on, Fraser helped Hensey, and every winter he trained with him, got better with him and prepared for every season since then.
“To have a man in your corner with a baseball mind like his, and he coaches so well with simplicity and emphasizes trusting yourself and trusting your stuff,” Hensey said. “And I really wouldn’t be where I am right now without him.”
MKramer1@th-record.com
Twitter: @MKramerTHR
This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record: Goshen native Rob Hensey drafted by Cincinnati Reds in 2022 MLB Draft
