Sam Demel was one of the bigger names on the 2007 Texas Christian University roster that also saw Jake Arrieta and Matt Carpenter taking the field. While Carpenter would become a 13th round pick in 2009, Sam Demel would be off the board earlier than Jake Arrieta, in the 3rd round of the 2007 draft, although Arrieta would get a much bigger bonus and become an overslot signing for the Orioles in the 5th round.
Demel wasn’t necessarily valued as a big impact prospect in Oakland, when the A’s took him in that 2007 draft. In 2007 the Oakland A’s drafted mainly college guys in those first rounds, obviously with the expectation that they could move up quickly through the system and Demel certainly made for an interesting one: as a freshman and sophomore he mostly worked as a starter with good strikeout rates, but in 2006 he impresses as a closer in the Cape Cod league, picking up 12 saves in 26 innings, and in 2007 works exclusively as the team’s closer, allowing just 1 homerun over almost 50 innings of work, paired with an excellent 4.