The Prospect League really does work.

The recent Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft featured 31 former players from the league. Every team in the Prospect League last season had at least one former player chosen.

One former Slippery Rock Slider — University of Connecticut catcher Max McDowell — was chosen in the 13th round by the Milwaukee Brewers. The Sliders were sold and moved to Springfield, Ohio, following the 2013 season.

McDowell wound up being a three-year starter behind the plate for the Huskies and a solid .280 hitter through much of his career. As a senior, he hit .286 with seven homers, 39 RBI and led the nation with 11 sacrifice flies.

Three former Butler BlueSox players were chosen in this year’s draft. Ryan Uhl, a first baseman at Indiana (Pa.) University, went in the seventh round to the Seattle Mariners. He hit .415 last spring with 29 homers and 74 RBI for the Crimson Hawks.

Catcher Stuart Levy went to the Baltimore Orioles in the 27th round. He hit .288 in his final season at Arkansas State.

Andrew Elliott was a starting pitcher for the BlueSox who was since converted to a relief hurler at Wright State. The Orioles selected him in the 30th round after he posted a 5-4 record, 2.61 earned run average and 11 saves as one of the top closers in the Horizon League.

Two other former BlueSox players are worth noting. Nick Sell — Seton Hill’s third baseman who received the Tino Martinez Award as the best baseball player in Division II this year — was inexplicably not drafted.

Sell signed a minor league contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers last weekend after leading all of Division II with 92 RBI. He drilled 28 home runs and hit .444 for Seton Hill.

Seneca Valley graduate and former BlueSox catcher Kevan Smith is in his first year with Class AAA Charlotte in the Chicago White Sox organization. He is hitting .246 with four homers and 18 RBI. Smith is carrying a .292 career average with 45 homers in five years of minor league baseball.

The highest selection from any Prospect League team was 6-foot-4 left-handed pitcher Jeff Degano of Indiana State. He played for Terre Haute and was chosen in the second round by the Yankees.

Other Prospect League alumni chosen in the first five rounds were relief pitcher Brandon Koch (West Virginia Miners) in the fourth round by Tampa Bay, outfielder Ronnie Jebavy (Danville) in the fifth round by the Giants and outfielder Jared Foster (Hannibal) in the fifth round by the Angels.

As the Prospect League continues to grow in notoriety as one of the top summer collegiate leagues in the nation, more and more legitimate prospects could be filling these rosters in coming years.

Here’s hoping these guys get to where they want to go.

John Enrietto is sports editor of the Butler Eagle