In the first week of June, Jack Penney was in Comerica Park, going through a workout in front of Tigers scouts and members of the front office, and one thought went through his mind: After all the practices, after all the games, after all the discipline required to get to this point, this is the dream that I’ve been chasing my entire life; and it’s so close.

Now?

Well, it’s reality.

The Tigers took Penney in the fifth round of the MLB draft.

“It’s a relief, honestly,” said Penney, a shortstop from Notre Dame who bats left-handed. “Just to know that my persistence, my discipline, and my determination have kind of paid off a little bit. This is obviously a huge step, and I'm excited to take the jump to minor league baseball.”

The Tigers had scouted Penney for years.

"With Jack, he is a steady defender that has really good hands, good internal clock, and on top of that, it's really good bat-to-ball skills, controls the strike zone,” Tigers scouting director Mark Conner said.

Penney estimated that about 30 players went to the workout in Comerica Park.

In some ways, it was like a normal baseball showcase. They did some stretches, ran the 60-yard dash, took grounders from short, hit batting practice and then took some live batting practice against a pitcher.

“It was the same few drills and the same things that I've been doing most of my life,” he said.

Except, of course, this was in front of professional scouts in a big-league stadium.

“It was just an unreal experience just to be there,” he said.

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Easy to see what the Tigers like

After about a 20-minute phone call on Tuesday afternoon with Penney, I had a few impressions.

First of all, he’s incredibly smart and engaging. He comes from a family that places a high value on education. Both his parents went to Tufts University — one of the best colleges in the country. His mother, Kim, played basketball, and his father, Matt, played football.

Jack Penney went to Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts, one the most prestigious, elite prep schools in the country, where he played baseball, basketball and … um, checks notes. ... squash?

He laughed.

“It's a really fun sport,” he said. “I kind of fell in love with it. I played it my last two years in high school."

Actually, that squash background might be the key to his success, according to Notre Dame coach Shawn Stiffler.

"I will tell you his whole game is based around — defensively and offensively — a lot of the things he does is based around the fact that he is a tremendous racquet sports player," Stiffler said. "If you watch him play, defensively, his feet really work in tight spaces. You develop that playing high speed racquet sports. How to read hops, read ball flight, read trajectory. And offensively, his hand-to-eye, bat-to-ball skills, develop through that as well."

Another thing that says everything: He majored in engineering at Notre Dame.

"Extremely bright young man," Stiffler said. "I would tell you that he is an engineer through and through, where he thinks about things, the way he goes about his business. He's very calculated, and he has a plan."

The second impression: He embodies what the Tigers preach.

Penney is extremely versatile defensively — the Tigers drafted him as a shortstop, but he had experience playing second and second base at Notre Dame.

And he has strong bat-to-ball skills. He prides himself on forcing the pitcher to throw strikes and doing damage to the middle of the field.

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When you stack it all together, it seems rather obvious why the Tigers picked him.

“I try not to swing and miss at a lot of pitches,” he said. “And I try not to chase. I kind of know what I'm looking for. I try to pressure the pitcher to throw it in the strike zone.”

Yes, he already talks like a Scott Harris guy.

Before the draft, Penney played 89 innings at third base and 23 innings at shortstop in the Cape Cod League. In 13 games, he hit .271 with six walks and five strikeouts.

“I know that some scouts were happy with my swing or my chase rate and my swing-and-miss ratio, which were good,” he said.

He does not consider himself a home run hitter. But he’s got homer pop — he tied for the Notre Dame team lead with 10 as a sophomore, and he hit nine as a junior.

“I've always kept the same approach, just hit line drives to the shortstop, and hit the fastball as often as I can,” he said. “But for me as a hitter, approach-wise, my swing never really changed. My approach has always been to just hit the ball hard as many times as I can. I've never really been a power guy and hit a lot of home runs. I've always tried to just be a hitter first and throughout the years, I haven't really changed.”

Statically, he didn’t have a great junior year — he had a slow start and ended up hitting .269.

But he walked 39 times, while striking out just 34.

“A little bit of a down year performance-wise, but we've scouting him over past years,” Conner said. “Honestly, it was just one of those years. There's a lot more to him."

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Making the mold

His versatility is intriguing.

"He can play every position on the field," Stiffler said. "Except maybe catcher."

At Notre Dame, he started out as a backup third baseman as a freshman.

“Our third baseman could pitch as well," Penney said. "So he would start at third and close out games, so I went in. That was my first role.”

But he switched to second base when Notre Dame's second baseman dislocated his shoulder.

“So I ended up moving to second," Penney said. "I actually ended up playing more second base than I did third base that year.”

As a sophomore, he started the entire year at third.

"I would tell anybody he was the best third baseman in the country," Stiffler said.

And then he moved to shortstop as a junior.

Bouncing around has given him a strong foundation of versatility.

Not to mention many of the traits the Tigers are looking for.

"The Tigers are getting a great player in Jack," Stiffler said. "He's a great human being."

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If you had to go into a laboratory and create the prototype of what the Tigers emphasize — defensive versatility, athleticism, drive, motivation and a hitter who understands the strike zone — you might just end up with Jack Penney.

Does that guarantee he's going to soar quickly through the system?

Does that guarantee he's going to make it to Detroit?

No.

But it's a pretty good place to start.

Contact Jeff Seidel: jseidel@freepress.com or follow him @seideljeff.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Easy to understand why Detroit Tigers drafted shortstop Jack Penney