Just because Thomas McCarthy was named first-team All SEC at third base as a junior last season and finished fourth in the league with a .581 slugging percentage, and just because he was given first-team preseason honors at third in 2012—none of it has added up to satisfaction or its fatal byproduct, complacency.

A handful of events have given extended meaning to the senior in his second of two seasons at Kentucky before facing the Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft in June.

As is with any junior in college baseball—particularly those with stats as gaudy and talent as obvious, if not a bit green, as McCarthy—senior seasons don’t always come to pass. Amateurs are automatically entered in MLB’s draft right out of high school. The next time a player that either doesn’t sign or isn’t drafted is eligible is after his junior season if he goes to a four-year college. If a junior is drafted and elects not to sign or isn’t drafted, he’ll go back for his senior season and give it another go.

Despite all of his accolades, McCarthy was not drafted in 2011. Not in the draft’s 50 rounds or its 1,530 picks.

“I was a little disappointed, obviously, because that’s obviously a goal of mine,” said McCarthy, who has been eligible for the draft on three occasions—out of high school, after his sophomore season at the junior college Feather River, and last year—and has yet to be selected. “But I knew defensively I wasn’t where I needed to be, and I’ve been working with Coach (Brian) Green to work on my defensive abilities. I’m excited to show everybody what I can do on defense this year.”

McCarthy said he’ll use not being drafted as motivation to keep improving, especially defensively—which he said he feels is his primary weakness—throughout his senior year to get drafted, yes, but his primary goal is a bit more immediate. He wants to get UK back into postseason play.

The Cats finished last season 25-30, including an 8-22 record in league play that pegged them second-to-last in the league’s standings and six games out of the conference tournament’s final berth.

Head coach Gary Henderson said McCarthy’s thirst for postseason play is a quality that reminds the fourth-year coach of some of his former stars.

“If you have the right personality with that skill, then it starts to rub off on other people,” Henderson said. “To me, that was a huge part of the different in Sawyer (Carroll) between ’07 and ’08—it was having Collin (Cowgill) come back. He had that personality that he meshed with and he hung out with and he grew with. I’ve always felt that way about that relationship.

“Thomas McCarthy has an infectious relationship with the other kids on the club. They like him, he’s a leadership-by-example guy. He keeps things loose.”

Henderson’s comparisons of McCarthy to Carroll and Cowgill, who were both first-team All-Americans for UK in 2008, are apt because the two former Cats spent part of the offseason training in Lexington with McCarthy.

Cowgill made his major-league debut last season with Arizona and was traded to the Oakland Athletics in December. Carroll spent 2011 playing for the San Antonio Missions, the San Diego Padres’ AA team, for the second year in a row.

From working out with the two pros, McCarthy said he learned to emulate each in the way they work out and approach each day, even in the offseason.

“Collin just got called up and he still comes to the field every day like he has something to prove,” McCarthy said. “Coming from a college athlete, you understand that you have to bring it every day.”

McCarthy’s first three games of the season last weekend suggested that the senior’s offseason training worked well. In 14 plate appearances over the weekend, he’s already picked up a home run, a double, four runs and three walks.

McCarthy hopes when June rolls around and 30 major-league teams try to fill 50 rounds’ worth of draft picks with names, his name will pop up. Until then, he said he won’t be satisfied or complacent.

I keep thinking about that, obviously,” McCarthy said of not being drafted last year. “But I’m more excited to hopefully make postseason this year. I’m just more excited for this season, and then we’ll see what happens after.”