Central College shortstop Garrett Saunders of Bonaparte is making the leap to professional baseball. Saunders signed a free-agent contract Saturday with the Atlanta Braves and has been assigned to Danville (Virginia), the club’s rookie-level Class A affiliate in the Appalachian League. The short-season team opened its 2019 campaign at home last Wednesday. This spring, Saunders started all 40 games for the Dutch, hitting a team-high .361 with 53 hits, including four triples and three home runs, as well as 34 runs and 25 RBIs. He’s Central’s all-time doubles leader with 48 and ranks second in career hits with 211. He helped the Dutch compile a 24-16 season record. Saunders also caught some attention away from campus. He was among a handful of NCAA Division III players to compete for the last two summers in the Northwoods League, a summer wood bat league for elite college players. Saunders had a strong showing for the league’s Thunder Bay Border Cats. He was then invited by the Braves to a pre-draft showcase in Cedar Rapids in May. Saunders graduated from Central last month with a biology major and a lofty 3.89 grade point average. A two-time Google Cloud CoSIDA Academic All-District selection, he’s hoping to attend medical school in a year but has put those plans on hold while he pursues his baseball dreams.