Former scout and baseball exec Tony Blengino shares memories from his years of experience participating in the MLB draft. Former exec Jim Bowden will share his own most memorable experiences Tuesday.
The MLB draft is almost upon us!
MLB teams are in the final stages of preparing their respective draft boards in preparation for the draft, which takes place Thursday through Saturday, while high school, junior college and college players around the country hope for the phone call that will change their lives.
I spent the two to three weeks preceding every draft from 2005 through 2012 in the draft rooms of the Brewers and Mariners, the clubs I served in a variety of capacities. A vast array of individuals pour their hearts and souls on a 24/7/365 basis into each club's draft effort. In the final weeks, all the information derived from those efforts -- from scouting reports to video to stats to eye tests to medical information, you name it -- is evaluated as each club hammers out its board.
Eighteen-hour days become the norm and tempers can occasionally flare, as decision-makers are in equal measures passionate about their beliefs, not to mention physically drained. What many on the outside of the process don't always take into consideration is that every draft magnet is in fact a human being, with his own story that led him to the big day.
Here are my four favorite draft stories:
The 47th-rounder
Today, there is no such thing as the 47th round in the MLB Rule 4 (amateur) draft. There's also no such thing as a men's baseball team at the University of Vermont. But both existed in 2004, my second year as the Northeast area scouting supervisor for the Brewers.
That year, I was honored to scout and sign our first-round pick, Mark Rogers, a Maine high-schooler. Much of my spring was spent watching a fairly unique group of high-ceiling New England high school pitchers, including Rogers.
I had also hoped to spend part of my spring watching University of Vermont left-hander Derek Miller pitch. Unfortunately, he had undergone Tommy John surgery the previous year, and as a fourth-year junior, the timing appeared to be quite unfortunate from his perspective.
Derek and I kept in touch regularly regarding his rehabilitation, and I told him to let me know if he would be taking the mound for a bullpen session at any point prior to the draft. I had heard good things about him from many college contacts, including his coach, Bill Currier, and a handful of opposing coaches.
As it happened, Derek was scheduled to throw his first pen at the University of Hartford on the same day I was scheduled to fly to Milwaukee for my individual draft meeting. I found a way to be there, and wrote up a "bare-bones" scouting report on the plane. My hope was that we would draft him late, follow his progress in the spring, and potentially sign him before the 2005 draft, as the draft-and-follow rules in place at the time applied to fourth-year juniors.
Long story short, we popped him on the 47th round, and he fully recovered and had a strong senior season, leading the Catamounts into the America East tournament. I attended the tourney, with the intention of signing him immediately, should the club be eliminated. We controlled his rights only until 10 days prior to the draft; if his club won, we would have to draft him again to be able to sign him.
Miller pitched heroically in his start, but his club then lost a long extra-inning affair to be eliminated, a game in which he actually served as a DH for the first time that season. There were mixed emotions after the game; the club had never been to the NCAA tournament, and each player was heartbroken. The silver lining for Derek was that he signed with the Brewers after the game.
He appeared to be on track to reach the majors, striking out 288 hitters in 302 combined innings in 2006 and '07, then suffered a major shoulder injury that ended his pitching career the following season. I still have his draft magnet on my refrigerator. Oh, and there's a happy note about Coach Currier as well: This weekend, he finally made his first NCAA tournament, as the head coach of Fairfield University.
The phone call
After I signed Derek, I flew directly from Burlington, Vermont, to Milwaukee for the remainder of draft meetings. It was an exciting process that culminated in our selection of Ryan Braun with the fifth selection in a historically loaded first round.
It was a very strong year in my home state of New Jersey; I signed our 18th-round draft-and-follow pick from the previous season, Darren Ford, and we used that 18th round once again for a draft-and-follow selection in lefty Zach Braddock. Eight rounds earlier, we were slated for the fifth pick in the 10th round, and were planning to select another New Jersey product, high school lefty Steve Garrison.
I had spoken to Steve and his family earlier that morning to make sure both player and club were financially compatible. We were, and I relayed my boss' indication that we would take him between Rounds 6 and 10. Well, four picks away from our turn in Round 10, the phone rang.
Apparently other clubs were calling Steve and hinting at the potential for more dollars later in the draft. The family wasn't sure how to proceed. All I could draw upon was our relationship; we were going to draft Steve, and our money was real; he'd just have to trust us. They did, and we did. Ironically, Steve's MLB career consisted of just two batters faced, as a Yankee, versus my new employer, the Mariners in 2011. He retired them both, and I couldn't have been happier.
I flew to New Jersey to sign Garrison, and then, oh yeah, had to fly to Burlington to retrieve my car. Yup, I had taken a one-way ticket to Burlington. Sounds like a country song.
Oh, and we drafted another pitcher with New Jersey ties in that draft ...
The one that got away
It isn't every day that you get to scout someone who went to the same high school you did, but that was the exact scenario I encountered with Wagner right-hander Andrew Bailey, like myself a proud graduate of Paul VI High School in Haddon Township, New Jersey, 15 minutes from Philadelphia.
Wagner, a burly righty with a mid-90s fastball and power slider, looked to be a sure bet to go in the third or fourth round until he tore his UCL (ulnar collateral ligament) late in the season, which required Tommy John surgery. I was still very interested in drafting him, and we (the Brewers) invested a 16th-round selection in him in 2005, hoping he would elect to rehab his elbow under our supervision.
We retained Andrew's rights until the second he attended a class in the fall semester. The two sides were never far apart financially, and I was very hopeful that an increase in our offer would eventually be authorized. My hopes dimmed a bit as he was extended a medical redshirt season, enhancing his leverage, and we spent uncharacteristically heavily on the international front that year, decreasing our available resources.
Bottom line, Andrew attended class, went back into the draft, was healthy and pitching well by May, and was selected by the A's in the sixth round in 2006. He punched his own ticket from there, rising quickly to the big leagues, and making a pair of All-Star teams. He's still at it, pitching for his hometown Phillies.
The sandwich pick
In 2010, I was with a new club, the Mariners, in a new role, special assistant to the GM. Among my many responsibilities, the draft was perhaps the foremost. We did not have a first-rounder that year, due to our signing of Chone Figgins as a free agent. We did, however, have a sandwich pick, 46th overall, as compensation for the loss of free agent Adrian Beltre.
When you don't pick until that deep in the draft, there are a number of players you almost don't even have to worry about scouting. We did our due diligence but little more on Bryce Harper, Manny Machado and others that spring, knowing they would be long gone by the time we were on the clock.
There were a pair of high school righties from Southern California -- Aaron Sanchez and Taijuan Walker -- that we really liked, and we felt pretty strongly that we liked them more than the industry as a whole. We hoped that one of the two would be sitting there at No. 43.
There was a group of college hurlers that were consensus clear first-rounders, including Drew Pomeranz, Matt Harvey, Chris Sale and Asher Wojciechowski, among others. If one of those guys somehow fell to us, we would have to consider them. Pomeranz, Harvey and Sale were all gone by pick 13, but pick after pick after pick went by and Wojciechowski, considered a first-round lock for most of the spring, remained.
We established contact with our area scout in the Carolinas to make sure that the righty from The Citadel was healthy and that there were no last-minute financial demands. There were none. On the draft conference call, you could tangibly detect the uncertainty in a number of draft rooms, confronted with the availability of a player they had previously thought unattainable.
At No. 34, the Blue Jays took Sanchez, and at No. 41, two picks ahead of us, they also took Wojciechowski. We sweated out pick No. 42, and then Walker was ours.
Each pick, each player has an individual backstory like the ones listed above. Draft day at the same time represents the culmination of one dream, and the beginning of a new one. So much hard work goes into simply being selected, but the reality is that a few days after signing, you're in a nearly empty ballpark, at the lowest rung of a ladder that is exceedingly difficult to climb.
As we all enjoy this week's proceedings, bear in mind these realities. Many of us have been there, starting our own careers, and possibly watching our own kids do the same. The young adults drafted this week are no different; sure, they're playing a game, and a choice few will haul down large sums of cash to do so, but they all have their own, unique story to tell. They all deserve our respect and support.