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Inside The Draft Room: The 2009 Angels

By Chuck Wasserstrom | April 26, 2017 at 1:51pm CDT

The way things are shaping up, the 2009 Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim draft would have to be considered a good one even if the 25th pick belonged to somebody else. When three starting pitchers (including two southpaws) and a power-hitting position player reach and produce at the major league level, it makes for a nice haul.

The team’s first selection, Randal Grichuk, is now a starting outfielder for the Cardinals – and is coming off a 24-homer season as a 24-year-old.

Supplemental first-rounders Tyler Skaggs and Garrett Richards were members of the Angels’ season-opening starting rotation. Second-round pick Patrick Corbin is the Diamondbacks’ No. 2 starter.

But then, of course, there is the matter of the Angels having the 25th pick that year. And you can very easily picture Commissioner Bud Selig walking to the podium and making his announcement: “With the 25th selection in the first round of the 2009 First-Year Player Draft, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim select Michael Trout.”

“I’ve never seen a team walk out of a draft and think they had a bad draft,” said Eddie Bane, the Angels’ scouting director from 2004-2010 and now a special assignment scout for the Boston Red Sox. “Everybody thinks that their draft was the greatest of all-time every year. Sure, we were guilty of the same thing. I don’t know if guilty is the right word; you just love scouting so much that you think the players you picked are just awesome. That’s the way it works. You think you’re going to help stack the organization; that’s the way everybody thinks. But we actually did. It’s kind of a rarity.”

In 2008, the Angels won a major league-best 100 games and went to the postseason for the fifth time in seven years.

Success on the field was mirrored by the Angels’ frequent forays into free agency, which directly impacted the team’s amateur draft capabilities. Over their previous five drafts, the team gave up seven high-round picks as free agent compensation, losing either a first- or second-round pick every year.

The 2009 draft, from that standpoint, was no different; the Angels surrendered their own No. 1 (No. 32 overall) as compensation for the signing of free agent closer Brian Fuentes.

However, the Angels lost several key players to free agency – closer Francisco Rodriguez (to the Mets), first baseman Mark Teixeira (to the Yankees) and starting pitcher Jon Garland (to the Diamondbacks). Lo and behold, the team had a glut of high-round picks – back-to-back at 24-25, followed swiftly by supplemental selections at 40, 42 and 48.

(Have you forgotten how the old Type A/Type B free agent compensation system worked? Take a trip down memory lane.)

“I started with the Angels in 2004, and we had a pick at 12 and got Jered Weaver. But other than that, we never had anything in the first 25 because we were pretty good and we were more in the shopping business,” said Bane – a no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is type whose previous Angels drafts included the selection of future big leaguers Weaver, Nick Adenhart, Mark Trumbo, Peter Bourjos, Hank Conger, Jordan Walden, Tyler Chatwood and Will Smith. “We never thought once about not having a really high pick; that was normal. So we were really excited because we had five picks. We thought that was awesome.”

If you recall, 2009 was the “Year of Strasburg.” The chances of Stephen Strasburg getting past Washington and falling all the way to No. 2 in the draft were largely nonexistent.

“I saw him pitch one time for about 2.0 innings and said, ‘This is a waste of time,’” Bane recalled. “I told the area scout to just make sure he does a good job on Strasburg’s makeup and everything else. You don’t spend a lot of time on Stephen Strasburg when you’re picking 24-25.”

Bane started ruling out others he knew would be gone by the middle of the first round and started focusing on players who he thought could be there for him. One player he was immediately drawn to was a prep outfielder out of Lamar Consolidated High School in Rosenberg, Texas, named Randal Grichuk.

“Jeff Malinoff, one of my national cross-checkers who was as good of a hitting scouting guy as there’s ever been … he loved Randal, as did Kevin Ham, the area scout,” Bane said. “Randal could hit his home runs a long way to right-center and left-center. Obvious power. Good athlete. All that stuff. We thought there would be a chance that he would get there.

“It’s hard to describe to people the excitement you get when you see somebody that not every scout loves, and you see the passion they have for the game, and you file that away. I still remember batting practice; I was there with Jeff, and Randal was hitting rockets out to right-center. With Randal, the body has improved with maturity, but it’s not dramatically different than he was in high school. He was a strong, good athlete that could go get a ball in centerfield. His arm was fine. To me, he looked like a lock first rounder. That’s when you start thinking immediately, ‘Well, he won’t be there when we pick’ – because you think other teams see it exactly the way you do. Fortunately, they don’t.”

And then, of course, there was another prep outfielder that Bane locked in on – this one out of Millville Senior High School in New Jersey. Two MVP seasons and three MVP runner-up campaigns later, it’s still hard to believe that Mike Trout would be available that deep in the draft.

– – –

“The first time I ever talked to (area scout) Greg Morhardt about him, he told me, ‘I got a guy in Jersey for next year’s draft who’s going to go into the Hall of Fame,’ and I started laughing,” Bane said. “I don’t know how many times I’ve heard that kind of statement from mostly parents. Usually, it’s not from a scout. But that’s what Mo said. I laughed about it, but I made sure to remember the name.”

Morhardt, whose territory included New Jersey, New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, was a former minor league first baseman/outfielder. For three years (1984-1986), one of his teammates with Minnesota’s Orlando affiliate in the Double-A Southern League was Jeff Trout – an infielder and future dad of Mike (who was born in 1991).

“Sometimes you have to listen to what people say … all the time, I guess, but then you usually filter it out,” Bane said. “I couldn’t be biased because it was some former player’s kid, and I couldn’t have a bias because the scout knows the guy – and he’s looking at the kid through rose-colored glasses. I had to be aware of that.”

In other words, the relationship between Morhardt and the Trouts could have skewed the scout’s judgement and reports. Bane had to go in with an open mind and witness the same things his area scout was seeing. He did … and then some.

“I go to his high school game with Jeff Malinoff,” he said, “and the kids are working hard and everything, but there’s not a lot of great players on the field. Obviously, you know which one is Mike Trout. They take batting practice, and he was killing balls. They took infield, so you were aware of his instincts out in center.

“The game starts, and this is the part that’s hard for people to believe. He pops up a ball to left-center and runs as hard as he can and ends up at third with a triple because they couldn’t catch it. You mark that down. He had a couple other at-bats, a couple more hits, and then around the fifth inning, I grabbed Malinoff and said, ‘Let’s go.’

“He looked at me like, ‘Oh no. What?’ And I got in the car and told Jeff, ‘If that guy’s there when we’re picking, we’re taking him.’ He said, ‘What went on that I didn’t see?’ And I said, ‘There’s something about this guy.’

“I wanted to learn more about him, so I called up (Morhardt) and told him to set up a dinner with me and the Trout family. He did, and maybe 10-15 days later, we had dinner at some colonial restaurant right outside out of Millville. The dinner was the best dinner impression I ever had as an amateur scout. The mom, Debbie, was incredible. Jeff fooled around with Mike like Mike was nothing special to them. And Mike, you could tell there was a lot of love at that table between those guys; they goofed around on each other and kidded with each other. It was the most impressive thing I saw out of Mike before the draft … the way he interacted with his mother and father.

“When I left the restaurant, I was pumped.”

– – –

Draft day … June 9, 2009.

Heading into the day, it was likely that Grichuk would be there when it was the Angels’ time to pick. But would Trout make it past 23 spots? Only a couple trusted higher-level scouts knew Bane’s pipe-dream scenario of landing both Trout and Grichuk.

“I tried to keep it inward as much as I could; Jeff (Malinoff) and (national cross-checker) Ric (Wilson) knew what I wanted to do,” Bane said. “I was kind of paranoid, and I didn’t want a text message going out to somebody saying ‘Hey, the Angels are looking at two high school outfielders in a row.’ Somebody would know who they were. That’s the paranoid part of having that job.”

Bane didn’t care about taking high school guys back-to-back. There is certainly risk in drafting high school players in the first round, and none of the prep position players taken before Grichuk and Trout that day (No. 3 Donavan Tate, San Diego; No. 16 Bobby Borchering, Arizona; No. 21 Jiovanni Mier, Houston) has seen a day of major league action.

“Now, I’ve read a lot of stuff … people saying, ‘How in the world did they take two high school outfielders in a row?’ That was never the way I looked at it,” Bane said. “I just wanted to take the best guy. You have to be blessed to get them to the big leagues. Forget about whether they’re high school outfielders or college shortstops or whatever else. You’ve got to be really blessed to get them there.”

Bane admits he was sweating it out, saying that “a lot of it played out nicely for us. Guys who liked Mike took other guys.

“I’ve read where we had Trout ranked seventh or 10th on our (preference) list – and that may have been on the board – but like I’ve said about being paranoid, I know where he was on my own personal pref list, and that was second behind Strasburg.

“But the only other team that had him ranked anywhere near that high – at least that I could find out – was the Yankees. Damon Oppenheimer told me after the draft that Mike had come into Yankee Stadium and had maybe the best workout that they’d ever seen. But they were picking after us, and they had no chance.

“I worried about Oakland; (scouting director) Eric Kubota did a great job on him. I worried about the Diamondbacks – because they had two picks (at 16-17).”

But after 23 selections, the two high school outfielders were still available. The Angels were on the clock.

– – –

Ask for an explanation of how Trout could still be available after 23 picks, and what you get sounds like a bunch of excuses:

  • The weather is too unpredictable, so it’s too hard for scouts to plan trips.
  • The weather is too cold and wet, so the player’s body of work is limited compared to players in other parts of the country.
  • Pitchers from the northeast have historically done OK in pro ball, but position players have not.
  • Due to shorter seasons, some teams don’t scout the area with any regularity.

To a scouting director, those aren’t excuses. They’re realities of the job.

“When you fly up to the northeast in late March or early April, there’s a really good chance that you’ll get snowed out and there’s a really good chance you’re wasting a couple days – whereas you can be in a high school tournament in California and see three games,” Bane said. “If you look at it that way, I can see it.

“But that didn’t come into play for us. You really need to include the entire field and not have an age bias or a regional bias. There had been a kid a few years before that named Billy Rowell, who Baltimore took in the first round, and he kind of washed out. So I think there were several teams that said they wouldn’t go back to the northeast because of that.

“There were teams that didn’t cross-check Mike. The weather … they got rained out this day … they got snowed out that day. Some people don’t understand it, but I understand it. It’s 4 a.m. wakeup calls every day for two months. And unless you really stick your nose to the grind stone, it’s hard to do that every day.”

– – –

While Trout was there for the Angels to select at No. 24, he also was there for them at No. 25. The first name they called was Randal Grichuk. And there’s a backstory.

“You really want to know why he went first? I’ve heard a lot of different stories, but I think I would know,” Bane said. “This is no knock on Randal. We wanted Randal bad.

“Craig Landis – the agent for Mike Trout – called me about a week before the draft and said ‘Mike’s signability has changed.’ And I said, ‘Well, no it hasn’t. I just talked to Jeff (Trout). He’s going to sign for slot.’ I checked with Greg Morhardt after that conversation, too. He said Trout would sign for slot.

“But the rest of the phone conversation with Landis, it was, ‘You need to call Jeff Trout.’ And I said, ‘No I don’t. I know what his signability is.’ He got a little perturbed. He said things had changed. I said, ‘No, I know what they told me. I think these are some of the best people I’ve been around. So if we want to take him, we’re going to take him.’

“I imagine I frustrated Landis a little bit there – and I’m petty. When we knew we were going to get both of them, I thought about the phone call – and we took Randal first.

“(Agents) can always dictate a lot of things, but the one dictate we have on them is that we can draft whoever we want.”

The moral of the story is … know your player, his makeup, his background.

“I knew Mike, and Mike wanted to play baseball and literally prove to everybody that he was the best player in baseball,” continued Bane. “About 10-to-12 days after the draft, Jeff (Trout) either got ahold of me or (Morhardt) and said ‘Will you get this kid out of my house? He’s driving me crazy.’ I reminded him, ‘The number is slot,’ and he said ‘That’s good. Let’s go.’

“The family flew out to Anaheim, and we signed him. He worked out at Angels Stadium, and he was hitting balls that the major league guys weren’t hitting in batting practice. At the time, he was 17. That’s when I knew that maybe we really did get something here.”

– – –

For Bane, his best-laid plans continued to come to life that June afternoon.

As if landing both Grichuk and Trout wasn’t enough, his plans were coming to fruition for the Angels’ supplemental selections at 40 and 42.

“Like I’ve told people – and they have a hard time believing me – we would have been happy getting Garrett Richards with our first pick. We didn’t think he’d be there,” Bane said. “And there’s a story about why we took (Tyler) over Richards, too. It’s kind of unique and really fun – because a lot of things come into play.”

Richards was a college hurler for the University of Oklahoma. Skaggs was a prep left-hander out of Santa Monica (Calif.) High School.

“I never wanted to tell an agent something that wasn’t going to happen,” Bane said. “Garrett Richards’ agent got ahold of me sometime after we had picked Randal and Mike; this had to be somewhere around the 35th pick. He said to me, ‘Are you guys going to take Richards at 40?’ I said, ‘If he’s there, we’re taking him.’

“At 41, the Diamondbacks had a pick. And right after that phone call, we got word that the Diamondbacks were going to take Skaggs at 41. Once we got wind of it, I basically had not told the truth to the agent. So we took Skaggs first and hoped (the Diamondbacks) didn’t take Richards at 41. Then we got both of them.”

As it turns out, Bane’s information was correct. The Diamondbacks were indeed planning on selecting Skaggs; when the left-hander was not available to them, they chose high school shortstop Chris Owings – and Richards became an Angel.

“(West Coast supervisor) Bo Hughes and (area scout) Bobby DeJardin had a lot to do with Tyler Skaggs,” Bane said “When I first went in to see Tyler pitch, I saw a lot of his stuff, but I said, ‘That’s a fourth rounder.’ He was throwing a slow curveball that was just not very good at all.

“But Bo was adamant. So I went back in, and Skaggs threw a tighter breaking ball. I asked, ‘What’s the story?’ Well, he had two breaking balls – and he thought the slow one was really good. We eventually got him to Angels Stadium to work out before the draft, and Mike Butcher – our outstanding big league pitching coach – was there. We’re watching Skaggs throw his bullpen, and we started talking to him. We said, ‘You’ve got two breaking balls, right?’ He said, ‘I’ve got this smaller, slider-type one, but the good one is my really slow curve.’ Butcher and I both said to him, ‘No, it’s not. The slow curve is really good for high school hitters, but it ain’t gonna work against these guys.’

“Skaggs was lights out the next time I saw him. So the chance to get a high school left-hander from Southern California that had that kind of angle, that kind of height, that kind of everything was a no-brainer.

“With Garrett, Arnold Brathwaite – our area scout in Oklahoma – kept coming up with reasons for me not to see Garrett Richards. ‘He’s not going to pitch this weekend … He’s pitching on Wednesday and I know you’re going to be somewhere else.’

“Garrett didn’t pitch on the weekends for Oklahoma; he was their Tuesday or Wednesday pitcher. I think he had a 6.00 ERA at Oklahoma his eligibility year. So I finally went in to see him during the Big 12 Tournament. I went down to the bullpen to watch him warm up, and it was just lights out. But the coaches were saying, ‘You’ve got to do it today. This is your day. Let’s go.’ You don’t see anyone get on a guy in the bullpen; they usually let a guy get prepared on his own in the pen.

“Garrett comes out to pitch, and he was throwing 97 MPH. There were about 30 scouts at the game, and one scout later told me that after two-or-three innings, I got up and said, ‘I don’t know what you guys are doing here. If he’s there, we’re going to take him.’

“I did stuff like that a lot. But I was setting the bait a little bit. This guy, on our grading scale, both of his breaking balls that day were a 70 and his fastball was an 80. He was just blowing away hitters. But he wasn’t doing that the whole year. Look up his numbers; he did not have a very good year, but he had a great day the day I was there.

“Walking away from that, you got a college pitcher that hasn’t had a lot of success, but has tremendous stuff.”

The Angels had a third supplemental pick at No. 48, selecting Eastern Illinois University left-hander Tyler Kehrer. “Wonderful guy. Good worker. But injuries really suck, and that really hurt him,” Bane said. “I thought we had really stole one there.” In selecting Kehrer, Bane missed out on a local kid named Nolan Arenado – who was chosen by Colorado at No. 59.

“Nolan Arenado is the one I kick myself on,” Bane said about the third baseman, who grew up around 20 miles from Anaheim. “They say it was one of the best drafts ever, but it would have been solidified if we had taken Nolan.

“The reason Arenado bothers me is that he was a Southern California kid, and we wanted to dominate Southern California. We felt like we had the opportunity because we had a Wednesday night scout team that Steve Hernandez runs, and it was room service for us. You’d go out there and there would be Mark Trumbo and Tyler Chatwood and Hank Conger. All of those guys played at Angels Stadium every Wednesday night – and you could just pick their brain. All these kind of guys like Arenado would come out and throw an inning, or play four or five innings for us, or take infield. You talk about room service; that was perfect.”

After five picks from 24-48, Bane had a little bit of a breather before the Angels’ next selection – the final pick of the second round (No. 80).

He then had one of those conversations where … you just had to be there.

“I get a break after the first round,” he said, “and I go into the restroom at the Anaheim Marriott. (Area scout) Tom Kotchman was famous for always having my ear on stuff; it really bugged some guys that Kotchman had my ear. But to me, he was Tom Kotchman – he drafts and signs big leaguers – so I’m going to pay attention.

“I’m doing my business at the urinal, and Kotch walks in. He’s at the urinal next to me and he whispers ‘Pat Corbin.’ I said, ‘What?’ And he says, ‘Patrick Corbin, left-handed pitcher.’ I said, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve talked about him. He’s going to be a good pick in a couple rounds. We’ll get him in the fifth round or something.’ And Kotch says, ‘If you don’t get him with our next pick, Atlanta’s taking him.’”

Let it be noted that the Braves did not have a second-round selection; their next pick wasn’t far after the Angels – in the third round at No. 87.

“So I go back into the draft room and quietly grabbed his file,” Bane said. “Before our pick, I gave the name to my assistant, Kathy Mair – who was the best, ever – and she says, ‘The Angels select Patrick Corbin, a left-handed pitcher from Chipola College.’ Some of the guys in the room looked at me like ‘What the hell. Where did that come from?’ Then they realized it was a Kotchman guy, so they quietly got pissed instead of doing it out loud.

“Kotch knew if there was any place that was going to be private, it was in the restroom of the Marriott Suites in Anaheim.”

– – –

On July 8, 2011, only 25 months after being drafted out of high school, Trout made his major league debut. The legend of Mike Trout was about to begin, but Bane was no longer a member of the Angels’ organization; his contract was not renewed after the 2010 season. Such is life in the big leagues.

Grichuk took a slower road to the majors – a fairly normal route for a high school kid, progressing level-by-level. He was traded to St. Louis with outfielder Peter Bourjos for third baseman David Freese and pitcher Fernando Salas in December 2013 – and made his major league debut the following April. Heading into this season, the only first-rounders from that June with more big league homers were Trout and Seattle’s Dustin Ackley – the second overall pick.

Corbin and Skaggs were traded to Arizona as part of a trade deadline deal involving Dan Haren just one year after being drafted (Skaggs was later reacquired by the Angels as part of a three-team deal in December 2013). Both southpaws made their big league debuts in 2012, and Corbin was a National League all-star in 2013.

Richards has had right arm issues the past two years – and is currently on the 60-day disabled list with a biceps strain. Prior to that, he was a combined 28-16 with a 3.18 ERA in 58 starts during the 2014-2015 campaigns.

“You think you really got them. You think you’re really great. Then you start thinking about it,” said Bane, as he reflected about being able to draft the players he was targeting that June. “You say to yourself, ‘What does the industry know about this guy that we don’t know?’ But you have to get past that. You have to trust your own scouts and your own instincts and everything else. And I think we were really good at not following the industry. We paid attention to the industry; we just didn’t follow whatever was conventional.

“We had no idea that all these guys were going to turn out like they did. Obviously, the bell cow was Mike. Getting four ‘plus’ major leaguers and one superstar out of the deal … that’s pretty good.”

– – –

Click here to read other entries in MLBTR’s “Inside the Draft Room” series.

Chuck Wasserstrom spent 25 years in the Chicago Cubs’ front office – 16 in Media Relations and nine in Baseball Operations. Now a freelance writer, his behind-the-scenes stories of his time in a big league front office can be found on www.chuckblogerstrom.com.

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Inside The Draft Room Los Angeles Angels MLBTR Originals

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Inside The Draft Room: The 2005 Red Sox

By Chuck Wasserstrom | April 10, 2017 at 10:38am CDT

Put on a scouting director hat and ask yourself this question: Do you want your team to do poorly so you can have the maximum number of opportunities to select a premium draft pick, or do you want your team to win – knowing all the supposed “top of the line” talent will already have been taken?

The question is purely rhetorical. For the person directing the draft and all the scouts out scouring for talent in the smallest of towns, the ring is the thing.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t win and have fun on the scouting side, too.

In 2004, the Boston Red Sox – down 3 games to 0 in the American League Championship Series against the New York Yankees – rallied to win their final eight postseason games in eliminating the Yankees and sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals. In the process, they won their first World Series since 1918.

On paper, if no free agents switched clubs, the Red Sox would have picked 28th overall in the ensuing 2005 amateur draft – with a second pick coming in at No. 58. But baseball isn’t played on paper. After the annual free agent signing frenzy, the world champs lost Orlando Cabrera, Derek Lowe and Pedro Martinez, and now – thanks to compensation selections and supplemental picks – found themselves with six draft choices from No. 23 to No. 57.

So … to the victors did go the spoils.

Oh, there’s just one thing. They were about to restock with a first-time scouting director.

– – –

In November 2002, Theo Epstein – just 28 years of age at the time – was named general manager of the Red Sox. Earlier that year, he had joined the organization as the assistant GM after coming over from the San Diego Padres.

During his time in San Diego, Epstein struck up a friendship with Jason McLeod, a former minor league pitcher who began his Padres career as a Community Relations intern in 1994 – before moving over to Stadium Operations that winter and to the Baseball Operations Department in the fall of 1995 (Epstein had joined the team earlier that year). McLeod’s time with the Padres later included three years as a minor league coach, a return to the front office as the assistant director of scouting and player development, and two years as an area scout in Southern California.

Epstein brought McLeod to Boston as an associate scouting director in the fall of 2003, assisting David Chadd. After the Red Sox won the 2004 Fall Classic, Chadd moved on to Detroit to become the Tigers’ vice president of amateur scouting – and McLeod was promoted into the scouting leadership position. Epstein wasn’t concerned about inserting his former Padres cohort into that role despite McLeod’s relative lack of experience in the draft room.

“Jason and I grew up together in the Padres organization,” Epstein said in an email, “so I knew he could really evaluate and was a great leader.

“It was a seamless transition because Jason had worked with us in 2004. The entire organization was focused on the draft with all the picks we had, and Jason did a great job as always leading the department. We had a lot of fun all scouting season and in the draft meetings.”

McLeod acknowledges that he didn’t have a boatload of experience from a draft-day perspective when he took over.

“In ’04, I was instilling and re-doing the processes of it,” McLeod says. “David was absolutely the scouting director; he was pounding it out on the road. But from the front office side of things, we were kind of co-directing that department that year.

“During my time in San Diego, I had sat in on many draft meetings, but I hadn’t been in the director’s seat or calling the shots or instituting processes or things like that until I got to Boston.”

The Red Sox had broken the curse. Now, just a few months later at their January scouting meetings, McLeod was presiding over the group and putting a game plan into place.

“There was a lot of excitement, obviously, coming off the World Series year,” he says. “For those of us in amateur scouting, we were just as excited knowing that we had two first-round picks and three sandwich picks. We felt that we were going to get a couple impact players with the volume of picks that we had. And coming out of the prior summer – after scouting the Cape, scouting the Team USA juniors – we knew that it was going to be a really good draft.

“We told our guys, ‘Let’s get after it and go crush it and find as much impact and upside as we can.’”

– – –

The top tier of the 2005 draft was considered to be very deep, and the results continue to speak for themselves.

Eight of the first 12 selections have appeared in the All-Star Game. Five of the first seven – Justin Upton, Alex Gordon, Ryan Zimmerman, Ryan Braun and Troy Tulowitzki – have career WAR above 25.0.

The Red Sox knew they had no chance of landing any of those five – or high school outfielders/future all-stars Andrew McCutchen and Jay Bruce, who went 11-12. But there was still a lot of talent out there to be had. Boston had the No. 23 and No. 26 selections in the first round – along with the Nos. 42, 45 and 47 slots in the supplemental round. The team’s second-round pick was No. 57 overall.

The key was to be prepared for anything and everything. Back in 2005, the draft was conducted via a conference call – and there was very little time between picks.

“At that time, we did a lot of mock drafts,” explains McLeod, who is now the Cubs’ senior vice president of scouting/player development. “We would run a mock draft where different scenarios were happening. I think at that time we maybe had 30 seconds before the next pick. So we ran a lot of simulations in the room. Theo liked to try to set up scenarios where … there were 12 of us in the room, and he’d set up scenarios and go worst case. I’m sitting there watching the board, and he’d set it up and say, ‘Now this guy and that guy are gone. Where are you going here?’ And he put you on a timeclock. We probably did that about five or six different times where we ran those simulations.

“We felt good about the information that we had. We felt good about the performance metrics we were looking at, and about how we had the board stacked. So at that point, let’s run the simulations. ‘Now, he’s gone. Now these two guys are gone.’ We also ran some where we knew there would be no way the board would fall that way, but if it all blew up, ‘Now where are you going? Why are you doing that?’ So you do those things prior to draft day. You trust the process and you trust the preparation.

“At the same time, just like every draft year … as the pick is getting close, there is some anxiety and anticipation that you feel. But again, you just trust your process. You do all the work to be prepared for every situation.”

– – –

By draft day, the Red Sox had narrowed their focus to three collegians for the No. 23 selection – Oregon State outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury, Arizona outfielder Trevor Crowe and Texas A&M shortstop Cliff Pennington.

“We spent so much time talking about those three players in particular, because we were really hopeful that one of them got to us,” McLeod said. “We spent an inordinate amount of time in the weeks leading up to the draft meetings on them. We kept stacking them and stacking them and talking about their strengths and weaknesses.

Jacoby Ellsbury | Ron Vesely/Getty Images

“The funny thing about Jacoby … that year, he had such a great year, and I saw four or five of his games – and he probably had his worst games when I was there. I actually took Theo to a game at the University of Washington when the Red Sox were in Seattle. Of course, Jacoby’s first two at-bats, he was 0-for-2 – and Theo was like, ‘Jason, you’re not allowed to watch his next at-bat. You’re bad luck. Please, turn around or something.’ So I literally turned around and heard the crack of the bat; I turned back and the ball was in the gap. Theo and I are standing down the third-base line, and I remember watching this kid round second turning on the afterburners as he’s coming into third. It was just something. You watch a lot of games and see a lot of fast guys, but then you see stuff that makes you say ‘Wow.’ That was one of those moments, just watching this guy fly around the bases. So I knew I wasn’t totally bad luck. I was in the ballpark. I didn’t see the contact, but at least I heard it.

“I literally saw him go 2-for-15 in a year that he hit over .400 and had an on-base of almost .500. But our scouts were so convicted on him – from the area guy (John Booher) to the regional guy (West Coast cross-checker Fred Peterson) to our national cross-checker (Dave Finley). They were all like, ‘This is our guy. This is it.’

“He was already doing the things that we were looking for … the ability to get on base … the fact that he was an outstanding athlete who was going to play in center field … he had a low K (strikeout) rate. My question was just going to be the strength. I remember seeing him in the Cape, and I was worried a little bit about how the ball was going to come off the bat.

“But there’s a really good story from that year. Oregon State was down at the University of San Diego, and it was one of the only days in the history of the University of San Diego that they actually had a rainout. San Diego’s coach, Rich Hill – who we had a really good relationship with – was gracious enough to let us work out Jacoby. So a couple of our scouts got to see him hit in the cage. Then they took him up to the Jenny Craig Pavilion, and there’s Jacoby Ellsbury throwing down gorilla dunks for our scouts – showing them his explosiveness and his athleticism. I wasn’t at that workout, but our cross-checker just called me and was blown away with the explosiveness in Jacoby’s body. He was like, ‘You will not believe what Jacoby just did.’

“If you looked at his performance, all the makeup we got on him, the fact that we felt that he was going to be ultra-disruptive on the bases … we thought he was going to be a shutdown center fielder. All of that aligned with someone that we absolutely wanted to bring into the organization. That’s why we liked Pennington. That’s why we liked Crowe. They were all these dynamic athletes that played in the middle of the field.”

Crowe went No. 14 to Cleveland. Pennington was chosen at No. 21 by Oakland. The Marlins, drafting after the Athletics and before the Red Sox, selected high school second baseman Aaron Thompson – and Ellsbury was Boston-bound.

McLeod literally had about 30 seconds to breathe. Houston was on the clock (selecting Brian Bogusevic), then came Minnesota (Matt Garza). It was now time to make another decision.

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– – –

In the days and weeks leading up to the draft, there had been a lot of discussion in the Red Sox draft room – oftentimes heated – about hard-throwing Angelina College right-hander Clay Buchholz.

“Clay was someone I had to have,” McLeod says. “I was just in love with the ability and the athleticism.”

As has been documented, Buchholz was pitching for a community college team in Lufkin, Texas, for a reason.

“It’s out there … when he was at McNeese State, he and his friend did a stupid thing. They broke into a school and stole some computers from a computer lab,” McLeod recalls. “Obviously, we had to dig deep into (A) what happened here and (B) is this something that’s going to be problematic going forward.

Clay Buchholz | Rich Gagnon/Getty Images

“Clay was very upfront when we talked to him about it. Jimmy Robinson, the area scout, did a tremendous job on the background and getting to the bottom of that story – and getting to know the player himself. I met with Clay in Texas. Theo and I had a big discussion with him in Boston at our pre-draft workout. We had a long conversation with him out in the bullpen during batting practice one day and talked about it. ‘What’s important to you? How do you want to be remembered by your family when you’re done playing this game?’ We hit him with some pretty personal questions.

“Let’s put it this way … I made it very evident that he was someone I had to have in that draft. There were some arguments in there. There was a time when Theo definitely challenged my conviction on the player, and we had a pretty heated debate about it in the room. Theo, in so many words, said ‘Jase, this is your first year running a draft as a scouting director solo. Are you going to put your name on this guy?’ I stood up and said, ‘Yes, I am.’

“At the end of the day, we were obviously aware of his past. It wasn’t ideal, but I personally felt confident enough to push for him in the first round. I can tell you we didn’t make his selection with any ‘Hold your breath, let’s hope this kid doesn’t get into trouble’ thoughts. We genuinely felt like he made a mistake and atoned for it.”

Ultimately, putting a first-round tag on Buchholz was a little too rich for Boston’s collective taste to select him at No. 26. That – and the fact that a reliever the team thought should have gone off the board much earlier was sliding.

St. John’s University closer Craig Hansen had dominated Big East Conference competition that spring, striking out 85 batters in 64 1/3 innings and recording 14 saves. McLeod thought a team that wanted a quick-to-the-majors reliever that could potentially pitch in the back end of games relatively soon would have jumped on him.

“We didn’t think Hansen was going to be there, because coming off the Cape that prior summer and going into the year, he was just so dominant,” McLeod said. “He wasn’t a priority type coverage guy for us, because we thought somebody else would grab him before pick 23.”

While Hansen was available, he was not an option for the Red Sox at No. 23; that pick was earmarked for a college hitter. The last-second conversation at No. 26 reverted to Buchholz.

“The bigger discussion for me on the Hansen selection was … we had done a lot of work on Buchholz, and I thought the Dodgers were going to take him at 40,” McLeod says. “I knew Logan White liked him. I knew he was there to see his last start. My fear was that we were going to miss him. I just had to leave that draft with Buchholz. He was the gut-feel guy who I really wanted.

“So there were some discussions about him at 26. That would have been a stretch for the rest of the room and for a lot of our guys, but that’s just how much conviction I had in Clay’s ability. And then the conversation obviously went back to Hansen – a big, college, ‘get there quick’ guy. We knew what he was and we knew he had power stuff. So the decision was made to take Craig. We took him – and he got to the big leagues later that year.”

Although he did pitch in four games for Boston that summer, Hansen struggled as a major leaguer, seeing action in 95 games for the Red Sox and Pirates. He saw his last minor league action in 2012. “Unfortunately for us and for Craig, he didn’t have the career that we all thought he would,” says McLeod. (Boston did still get some value from that selection, as Hansen was part of a three-team blockbuster that netted outfielder Jason Bay, who had one and a half outstanding seasons with the Sox.)

With Hansen on board, all McLeod could do was wait impatiently for Los Angeles to make its supplemental round selection.

“I sat there and held my breath,” he remembers fondly. “I know now, having talked to other teams over the years, it was basically us and the Dodgers that were in on Clay. Logan White is a good friend – and obviously his track record is pretty stellar with the draft, and we’ve had fun talking about Clay over the years. But we sent one cross-checker to this tournament in south Texas, and I think it was the opening day of the college conference tournaments – and Logan happened to be there. It says a lot when the scouting director, instead of being at the SEC tourney or day one of the Big 12, is seeing a junior college guy down in Nowhere, Texas.

“When the Dodgers were about to announce their pick, I literally was like, ‘They’re going to take Buchholz. They’re going to take Buchholz’ (laughing). And then they took Luke Hochevar.”

After Atlanta drafted high school left-hander Beau Jones at No. 41, McLeod got his guy.

“There was a big exhale … relief. Anyone who worked with me at the time would echo the sentiment,” he says. “As a scouting director, he was the guy I had to have in that draft.”

Fast forward to two years later, and Buchholz threw a no-hitter in his second major league start.

Rewind to draft day, and McLeod had about 60 seconds until his next pick at No. 45.

“We had stacked the board with some college hitters that we liked, so I was already feeling confident about our next pick,” recalls McLeod. “There were a few guys we really liked: Jed Lowrie (Stanford) … Stephen Head, a kid from Ole Miss … Chase Headley (Tennessee). I knew we were getting one of those guys.”

Sure enough, the Cardinals and Marlins picked pitchers.

“Jed Lowrie fell right into our laps – a guy who played the middle of the field with that kind of performance in college. Nowadays, he’d never get to No. 45. For us, it was a no-brainer. This kid was coming off a sophomore year where he almost won the Triple Crown in the Pac 10. He had a little bit of a down junior year, which allowed him to slide down into that selection for us.”

Then, two picks later, the Red Sox went the prep route, selecting Michael Bowden – a pitcher out of Waubonsie Valley High School in Aurora, Ill.

“Michael Bowden was a kid that we spent a lot of time with,” McLeod says. “He was one of those guys we got a lot of looks at. Our area scout was ultra-convinced on the makeup of the kid. We got to know him pretty well … the way he competed … blue collar … all of that.

“We really thought we got a mid-rotation guy with that selection. And the way his career started, we were really pumped. He was a workhorse, he threw a ton of strikes, and he had great stuff. After his first couple of years, we were like, ‘Wow, we got a really good pick here.’ In 2008 at Double-A, he sat on a low 2.30 ERA with a 25 percent punch rate. We thought this guy was going to sit in the middle of our rotation for a long time. He had a decent Triple-A year when we moved him up, he got to the big leagues, but he kind of plateaued out. He never had the career that we thought he would.”

Bowden saw action in parts of six big league seasons with the Red Sox and Cubs, appearing in 103 games from 2008-2013.

The flurry of activity concluded a little while later with Boston’s second-round pick – the No. 57 overall selection. And the rationale behind the player chosen – Jonathan Egan, a catcher out of Cross Creek (Ga.) High School – still bothers McLeod.

“I think every scouting director … if you would change things and do them over, we all would. This is one that sticks out with me,” McLeod admits. “We liked Jon Egan quite a bit. I was shooting for upside. We thought this kid had tremendous power. We thought he’d be able to catch. And when you went to watch him, it was a really beautiful swing.

“But what I regret here is that there was another college player sitting there right in our lap. There was a lot of discussion in the room that we should consider him, but my thought process was, ‘We just took Jed Lowrie. That was the safe college guy who performed. Let’s really shoot for some upside here.’ So we ended up passing on Chase Headley and took Egan. That’s one of those that I still to this day look back at. My reasoning did not go with the process. I was shooting for upside when we had Headley sitting right there for us on top of our board.”

Egan played three minor league seasons, peaking at Class-A Greenville in the South Atlantic League. Headley, who went to the Padres at No. 66, entered this year having been a major league starting third baseman since 2008.

While Headley was a miss for McLeod, Pedro Alvarez was the one who got away. A 14th-round pick out of Horace Mann High School in New York, Alvarez opted to bypass the Red Sox’s offer and go to Vanderbilt – and later was the second overall pick in the 2008 draft (by Pittsburgh).

“Missing out on him, we didn’t like that taste – especially seeing what he became,” McLeod says of Alvarez – who entered this year with 153 homers during his seven-year big league career. “It made us want to be even more aggressive going forward in trying to sign those types of players.

“We really loved the kid’s power. We loved the bat speed. He came to our workout that year and really put on a show. We made a serious run at him. I was on the phone a lot with the kid, trying to get him signed.

“Under the old system, the day they show up for class, they’re done. So I’m on the phone with him that morning, and I made a significant offer. Remember, this was the 14th round, and we already had spent a ton of money on the guys at the top. We had our last conversation, and he said, ‘Sorry, Mr. McLeod, I’m here at school now – and I’m getting ready to go to class.’ So we don’t sign him.”

McLeod later found out that Derek Johnson – who was Vanderbilt’s pitching coach at the time and now the Milwaukee Brewers’ pitching coach – was standing next to Alvarez when the prized freshman was having his final conversation with the Red Sox. Johnson was the Cubs’ minor league pitching coordinator in 2013-2015, and his boss was McLeod.

“We were swapping stories about Pedro Alvarez after (Johnson) joined the Cubs, and he says to me, ‘I walked him to class to make sure he got there and that no Red Sox employees were jumping out of the bushes trying to sign him.’”

Looking back at his first draft, McLeod talked about the need to be aggressive and wanting players who could provide impact and upside.

“We knew having all those picks early … we had the ability to diversify the portfolio, so to speak, where you could take some high-impact riskier high school kids, college performers that you felt really good about with athletic upside, and a junior college guy like Clay Buchholz,” McLeod says.

“As history has borne out, it’s probably one of the best drafts of all-time. I’m not talking about the Red Sox. That ’05 draft class was ridiculous in the first round.”

– – –

Chuck Wasserstrom spent 25 years in the Chicago Cubs’ front office – 16 in Media Relations and nine in Baseball Operations. Now a freelance writer, his behind-the-scenes stories of his time in a big league front office can be found on www.chuckblogerstrom.com.

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Boston Red Sox Inside The Draft Room MLBTR Originals

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Inside The Draft Room: The 1998 White Sox

By Chuck Wasserstrom | April 3, 2017 at 1:10pm CDT

Duane Shaffer was involved in many facets of the game during his 36-year stint in the Chicago White Sox organization. He was a pitcher, coach, roving instructor, manager, area scout, supervisor and scouting director after being selected by the club in the 11th round of the 1969 draft.

While he is the answer to the trivia question of “Who was manager Tony La Russa’s first pitching coach?” – Shaffer performed those duties for LaRussa at Double-A Knoxville in 1978 – he is best known in baseball circles for overseeing 17 White Sox amateur drafts from 1991-2007.

“I was fortunate enough to work for Jerry Reinsdorf during most of my time there,” said Shaffer, who is now a pro scout with the San Diego Padres. “He afforded me the opportunity to do pretty much anything I wanted to do. He was a tremendous owner. He was a great guy to work for, and I don’t want that to go unsaid. I appreciate what he did for me when I was there.”

Shaffer’s finest hour as the scouting director – and his greatest opportunity to thank Reinsdorf – took place in 1998, when his draft netted two of the most important pieces on the White Sox’s 2005 World Series championship club.

Heading into that draft, Shaffer had plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the White Sox’s draft position. Although the team wasn’t selecting until the 16th spot, Shaffer was certain that the guy he wanted was going to be sitting there for the taking.

The White Sox also received a supplemental first-round pick (No. 35 overall) and an extra third-round pick due to losing free agent outfielder Dave Martinez – who signed with Tampa Bay.

In 1998, Chicago’s first four selections – Kip Wells, Aaron Rowand, Gary Majewski and Josh Fogg – all went on to see extensive big league action, appearing in a combined 38 major league seasons. That in itself merits attention. But it was a 38th-round draft-and-follow selection named Mark Buehrle that turned this into an outstanding draft for the White Sox.

– – –

On the day of the draft, Shaffer’s plan was to select a college pitcher at No. 16 who could get to the majors quick. The player at the top of his draft board was Kip Wells, a right-hander out of Baylor University.

“Kip Wells was the guy we knew had the best chance of being there when we picked,” Shaffer recalled. “Obviously, you had 15 other guys in front, but doing your homework, you have a good idea who they’re going to take prior to you picking. When it came down to that, he was the guy that we wanted.

“He was a guy that you watched pitch, and he was 91-to-95. Good breaking ball. Had a decent feel for pitching. I saw him pitch a few times that year, and I recollect taking Ron Schueler, the general manager, to go see him. This was at the University of Arizona, down in Tucson. We went over and sat down the third-base line and watched him pitch six or seven innings. He was very impressive. You watched the ball come out of his hand. You watched the breaking ball – and the ease in which he did it. He was a big, loose, lanky kid that just impressed you watching him go about his business. He repeated that on a regular basis. That’s who we targeted.

“As it got closer to our turn, Jeff Weaver – who we had drafted the year before (second round in 1997) – went to the Tigers at No. 14. Then Clint Johnston went right in front of us – he was a Vanderbilt kid, left-handed pitcher, who the Pirates picked. Kip was sitting there for us when we picked. Actually, it ended up being a Kip Wells/Brad Lidge discussion when we got down to it. And we ended up selecting Kip.”

It turned out to be an immediate gratification selection, as Wells was in the majors by the end of the following season. In total, he pitched 12 major league seasons – mostly as a starter – with nine different teams. Lidge, meanwhile, was a big league reliever for 11 years.

Looking back, it’s hard not to notice that four of the 10 players selected immediately before Wells did not see a day in the majors.

Looking back, it’s also hard not to notice that four picks after Wells, the Indians selected a high school left-hander by the name of CC Sabathia.

“I went up and saw Sabathia, and he was a good-looking kid,” Shaffer said. “Hindsight is 20-20, obviously, and you’d love to have him. The problem is we thought he might have trouble throwing a breaking ball. At that particular time, we didn’t want to take a guy who had one pitch in the first round. We thought about him and we talked about him – he was a big strong kid – but we weren’t convinced as a group that he was going to have a really good breaking ball. He ended up doing it, obviously. So if you want to say we missed, yeah, we missed. But I’m happy with Kip Wells and I thought he was a good pick at that time.”

As the draft moved into the supplemental round, the future heart-and-soul of the White Sox’s 2005 championship team was there for the taking. And Shaffer was more than happy to take Cal State-Fullerton outfielder Aaron Rowand at No. 35 overall.

Aaron Rowand | Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images

“When he got to us with that pick, I was extremely happy to get a kid like him,” Shaffer said. “I knew the physical tools, but it was the mental side for him. He was going to make himself a big leaguer – no matter what. This kid had tremendous determination to be a good major league player.

“You might ask why I didn’t take him first, and the answer is because I didn’t have to. I knew the market. I knew what was in front of him … I knew what was behind him. When he was there for the taking as the supplemental pick, we were extremely happy – because we knew we were getting a gamer, one of those guys that loved to put the uniform on and do whatever he could do to help a ball club win. Aaron was always like that.

“I just had a really good feeling about him … the way he went about his business … the competition level he played against and excelled in at the Division I level at Fullerton. He was one of those guys … you look at him, and you know this guy is a big leaguer.”

Rowand spent five seasons with the White Sox, two with the Phillies and four with the Giants, earning a pair of World Series rings (2005 with the White Sox and 2010 with the Giants).

Shaffer’s next two selections – right-handed pitchers Gary Majewski (St. Pius X High School in Houston, No. 59 overall) and Josh Fogg (University of Florida, No. 89) – had solid but unspectacular big league careers.

Majewski was a reliever with Expos, Nationals, Reds and Astros from 2004-2010, appearing in 231 games.

“Gary was a good-arm kid. He could let it fly. That’s what we liked about him,” Shaffer said. “Good loose arm, and the ball came out of his hand extremely well. Good, live fastball. This is the separator for me when you talk about the high school kid vs. the college guy at this point. His breaking ball wasn’t great; it was OK. He’d show you flashes. At that particular time of the draft, that’s when you might take a chance on a high school kid. Do you think he’s going to get a good breaking ball? Fortunately for us, he ended up developing a decent breaking ball, and he turned out to be a solid-average major league relief pitcher.”

Fogg had a cup of coffee with the White Sox in 2001 before being traded to the Pirates – along with Wells – as part of a five-player deal in which starter Todd Ritchie was acquired by Chicago. Fogg was mostly a starter with the Pirates, Reds and Rockies from 2002-2009 – with five double-digit victory campaigns to his credit.

“Josh Fogg showed you a good idea of how to pitch,” Shaffer said. “90-to-93. Good off-speed stuff. Repeated well – and that’s the part of it I liked the most. He was a great competitor, and he would be facing the University of Miami or whoever it was – and he’d just handle it as well as he could. He knew when and how to make pitches. I really liked the way he went about his business. And I thought that translated well into a major league pitcher.

“These are the kind of guys that we emphasized as you got down into the draft – and I know the third round is not deep. But at that particular time, when you had multiple picks or supplemental picks, the third round was farther down than it might sound. I liked Josh. I thought he was a good competitor. When he was on the board when we picked right there, I thought that was a good pick. He was a college guy we thought could move fast.”

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– – –

Back in 1998, teams were allowed to draft high school or junior college players, follow them through the next season until a week before the ensuing draft, and then sign them or move on. Under that since-eliminated rule which existed from before the 1987 draft through 2007, the “draft-and-follow” process essentially gave teams a nearly one-year exclusivity window with players not attending four-year colleges. It also blocked every other team from talking to those players; to do so would have been tampering.

As the draft moved into the later rounds, Shaffer often relied on suggestions from a couple of White Sox scouts with histories of uncovering nuggets missed by others.

“We had some scouts that were extremely good at the end of the draft, so to speak,” Shaffer said. “Guys that had an eye for a player who didn’t necessarily show you everything you wanted to see – but they could see something in the guy that may stick out. Jose Ortega down in Miami was one of them. And John Kazanas was another.

“At the end of the draft, you kind of pushed towards their players – because of the way they went about their business. They just had an eye for a guy that wasn’t the 4.1 runner or the guy that didn’t throw 95. They saw things in a kid’s desire. I’m not going to say our other guys didn’t see it, but they had a little bit better eye for it. They enjoyed going to see those guys, and they prided themselves on going that far into the draft and finding a good player.”

So in the 38th round, Shaffer – on the strong recommendation of Kazanas and another White Sox area scout (Nathan Durst) who had also seen the kid pitch – selected left-hander Mark Buehrle out of tiny Jefferson College, a junior college in Hillsboro, Mo.

“When you’re in the Midwest and the weather is bad and things are cramped up, your season of scouting in the spring is real short. So you have to pick and choose who to see,” Kazanas said. “Nathan Durst was the first to actually lay eyes on him, and he identified that there was a kid that needs to be seen. I went in to see him … and I informed Duane that this young man was someone he needed to see.

“Buehrle was a very competitive pitcher. He worked faster than turning on a light. His pace was just extraordinary. ‘Give me the ball. I’m ready to go after him and attack.’ No wasted time. He didn’t let hitters get comfortable. And he was going to find a way to carve you up with all four of his pitches.

Mark Buehrle | Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images

“All four pitches came out of the same slot. So for a hitter, he doesn’t know what is coming. Also, he had a little reach back to get to 91 (MPH). But that wasn’t going to be the factor of him being successful. It was his ability to have pitchability. He would be able to use a little paint brush and hit the corners with his fastball. I’m sure a hitter was looking for one spot, and then all of a sudden he does a backdoor curveball. Then the guy is hanging over the plate, and then he throws a slider inside on his hands. So he was really able to mix up all four pitches, and hitters were guessing. And his success came out of it.

“My car was still hot by the time the game was over. He was a joy to see.”

The White Sox called his name that June day (June 3, 1998, to be exact), knowing that they would be keeping tabs on Buehrle’s progress over the next 11 months while he was technically under the team’s control. The more they got to know him both on and off the field, the more they realized they had found a hidden gem.

As a draft-and-follow, Buehrle returned to junior college and had a strong sophomore campaign. Then in mid-May of 1999, a couple weeks before the next draft, the left-hander signed with the White Sox and began his professional career.

“I went in to see him in a tournament at the end of the school year in ’99,” Shaffer said. “I went into the house and talked to him, talked to his parents. Tremendous family. You could see as you walked into the house how well he respected his parents and how well he handled himself. He was just a first-class guy. And the family … great people. He turned out to be everything they were and everything they wanted him to be. He was an easy sign, so to speak, as far as the way his makeup was and the way he handled himself as a person.

“Mark is a hell of a guy. I’ve always liked him. He’s always been respectful. He’s never gotten too crazy about himself. I don’t think he takes himself all that seriously like some athletes do. He was always serious about his business. A guy like him … they don’t come along very often. You can probably count on two hands the guys that have come through that late in the draft and have been that good.”

The point is moot – since he did sign with the White Sox in May 1999 before the deadline – but what if they didn’t sign him and he went into ’99 draft?

“That’s a tough question,” Shaffer said. “I’m not going to say he’d be a first rounder, because he wouldn’t have been. Way too many guys look at gun readings, and he never was a guy to light up the gun.

“Guys like Mark can basically make or break a draft. Having an extra guy like Mark Buehrle – who turned out to be a No. 2 starter at the major league level in the 38th round – is a tremendous asset.”

Fourteen months after signing with the White Sox’s organization, Buehrle was toeing the rubber on a major league mound.

– – –

There’s no other way to say it: Buehrle was the 1,139th overall selection in the 1998 June amateur draft.

A guy who won 214 major league games, pitched a perfect game, threw another no-hitter, went to five All-Star Games, won four Gold Glove Awards, a world championship, and will have his uniform number (#56) retired by the White Sox later this year, couldn’t crack the top 1,138 in the draft.

No one is thinking that a 38th-round pick is going to make 493 big league starts. However, to be the scouting director who selected that player has to be a nice feather in your cap.

“I guess you could say we liked him better than anybody else because we took him,” Shaffer said. “He was a left-handed pitcher out of a junior college who showed some promise. He had good command. His fastball was a little bit short at the time, but the command, the movement, the way he had a sixth sense in that he knew how to pitch … he knew when to throw a pitch … he knew how to make a pitch. There were just things in his DNA that most pitchers don’t have.

“He was just a pitcher in the best sense of the word. He pitched. He knew how to pitch. He always knew how to pitch. And he walked through the minor leagues with the Chicago White Sox like it was a day in the park.”

How satisfying must it be for a scouting director when he has success at the top of the draft AND strikes gold on a late pick?

“The level of satisfaction with this draft is tremendous. When you’re right on the top end of your draft, that’s basically what you get paid for. You have to be right on those guys,” Shaffer said. “When you get a guy like Mark Buehrle down in the draft – he makes that draft that much better.

“We were fortunate enough to get a guy like him. He became a huge part of the Chicago White Sox – and a huge part of the World Series run in 2005. They wouldn’t be retiring his number this year if he wasn’t what I’m telling you he is. He’s a tremendous person, and he was tremendous for the Chicago White Sox. He is the consummate professional as far as I am concerned.”

– – –

Chuck Wasserstrom spent 25 years in the Chicago Cubs’ front office – 16 in Media Relations and nine in Baseball Operations. Now a freelance writer, his behind-the-scenes stories of his time in a big league front office can be found on www.chuckblogerstrom.com.

Photos courtesy of Getty Images.

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Straight From The Heart: The Signing Of Ted Lilly

By Chuck Wasserstrom | March 22, 2017 at 7:15am CDT

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“You were part of it,” my former boss said with a laugh, “watching me roll around in agony for a couple days in the hotel room and not doing anything about it.”

“We were angling for a palace coup,” I joked, “but the reality is … the doctor gave me warning signs to be looking for, and we all know you weren’t being truthful with us.”

To which he quickly replied: “Well, we had to get Lilly done.”

– – –

It was a Tuesday night in December 2006, and baseball’s annual Winter Meetings were taking place at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort in Orlando, Fla.

Cubs general manager Jim Hendry hadn’t been feeling well all day. He really hadn’t felt right since arriving in Orlando over the weekend. He talked periodically about feeling a little bit of discomfort in his abdominal area, but never let on how much he was hurting.

Mostly, he sat subdued in the Cubs’ suite – which wasn’t like him – chomping antacid tablets like they were M&M’s. Typically, he was animated, lively, tugging at his shirt collar as he worked the room. On this day, he was pale and quiet but determined to do his job.

And I knew he wasn’t his normal self, as I was a member of Hendry’s baseball operations staff.

Leading up to Orlando, the previous couple of months had been an offseason like no other in Cubs history – as Hendry was literally ordered to spend money by his bosses. Tribune Company executives more-or-less gave him a mandate: We want a winner now. We need TV ratings to go up now. We need to be relevant immediately.

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Little did the rest of the baseball world know that Tribune was putting in motion plans to sell the Cubs. And just like selling a house, you had to dress up the product – and a winning team was what the company needed. On Opening Day 2007, Tribune Company executives announced that the club would be put up for sale; when the Cubs were officially sold to the Ricketts family in 2009 for a reported $875 million, it was a nice return on the $20.5 million Tribune had paid to purchase the club in 1981.

Over a six-week stretch leading into the Winter Meetings, Hendry brought in Lou Piniella to manage the Cubs, replacing Dusty Baker. Third baseman Aramis Ramirez was brought back on a mega five-year, $73 million deal just as the free agent signing period was set to begin. Free agent second baseman Mark DeRosa came on board – signing a three-year, $13 million contract. Veteran leaders Kerry Wood and Henry Blanco re-signed with the team. And there was the big splash – the addition of outfielder Alfonso Soriano, who inked an eight-year, $136 million contract.

All of this was done by a team that had gone 66-96 and finished in last place in the National League Central Division race in 2006. Looking back at that offseason, Hendry talked about his new marching orders.

“Obviously, we made a managerial change and decided to go with Lou,” said Hendry, the Cubs’ general manager from July 2002-August 2011. “Coinciding with that, we had a change in regimes. (Team president) Andy (MacPhail) left, and I was told in confidence that Tribune Company was contemplating selling the club. It might take a while – but the directive was that we were going to do business differently around here. We needed to try to win for the company before they sold the club. Basically, I was told: Spare no expense and chase all the high level free agency that you think we need. That was our directive, and that’s what you’re supposed to do. No general manager is going to say, ‘Oh gee, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to spend the money.’

“Once we did Sori and DeRosa, we felt like we were really good on the field. And the pen was good, too. We knew we needed to round out the starters.”

As Piniella recalled, “Tribune Company had made a commitment to spend some money and shore up the team, and Jim was very aggressive and was getting things done.

“John McDonough, the president of the team, told me when they hired me that they were hiring me to win. They were on a short leash; in other words, they wanted to get this thing shored up right away. Truthfully, I was already in my 60s, and that short-term turnaround situation really appealed to me.”

Hendry, Piniella and the Cubs’ front office group descended upon Orlando anticipating plenty of action to make a worst-to-first run in 2007. Heading into the Winter Meetings, the Cubs’ brass knew they needed pitching, “and Ted Lilly was our target guy,” Hendry said.

On paper, Lilly and the Cubs didn’t exactly look like the right match. He was an American League pitcher. He was a flyball guy. The talk was that his stuff wouldn’t work in hitter-friendly Wrigley Field. But Hendry trusted the scouting reports he had from his talent evaluators.

“One of the reasons he was a target was the recommendation of Stan Zielinski, who just left us,” Hendry said. Zielinski, a pro scout for the Cubs, passed away this past January. “(Major league scout) Ken Kravec really liked him – and Stan loved him, to be honest. Stan was the guy behind the scenes pushing me for Ted. He was a Lilly guy big time. He convinced me that Ted hadn’t been given the due that he deserved.

“Anyway, Ted was a target. We thought we had a really good chance of getting (Hiroki) Kuroda from Japan. Those were our big targets – Kuroda and Lilly. We felt like we had a really great shot at Kuroda, but he decided to wait a year and delay his coming to America. Once Kuroda took himself out of coming over, we really needed to get Ted – and we pursued him vigorously. We had backup plans with Gil Meche and Jason Marquis.

“But Ted was really the focus going into the Winter Meetings. Ted and his agent, Larry O’Brien, were tremendously honest. Ted had told me – in what I guess you’d call the recruitment process leading up to the Winter Meetings – if the Yankees pursued him with the same level that we did, we would probably be his second choice. The Yankees were his first choice … he had been there before. So we were on pins-and-needles leading into the Winter Meetings and the first few days there.”

A little over 10 years later, Hendry – now a special assistant to Yankees general manager Brian Cashman – can reflect on the events of that week and off-season and acknowledge that something wasn’t right when he got off the plane in Orlando.

“Honestly, when I got there, I didn’t feel great,” he said. “I think a lot of it was normal. I was in a rut that most people in that job get in; you know, you’re always working and you don’t take great care of yourself. I felt a certain amount of remorse – I don’t know if that’s the right word – but I felt really bad that Andy (MacPhail) left. And I felt that Dusty (Baker) had done a lot of good things for us and me, but a decision had to be made in October. When you let somebody go that really helped you get started when you first got the job, you don’t feel good about it. I had a good relationship with Dusty – and still do – but at the same time, it wasn’t easy; it did bother me. And I had such a long history with Andy; while he left on his own, it was still a transition for me.

“I don’t know if stress is the right word, but I knew I needed to get this going and start winning again immediately like we did in my first couple of years as GM. It was a different agenda. I also owed a lot of gratitude to (Tribune Company executives) Jim Dowdle and Dennis FitzSimons – who, after 2006, could have shuffled me out the door, too.”

So obviously, there was a lot weighing on his mind in addition to on-field player procurement.

“I never thought I didn’t handle the stress of the job well; I always liked the action,” Hendry said. “But I remember not feeling great when we got to Orlando. I saw (agent) Pat Rooney in the lobby after I got to the hotel and declined an invitation to meet him for a drink later that Sunday night. That was probably a sign. And – how stupid is this looking back – I had a lot of discomfort in my chest starting Monday.

“I was scuffling Monday and Tuesday – trying to grind through it.”

– – –

When he arrived at the Winter Meetings, agent Larry O’Brien had one major task to accomplish: Get a four-year contract for Ted Lilly.

Lilly was coming off a 15-win season … he was left-handed … he had his first shot at free agency and life-altering money … and he was drawing a lot of attention.

Lilly had spent the previous three seasons in the Blue Jays’ starting rotation, recording 37 wins. The southpaw had previously pitched two-plus years in the Bronx – to mixed success – along with spending time in Montreal and Oakland.

About a week before departing for Orlando, O’Brien was homing in on his list of potential landing sites for Lilly when he received a phone call from his client.

“Teddy was up in Davis, California, and his wife, Tasha, was in vet school – cramming for her finals,” O’Brien said. “So Teddy called me and said, ‘Come on up and spend time with me. I’m bored up here. I’m playing golf, and Tasha’s gone 20 hours of the day studying for finals.’ I said, ‘Ted, I’m getting ready for Orlando. I’m looking at who your comp(arable)s are – and what kind of value we’re shooting for.’ And he said, ‘Well, you can do that from up here.’

“I was talking at that point with a few teams. Toronto was very interested in bringing him back. The Yankees were interested; Brian Cashman had liked Ted a lot, and he had pitched for the Yankees before and liked it there. The Giants were interested before they signed (Barry) Zito – and Ted would have loved to have pitched for the Giants. That was the team he grew up rooting for.

“But when I was in Davis – and this is funny – I said to Ted, ‘I heard rumors that Lou Piniella, who is now managing the Cubs, is very interested in you.’ Lou and I knew each other; he managed my brother, Pete O’Brien, with the Mariners back in 1993 – but I hadn’t talked to Lou since then. Now, it’s 14 years later, and Ted and I are talking about him, and I look down at my phone – and Lou’s calling.

“So I said, ‘Hey, speak of the devil, Ted. Look at this.’ I get on the phone, and I said, ‘Hey, Lou!’

“And he said, ‘Hey, Larry. How are you doing?’

“I said, ‘You don’t care how I’m doing. You want to know about Ted Lilly.’

“And he said, ‘Well … that, too.’

“So we started talking, and he said, ‘Listen, Jim Hendry is opening the checkbook for me, and I want Ted Lilly. I want to be the last guy standing at the poker table. I want to get something done.’

“I said, ‘That’s great. I’ll see you in Orlando.’ And we left it at that.

“Lou made it clear to me that, ‘Hey, I want Ted. He’s a priority for me.’ I remember asking him, ‘Are you sure you would be good with Ted?’ Remember that year, he got into trouble with his manager, John Gibbons, who came to take him out of the game. Ted didn’t want to come out, and they ended up brawling in the dugout tunnel. I told Lou that Ted didn’t want to come out of games. And he said, ‘Exactly. That’s why I want him. I’m tired of looking out at pitchers – and they’re looking back at me like you should come and get me. That’s what I love about Ted.’”

Piniella had seen plenty of Lilly from his time managing in both Seattle and Tampa Bay.

“I liked Ted. I had seen Ted pitch with the Yankees, I had seen him with Oakland, and I’d seen him with the Blue Jays,” Piniella recalled. “I thought he competed very, very well – and we were dead right on that issue. This young man was just a tremendous competitor. He had that big curveball, he threw hard enough, and we felt that – in the National League – he would win.

“We needed a left-hander, too. Our pitching was all right-handed, and we needed a left-handed starter with experience.”

Now that the recruiting process had started, the question became … What should the agent be looking for?

“Ted was taking me to the airport, and I told him we needed to talk about what we thought his value should be,” O’Brien said. “And I pointed to one guy – Jarrod Washburn, who had pitched for the Angels. He was a lefty, and I felt that Ted was pretty comparable to him. He had signed a four-year, $37.5 million contract the year before (with the Mariners). I said, ‘You know, Ted, I think it’s very reasonable for us to look for something north of that contract – and see how the market plays out for us.’”

Although Lilly was coming off a 15-13 season for the Blue Jays, he might have received more notoriety for that incident with Gibbons than for his mound performance. In a late August home game, the left-hander was less than thrilled with an early hook from the contest, and a well-publicized skirmish outside of public view broke out between the pitcher and the manager.

At the time, Lilly figured his Toronto days were all but over.

“After the incident, I didn’t think that the Blue Jays had any interest in retaining me,” he said. “I talked to (general manager) J.P. Ricciardi the day after, and I said to J.P. that I didn’t think this was the place and that I’d like to move on. I was emotional and irrational making those statements, but J.P. said that they’d like to keep me around and keep me for years to come. That caught me off guard.

“After the season ended, J.P. told me that they would match any offer that was out there.”

As the Winter Meetings approached, Toronto was still in play to retain the left-hander’s services. Lilly had interest in pitching for Boston, but that interest level wasn’t reciprocated. San Francisco was in play – as were the Yankees.

“I did know that Ted wanted to come back, and we previously had Ted and liked him,” said Yankees GM Brian Cashman. “There was no question about Ted’s ability.

“Simultaneously, there was a left-hander available via Japan that we liked – Kei Igawa. If I remember correctly how the old rules worked, between the posting number and the acquisition cost … Igawa was younger, we had strong reports on him, and I think we had health concerns about Ted. The question wasn’t about Ted’s ability … it was whether he’d stay healthy in the long-term. The acquisition cost on Igawa wasn’t going to be taxed, while all the signing cost of Lilly would be. So that was also a big factor in the process. If all things are equal, you have one guy that looks like he has pristine health, he was younger, and a lot of the money is protected from being taxed because of the way the old rules were set up. There was a whole combination of things – from medicals to financials – that played into the ultimate decision-marking.”

And then in late November, the Cubs appeared on Lilly’s radar.

“It was important to me to find a place that was going in the right direction – especially as our intent was finding a multi-year deal,” Lilly said. “I wanted to go to a club that was going to be in the middle of winning for the next few years.

“To be honest with you, I was kind of surprised when the Cubs got into it. There wasn’t much talk about them early on. But then they certainly made a statement when they signed the top free agent slugger out there in Soriano. That was a very large statement, and it got my attention.

“Then I thought, ‘OK, they made a splash on the top slugger, but what else do they have going on?’

“I remember talking to Jim Hendry on the phone and really leaving that conversation with more confidence about the direction of the club than I did going into it. Jim made it very clear to me that they weren’t done. He didn’t indicate to me who he was intent on signing, but he was being aggressive. Jim went about it in a way that he didn’t overdress it. I appreciated the fact that there was an element of a recruiting pitch in it, but it wasn’t by any means excessive. I felt like he was honest and pretty straight to the point.

“I basically went on Jim’s word that he was going to do everything he could to compete in that division and win that division.”

It was in Orlando where it all came together.

– – –

Tuesday, December 5, 2006

For those of us who had spent any time around Hendry, that Tuesday was a day where you could sense something was amiss. He sent me on several trips to the gift shop for antacids. He was drinking nothing heavier than 7UP and ginger ale.

“That day, from what I was being told, Jim wasn’t his normal self – but I didn’t pick up on it as quickly as the rest of you did because I was new to the Winter Meetings and new in my position,” recalled Randy Bush, who at the time was a special assistant to Hendry. Two weeks later, Bush was officially named assistant general manager. “I really hadn’t been in the environment where Jim was running meetings, but I do recall others in the room telling me that Jim was off, that something was really bothering him. He’s not himself.”

Hendry, for his part, was determined to fight through it.

“I was doing the Tums and the Pepcid … I didn’t think it was my heart at all,” he said. “I talked to (team physician) Dr. (Stephen) Adams, and I didn’t describe it right. That was totally on me. In fairness to him, I was downplaying it; I didn’t want to leave. I decided I could handle this until I got home. He thought maybe it was a gallstone from the way I was telling it to him. I remember – and this is really sad looking back – having two episodes in the afternoon … I kept thinking that if it was a heart attack, it would have been upper left. But I had these pains right in the middle of my chest. They probably lasted two to three minutes. And I remember rolling around on my bed thinking this isn’t normal. And then it stopped – and I proceeded the rest of the day OK.”

Hendry was more concerned about keeping things business as usual. There was the normal trade talk with other clubs. Meetings were set up with agents for later in the day – including O’Brien.

And then came an unexpected knock on the door of the Cubs’ suite. It was O’Brien and Piniella.

O’Brien: “I bumped into Lou in the lobby, and he said, ‘I really want to get something done.’ So he brought me up to Jim’s room. It was Jim, Lou, a bunch of guys were there – including Randy Bush, who had played against my brother and knew him. I had never met Jim Hendry before, and he goes, ‘So you’re Pete O’Brien’s brother. I hated your brother.’ And I said, ‘How can you hate my brother? My brother is the greatest guy. Nobody hates my brother.’ And he goes, ‘I was the head coach at Creighton when your brother was at Nebraska – and he probably hit 10 of his 14 homers his junior year against us.’ That’s how he started the conversation.”

Hendry: “It was kind of a very upfront, fun negotiation. Larry was a different kind of guy in a good way, and he wore his heart on his sleeve. He didn’t have a dishonest bone in him. Everything that happened, he was honest with me.”

O’Brien: “We talked for a while, then I brought up Washburn’s four-year deal. I told him, ‘I’m talking to the Yankees. I’m talking to Toronto. I’m thinking, the number is probably going to have to have a four in front of it.’ Twenty minutes later, Jim committed to four years.”

After the meeting, there was still a lot of work to be done. O’Brien spent the rest of that day checking in with other teams. Hendry had other agents to speak to, including Sam and Seth Levinson – the representatives for free agents Jason Marquis and Cliff Floyd.

Hendry: “The Levinsons were coming by the suite after we were done with our business – maybe 9 at night – to have a drink. And before they got there, I was laying on my bed for a few minutes trying to gather myself. I was having some discomfort, and I called Doc Adams again. I decided that after I got back from the Winter Meetings, I better go see him. But I still wasn’t describing it to him right.”

Seth Levinson: “I don’t have to tell you that Jim is an extraordinary man who redefined what it means to be dedicated to one’s job. He is as passionate, as colorful, as hard working and as honest as any man that I have ever encountered. We spent quite a bit of time in his suite that night discussing Marquis, Floyd and various subjects. It was painfully evident that Jim was not well. He was pale, he seemed to have some shortness of breath and was in obvious discomfort. It was terribly worrisome to everyone. He blew off every plea to see a doctor and took such suggestions and recommendations as insulting. In a historic show of stubbornness, he unwaveringly committed to his style of using self-deprecating humor, razor-sharp insults, and infallible logic to drive home his most practical and critical points.”

Hendry: “After the Levinsons left, which now had to be after 10 o’clock, I had the same spell I had in the afternoon. I had convinced myself that these were gallstones. I remember rolling around in agony with severe pain in the middle of my chest, and when they went away, I thought, ‘If gallstones are this painful, how painful must kidney stones be?’ Looking back, what was I thinking about? The dumbest thing ever was not having [the author] take me to the hospital then. I remember 11ish or so in bed, my chest bothering me. I didn’t know if I should go to sleep. Sooner or later out of tiredness, you just fall asleep.”

Seth Levinson: “After the meeting, I spoke to Lou Piniella – who also was concerned about getting Jim to a doctor. We damn well knew that to get him to a doctor without his consent would require us to Taser him, hogtie him or render him unconscious.”

– – –

Wednesday Morning, December 6, 2006

I got to the suite early – around 7 a.m. – to get the room ready for the morning group meeting. Hendry was already sitting on a sofa in the suite when I walked in.

“I barely slept last night. I was afraid that if I closed my eyes, I wouldn’t wake up,” he said.

Looking back, “When I woke up, thank God I did, I had an overall feeling of just not feeling right,” Hendry said. “It was like nothing I’d had before. It wasn’t dizziness. It wasn’t nausea. It was an overall weird sensation, like an achy feeling right before you have the flu. Something seemed really out of whack. I didn’t have much energy.”

He looked worse, but he was determined to do his job. He was noticeably whiter than the night before – and had that “death warmed over” look to him.

Before the morning group meeting – and after he had gone through the entire bottle of antacid I had brought him the night before – he asked me to go back to the hotel’s gift shop for more.

While in the lobby, I paged Dr. Adams – who was back in Chicago – telling him that something wasn’t right. We both knew that Hendry wasn’t being truthful with anyone. Dr. Adams sent me to the hotel front desk to find a doctor on call. I was told the doctor would come see Hendry as soon as he could.

The morning calendar was tight from a scheduling standpoint. After the daily group discussion, Hendry had a general managers meeting to attend. A follow-up one-on-one with O’Brien was set for late morning.

The Cubs baseball contingent at the morning meeting included Hendry, Piniella, Bush, special assistant Gary Hughes, scouting director Tim Wilken, baseball operations director Scott Nelson, minor league director Oneri Fleita, and other special assistants, scouts and front office staff members.

Hendry: “That Wednesday morning meeting, I kind of sat down more than I usually do. I’d usually be up in front of the boards, talking about if we get this guy … or what about that guy. I think we even talked about what the hell we’d do if we didn’t get Ted. (Agent) Casey Close was dealing with us on Meche, and Lou had an affiliation with Meche from the Mariners. And I knew Meche a little bit from Louisiana. We didn’t know it was going to get to $55 million.”

Hughes: “Really, when you take everything into consideration and the whole seriousness of things, Jim was business as usual. It’s just scary to think of, because that’s what we expected of him. But come on, we were yelling at him – he didn’t belong there. He told me first thing in the morning, ‘I don’t feel good.’ Then find out what’s wrong.”

Bush: “I remember Jim was leading the discussion on different topics sitting in front of the room and just kept chewing antacids like they were candy, one after another after another.”

Hughes: “I kept asking him, ‘What are you doing here?’ He said he was there for our meetings, but I kept telling him he had to get out of there. He kept saying, ‘No, no. I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.’ He thought it was more important to be around the hotel, running what we were trying to get done. And one of the most important things baseball-wise was trying to get Ted Lilly done.”

Nelson: “After our meeting, Jim and I went to a (general managers) meeting, and I talked to Joe Fitzgerald from MLB – who was running the convention. I asked Joe if he could help find a house doctor. He contacted the hotel rep, who contacted the doctor – and I remember it took forever for that doctor to show up. He wasn’t on site; I think he serviced the whole Disney World community.”

About an hour later, Hendry was examined by the doctor in his hotel room.

Hendry: “This doctor came up and checked me out. He said, ‘If it was me, I’d go to the hospital. My recommendation – I’m going on record that you should go get checked, but I’m not making you.’ That’s what he said. In fairness to him, just like with Doc Adams, I was downplaying it. I didn’t want to leave. I could handle this until I got home. If he had been more forceful and said ‘Hey dude, you could be screwed here. It looks like a heart attack coming,’ I would have gone earlier.”

O’Brien had come to the suite for his meeting. Nelson stalled him while the doctor was finishing examining Hendry, telling the agent that Jim was on a phone call.

Hendry: “Right away, Larry told me that everyone else was out except the Yankees – and that he’d let me know later that afternoon or early that evening what their decision was. That’s when I offered him 4-for-40 (four years, $40 million). When I made him our final offer, he gave me a ‘Bingo – that’s the number we’re looking for. If the Yankees won’t do it, then you’re going to get him.’ And I remember trying to talk him into taking it earlier before he heard from the Yankees. ‘We’ve been with you the whole time. You were our first guy.’ You know, the whole Eddie Haskell deal. But Ted still needed to hear from Brian (Cashman) – which was rightfully so.”

O’Brien: “Jim said, ‘Four years, $40 million.’ Then I called Ted. He still wanted me to talk to San Francisco and New York.”

Lilly: “I didn’t want to rush into something. I just wanted to see if there was any possibility with San Francisco, but I believed we were good (with the Cubs). And when the Cubs made their offer … from the standpoint of Toronto, I just thought it was time for me to move on.”

O’Brien: “I gave [the Giants] a call. They were interested, but they were working on signing Barry Zito to that seven-year deal. So I knew they were going in a different direction.”

– – –

Wednesday Early Afternoon

After O’Brien left the suite, Hendry tried to relax for a while. At that point, he was tiring of everyone telling him to take it easy. Plus, he had already seen the hotel doctor, so he thought he was out of the woods.

Hendry: “Early in the afternoon, Lou, Nelly (Scott Nelson) and I were in the suite, and we were on edge about Ted … and all of a sudden, I remembered we had the Scout of the Year banquet that night to honor (Cubs scouting director) Tim Wilken. I was going to give the introduction, and I hadn’t prepared anything. I was starting to write something down. I was really starting to feel even worse. I had another little thing in front of them, and Lou said, ‘Enough is enough.’”

Piniella: “He had been fighting this thing for over a day. I finally told him, ‘Enough is enough, Jim. You’re going to the hospital whether you like it or not.’”

Nelson: “Lou said he wanted to call for an ambulance. Jim said ‘No, we’ll just go in your car.’”

Piniella: “He fought us tooth-and-nail the whole way. He said, ‘I’m busy working. I’ve got to get a few more things done.’ We told him, ‘Hell, those things can wait.’ We insisted that we take him to the hospital to check him out. In fact, I drove him.”

Nelson: “I remember walking through the hotel lobby with Jim and Lou, heading to Lou’s car. People were stopping to chat with Jim, and we were just trying to get him through. We obviously weren’t telling anybody what was going on. At least the clinic we went to wasn’t too far from the hotel.”

As the afternoon went on, word spread among Cubs personnel that Hendry had gone to the hospital – and that no one outside the organization was to know.

Hughes: “I thought that he was dealing with something that was extremely serious, and he wasn’t telling us. I wasn’t surprised that he went to the hospital; I was just surprised that it took him that long to go. I was thankful that Lou got him there.”

Bush: “I was at a different meeting when the decision was made to take him to the hospital. When I got back to the suite, I was told Jim was getting checked out. Then we started getting verbal reports that there might be some type of heart issue – which was very scary for all of us. Jim was more than a boss to everybody; he was a friend. I remember that the room was very upset. There was a lot of tension, just wanting some information, just wanting to know how he was doing.”

– – –

Wednesday Late Afternoon

After Piniella and Nelson got Hendry to the nearby clinic, the Cubs’ general manager was immediately taken for an EKG.

“It seemed to be going OK,” Hendry said. “I had a resident overseeing it. When it was over, I asked the guy, ‘Give it to me straight, I’ve got to get back to work. How did it look?’ And he implied that it wasn’t that bad, but the doctor had to sign off on it. I remember waiting 15-20 minutes for the doctor, and I was getting antsy. So I went and got dressed.

“I checked my messages and made a few calls. Then the nurse came in and said the doctor needed to see me. When he finally came in, the doctor said he’d have to give me another EKG and that he would monitor it. ‘I don’t think it was done right. There were a few issues that clouded the results. We’re going to have to do it again.’

“I was chapped. I said, ‘Doc, I’ve got to get going. I have things to do.’ He said something medically or legally – whatever – that he couldn’t send me out until he did another EKG.

“Then I said, ‘I promise you, if I have any more trouble tonight, I’ll be back tomorrow.’ And he said, ‘Jim, listen to me. If you walk out that door, you might not make it to tomorrow.’ Ooh … that was kind of a buckler. He stayed in there while I took the EKG again.”

As the day had moved from early afternoon to late afternoon, O’Brien was busy doing his due diligence on behalf of his client. He had talked to the Giants, and knew they were closing in on Zito (the two sides would agree to a seven-year, $126-million contract). He had talked to the Yankees, and was again told that their number one priority was Igawa; the Yankees, who had won Igawa’s posting rights with a bid of $26,000,194, would soon sign him to a five-year, $20-million contract.

O’Brien and Cashman spoke. “Bottom line, Larry O’Brien is a straight shooter … a good man to do business with,” Cashman said. “He tells you exactly the bottom line and what it will take. He was very upfront that Ted wanted to play for the Yankees if we could make it work. Larry constantly stayed in touch with us. We knew they were going down the tracks and he was going to go to the Cubs if we didn’t jump in. At the end of the day, we never made Ted an official offer.”

O’Brien and Lilly spoke. “I told him, ‘The Cubs are great. Lou is great. He loves veteran guys. You’ll be well taken care of,’’ O’Brien said – and it was time to let Hendry know that Lilly was Cubs-bound.

And then the legendary phone call between O’Brien and Hendry took place.

Hendry: “I was on the gurney, still hooked up to the machine, and by now the doctor had alerted me that it wasn’t going good. The funny part is, and it’s not really funny … to this day, I still don’t know why I had my phone in my hand while the EKG machine was on. Most people would have left it in their pants pocket. I took the call on the gurney, hooked up to the machine. I knew there was some kind of complication or problem. And while I was on the gurney – it must have been somewhere between 4-to-5 o’clock by now – Larry O’Brien called me back. I wasn’t thinking about heart surgery when I took the phone call from Larry.”

O’Brien: “I said to Jim, ‘We’ve got a deal.’”

Hendry: “So Larry gave me the good news. I didn’t tell him where I was. He said, ‘He’s not going to the Yankees. He’s a Cub. We got the deal done. 4 for 40.’ And he said, ‘Let’s get the paperwork and the term sheet done right away. I said, ‘Larry, give me a few minutes. I’m going to have Scott Nelson do the work.’ I didn’t want to tell him where I was. ‘I’ll tell Nelly to meet you in the room at 6 o’clock.’”

Piniella: “Lo and behold, instead of just resting and taking care of his health, he was determined to get everything done that we needed done. He was laying there, working on the Lilly deal. He was so determined to get this thing done. It was unbelievable.”

O’Brien: “Then he said, ‘Here, I’m going to let you talk to Lou.’ He gives me to Lou, and I said, ‘What’s going on?’ And Lou said, ‘Hey Lar, it’s great that we’re coming to an agreement.’ And that’s when he said, ‘Jim’s not supposed to be on the phone right now because he’s in the hospital having an EKG. He has some sort of a heart issue.’ And I said, ‘Why didn’t he tell me that? Let’s get off the phone. I don’t want tomorrow’s headlines to be Hendry has a heart attack and dies while negotiating with O’Brien.’”

Nelson: “While I was waiting for him when he was taking the second EKG, I went in the back – and that’s when he was talking to Larry O’Brien. Lou was there with him. Jim’s phone was running low, and after the call he said to me, ‘I need a charger.’ I told him Lou and I will go find one at a store nearby.”

Piniella: “I remember doing that, yes. I really do (laughing). He’s laying there working, his phone was on the brink, and we had to get his phone recharged. That was a priority. Jim was barking at us.”

Hendry: “After talking to Larry, I called Ted and congratulated him. I didn’t tell him a word about me, obviously. I told him we were thrilled to have him, that he made the right choice. You know, the whole deal. The whole time I talked to Ted, I was still on the gurney.”

Lilly: “When I got off the phone, I remember saying to myself, ‘I feel comfortable with this. This is the right place.’ And I had no idea that he was in the physical condition that he was in.”

Hendry: “They made me wait. It turns out the doctor was consulting with another doctor. I thought they were going to let me leave, but then the doctor came in and said, ‘We’re going to either helicopter you or get you an ambulance to get you to a heart hospital 30 miles from here. You’re going to have to have a procedure tonight.’ That was a jolt.”

Nelson: “As we were about to drive off in Lou’s car, we were told we would have a little time before he was transferred. So we thought we had time to go and find a charger. We went to a phone store, we went to Walgreens, it was crazy. We couldn’t find one. And I knew Jim was going to leave pretty soon, and we had to get that charger. Lou was whipping down the streets of Celebration (Fla.). To steal an analogy to Disneyland, it was like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. He was going over 60 MPH in a 30. There were humps on these streets, and we were flying all over. Ultimately, we must have got one – although I don’t remember where. Just as we got back, he was in the ambulance – about 30 seconds away from going. I jumped in the passenger seat and boom … off we went.”

Hendry: “Nelly went with me in the ambulance, meaning he wouldn’t be heading back to the hotel. So I called Larry back and finally told him what was going on. He was joking around and said to me, ‘I hope the pressure of this thing didn’t do this to you.’ Since Nelly was going with me, I had to let Larry know he’d have to do the term sheet with Nelly either late tonight or tomorrow.”

Nelson and O’Brien finalized the deal the next morning, as Nelson didn’t get back to the hotel until late Wednesday night.

Hendry: “Like an idiot, I kept calling people from the ambulance. I called Randy to let him know I couldn’t make the banquet.”

Bush: “A number of us went to the Scout of the Year banquet. I was sitting at a table near the back of the room when my phone rang, and it was Jim. I remember whispering in a really hushed voice, ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ And Jim’s response was, ‘Busher, I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is, we just got Ted Lilly done.’ And I said, ‘That’s great. What’s the bad news?’ And he said, ‘The bad news is, it’s not looking too good for me right now. I’m on my way into the operating room. I have to have a heart procedure. I’ll call you later.’ And he hung up, just like that.”

Hendry: “I called [the author] to make sure to tell Wilken to sell the Rule 5 pick, hung up, and was getting ready to make another call when the paramedic in the back of the ambulance said, ‘Dude, what are you doing? We’re not going for another opinion; you’re going in for a procedure. I can’t tell you how it’s going to go. So why don’t you call the people you love instead of your peers at work and tell them what’s going on.’ And then he said, ‘You might not make it. You never know. You’ve got to quit worrying about business calls.’”

The hospital – Florida Hospital South (now known as Florida Hospital Orlando) – was a 30-mile trip in rush-hour traffic. Taking the advice of the paramedic, Hendry was able to shift his focus to calling family members.

Hendry: “Thankfully, I had just enough time to call my children and (his girlfriend) Vickie before it became breaking news in Chicago. I didn’t want them to hear about me on TV. The calls home were a little tough. The kids weren’t that old … and they were supposed to be flying down to Disney World to meet me for the weekend. When I made the calls home, I didn’t want to make it sound that bad; in ’06, they were still young – 10 and 8. I called the house and told them, ‘You’re going to see it on TV. I’m going into the hospital tonight. It’s just a little procedure, but I’ll be fine. I just wanted to let you know before you see it on TV.’ And I remember my daughter saying to me, ‘Dad, does that mean we’re not coming to Disney on Friday?’

– – –

Wednesday Early Evening

As the ambulance was traveling to Florida Hospital South, the Cubs announced that Hendry had been hospitalized when it was time for his daily Winter Meetings press briefing with members of the local Chicago media.

About 20 minutes later, O’Brien stood in the lobby of the Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort and, before assembled media, famously made his announcement: “Ted Lilly is a Cub.”

“I recall telling the media that I didn’t want to go over the same story with everybody who was calling me, so I told them I would be at the Christmas tree in the lobby at a certain time – and I’ll give you updates at that point. That’s how I did it,” O’Brien said. “I did tell everyone that Ted was a Cub, and he was really excited about it.”

By now, Hendry had arrived at the hospital and was being prepped for surgery. He was about to undergo an angioplasty – a procedure to open narrowed or blocked arteries that supply blood to the heart. During the procedure, stents were inserted to help prevent the artery from closing.

“When I first got wheeled into the operating room – and I hadn’t met the doctor yet – there was a period of about 60 seconds, maybe two minutes, where I was thinking, ‘I hope this isn’t it,’” Hendry said, “I don’t know why, but I wasn’t as scared as I probably should have been. I’m not tougher than anybody else, but I really wasn’t in a panic mode.

“Looking back, I probably should have been more uptight than I was. They wheeled me right in, and it was the funniest thing. I swear, it was like seeing the cast of Grey’s Anatomy. They were telling me how lucky I was because the best doctor in the whole hospital was a guy named Dr. (Pradipkumar) Jamnadas. They told me he was only on call two or three nights a month, and you don’t know how lucky you are that you’ve got him.

“I saw him walk into the operating room. They had taken my EKG records to show him. He came over and introduced himself and said, ‘Look, I’m going to do this through your groin. You’re going to need some stents, but you’re not going to need open heart. You’re going to be OK. You’re going to make it. I’ve done a bunch of these before.’

“I wasn’t out yet, and he said, ‘We’ll get going in a few minutes.’ Then he leaned in and said, ‘By the way, they call me Dr. J around here.’ And I said, ‘Doc, you better play like him tonight.’

“The next thing I knew, I woke up in the recovery room.”

– – –

Wednesday Night

Looking back, Nelson is able to laugh about that night in the hospital waiting room – standing against a window and alternating cell phones while Hendry’s angioplasty was taking place.

“We get to the hospital, they unload him, and he goes in,” Nelson said. “Now I have his phone … and his phone is blowing up. So I’m going back-and-forth between my phone and his phone. That whole thing was pretty tense. Everything was happening so fast, and I was just fielding phone calls the whole time – call after call after call. I remember having to stand up pressed against a window because the reception was so poor.

“When Jim got out of surgery, they took him into recovery before taking him to intensive care. There were eight beds in a circle – and you couldn’t use cell phones. There was one old-fashioned phone that everybody had to share if they were to talk on the phone. Jim said, ‘Forget that.’ And he starts using his cell phone. He was having a hard time getting reception because of all the machines in the room. He tried using the hospital phone one time, and it was like ‘Screw this.’

“I do remember Jim using his phone that night in the ICU. But I’m still foggy about this … I still don’t remember how I got the charger. I remember whipping through town with Lou looking for the charger, but I know we must have found it – because I was taking calls on his phone that whole time.”

Meanwhile, back at the hotel …

O’Brien: “Before we finalized the deal, I said to Lou, ‘If we make a deal, I want you to buy me a steak dinner at Shula’s Restaurant,’ which was in the hotel. And I said, ‘It can’t be a Cubs credit card, and I want to order whatever bottle of wine I want and whatever steak I want.’ And I asked him, ‘Would you do that?’ And he said, ‘Absolutely.’ So after we made the deal and he got back to the hotel, he said ‘Let’s go.’ Lou and I go to Shula’s, we’re sitting and waiting for our table, and (St. Louis manager) Tony La Russa and (Florida manager) Jim Leyland walk in. La Russa looks at Piniella and said, ‘I heard some rumor. Did you guys get Ted Lilly?’ And Lou said, ‘Absolutely. And you can get it straight from the horse’s mouth. Tony La Russa, meet Larry O’Brien – Ted Lilly’s agent.’”

Piniella: “I remember Tony saying, ‘Boy, you guys have done a lot of things. We better watch out for you next year.’ I think he was right.”

As the night went on, word spread throughout the hotel about Hendry’s hospitalization – and the fact that he was now undergoing a heart procedure.

Bush: “After the Scout of the Year banquet, we all went upstairs. I just remember having this very solemn room, very concerned. As I recall, we didn’t even know what kind of procedure he was having done. We were really concerned and really down. The whole room was just waiting for news.”

Seth Levinson: “When I learned that Jim was taken to the hospital, it was a blow that knocked the wind from my soul.”

O’Brien: “I didn’t really understand the magnitude of it at the time. I was in my own little world, worrying about Ted and being excited about the Cubs and his deal. The magnitude of what was going on with Jim really didn’t sink in until I was back home in California – and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, this was serious.’”

Then came the reality in the Cubs’ suite. There was still work to be done.

“That night, it was my responsibility to go out in the lobby and sell our Rule 5 pick,” Wilken said. “We had to get underneath 40 on our major league roster. It wasn’t just for Lilly. We had re-signed Henry Blanco a couple weeks before the meetings, and we were getting pressure from New York to get him officially on the roster. With all the guys coming and going, it was kind of a wild and furious time. So that night, I was out working the lobby (the Cubs were drafting third overall), and I’m sure I touched base with at least 25 of the clubs. I was able to reach a deal with Cincinnati and sold the pick for $100,000.”

In order to do that, the Cubs first had to clear a spot on the 40-man roster. To sum things up: Clear a spot … take a Rule 5 selection … trade that selection … and once again have a vacancy, at least for the time being.

Bush and Hughes reached an agreement with Baltimore, with the Cubs sending utility man Freddie Bynum to the Orioles in exchange for Class A pitcher Kevin Hart.

It was the first trade Bush consummated. “I’m glad it worked out. I’m glad Kevin Hart came up and helped us at the big league level.”

– – –

Thursday, December 7, 2006

Hendry woke up Thursday morning feeling great and ready to get back to work – from the ICU.

“Dr. J came in early in the morning and told me he put four stents in – and that I was going to be OK,” Hendry said. “So I had to see what was going on.”

Hughes recalled that he received multiple calls from Hendry during the Rule 5 draft, but couldn’t get the Cubs’ GM to worry about himself.

“That was one of the scariest things I’ve been around,” Hughes said. “I can say all these nice things about Jim, but he’s pigheaded, too. He thought all of that stuff was way more important than his health. All things ended well, but boy oh boy, when you think back at the seriousness of it … you know, God bless Ted, but thank God for Jim.”

What was Hendry missing out on at the Rule 5 draft?

“I got this folded up sheet of paper from the Reds about a minute before the draft,” Wilken said. “We were drafting Josh Hamilton for them.”

And that’s how Hamilton became a Cub for approximately 30 seconds.

– – –

Friday, December 8, 2006

After the Rule 5 draft ended the day before, the major league portion of the Winter Meetings came to a close.

While most of the sport had departed from Orlando, Hendry remained in intensive care and was still trying to consummate deals. From his hospital bed that afternoon, he and the Levinson brothers came to a three-year, $21 million agreement on Marquis – who had won 42 games over the previous three years as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals’ starting rotation.

Seth Levinson: “Amazingly and incomprehensibly, the sick man managed to call me from the ICU. Despite pleas to get off the phone and with the unmistakable beeping noises of hospital machinery in the background, Jim assured me that he was fine. I was dismayed that he wanted to finish the Marquis deal – which we did.”

Hendry: “I remember as soon as I finished the call, this lady came in and took my phone. She was chapped that I had a phone in intensive care. They took my phone for a while. When the doc came to see me, I told him I needed to get my phone back for a couple hours.”

Seth Levinson: “To help make his hospital stay a bit more enjoyable, we sent a singing gorilla to ICU to serenade him with get-well songs. Hopefully, that got his recovery off to a good start, or at least temporarily took his mind off of business.”

Hendry: “The Levinsons sent a gorilla with a dozen black balloons – like I had already died.”

– – –

Final Thoughts

Hendry got out of the hospital on Saturday and stayed another day in Orlando. “I remember taking a walk on the boardwalk near the hotel and just getting my legs back under me. And then on Sunday afternoon, I flew home.

“Looking back, I probably should have been more uptight than I was. I think that it hit me by the time I got home – how lucky I was.”

Lilly was an important part of the Cubs’ rotation for three and a half years, going 47-34 with a 3.70 ERA in 113 starts for the club – winners of the National League Central Division in both 2007 and 2008.

He was a 15-game winner for the Cubs in 2007 … a career-best 17-game winner in 2008 … and an All-Star in 2009. He was traded to the Dodgers at the 2010 trade deadline and went on to pitch through 2013.

“I don’t think Ted got to be Ted until he was with us,” Hendry said. “We got quite a bit of scrutiny for giving Ted four times 10. As we all know now, he earned every penny of it.

“Ted did well for us. He’s a real different cat, but he was a ballsy guy. I used to tell people he’d fight (Muhammad) Ali behind a 7-11 and think he was going to win.”

And to think … the agreement to get his target pitcher took place while Hendry was undergoing an EKG.

“To this day, the story obviously has been embellished in some ways by the fact that a couple hours later I was going to have a heart procedure – but the fact is that Larry O’Brien called me when I was on the gurney,” Hendry said.

“Jim Hendry was a joy to meet and to negotiate with,” O’Brien said. “He was very clear and upfront with me that he wanted Ted Lilly, and if Ted Lilly wanted to be a Cub, then he was going to make that happen. So the negotiation was pretty easy.

“Looking back, this guy was on his death bed – and to have the energy and the stick–to–itiveness and persistence to get this done was pretty amazing.”

And as Cashman summed it up about Hendry being on a gurney at the time the agreement was reached: “Obviously, it turned out to be a tremendous decision for Jim Hendry and the Cubs,” he said. “In real time, I was massively worried for Jim.

“Jim eats, breathes and lives baseball. The passion is unquestioned. If anybody questions his dedication, this is Exhibit A with an exclamation point; that’s just the way he’s wired. I remember that he was trying to get Lou Piniella the best team possible as they took that run to breaking the curse – and they got damned close doing so. Unfortunately, how close they got is probably forgotten. I know we as an industry were worried sick about Jim and his health, but it’s nice to be able to look back on it in a fond way promoting how dedicated Jim is – because he survived it.”

– – –

Chuck Wasserstrom spent 25 years in the Chicago Cubs’ front office – 16 in Media Relations and nine in Baseball Operations. Now a freelance writer, his behind-the-scenes stories of his time in a big league front office can be found on www.chuckblogerstrom.com.

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Inside The Draft Room: The 1997 Blue Jays

By Chuck Wasserstrom | March 6, 2017 at 1:27pm CDT

Chuck Wasserstrom spent 25 years in the Chicago Cubs’ front office – 16 in Media Relations and nine in Baseball Operations. Now a freelance writer, his behind-the-scenes stories of his time in a big league front office can be found on www.chuckblogerstrom.com. Chuck has previously contributed to MLBTR’s Draft Prospect Q&A series and spearheaded MLBTR’s College Series, in which he spoke to numbers general managers and assistant general managers around the game about their time in college and their paths to a Major League front office.

It’s early on a Wednesday morning in February, and Tim Wilken is well into the amateur scouting season.

In most parts of the country, high school and college baseball teams are still a couple weeks away from getting on the field. But at this point in the year, Wilken has already been to Puerto Rico for a showcase and to Fort Myers, Fla., for a junior college tournament – as well as multiple scouting missions to the Dominican Republic.

This is the 39th consecutive year that Wilken – a special assistant to the general manager with the Arizona Diamondbacks – has been involved in baseball’s amateur draft. In his current role, he works closely with Arizona scouting director Deric Ladnier and anticipates seeing anywhere from 150-190 players for the upcoming draft. Prior to joining the Diamondbacks, he spent 10 years with the Cubs, three with the Rays and 25 with the Blue Jays.

Major League teams started putting together their 2017 draft coverage last summer, sending scouts to watch high school showcases, high school tournaments, the Cape Cod League, Team USA, and other events. As the summer turned to autumn, there was plenty of collegiate fall ball – along with a fair share of pro scouting days. Throw in some pretty significant junior college tournaments in January, and it’s easy to see that the draft is a year-round process.

Wilken began his Blue Jays career in 1979 as an area scout and was named national crosschecker in 1989. He was promoted to scouting director in 1995, and – during his first year in charge of the Blue Jays’ draft – the club picked seven players who would reach the majors, including Billy Koch and Casey Blake. It was a precursor of things to come.

“The first draft was a wild one,” Wilken recalled. “I’d been involved in six drafts before as the national guy and had a pretty strong hand in those drafts. But when it’s your turn to make the call, it’s a little bit different.”

The first draft was a launching point. But Wilken’s second draft really stamped him as a scouting director to keep an eye on. Looking back at it 20 years later, Toronto had the best draft class of 1997 – a draft class worth praising.

The truth: “Only” four players selected by the Blue Jays in that year’s draft went on to reach the majors. Four others – who were picked by the club but returned to school – eventually reached the big leagues after being chosen in later drafts by other clubs.

The reality: “Only” is a poor word to use. Having four players from one draft reach the majors is a solid accomplishment.

The facts: Those four players – Vernon Wells, Michael Young, Orlando Hudson and Mark Hendrickson – each saw action in at least 10 major league seasons. Wells, Young and Hudson had multiple All-Star game appearances and received big league hardware (eight combined Gold Glove Awards, a Silver Slugger for Wells, a batting title and an All-Star Game MVP for Young). Hendrickson, a 6-foot-9 left-hander, pitched for five teams over 10 years – after seeing action as a power forward with four NBA teams.

When you add it all up, those four players appeared in a combined 50 seasons of major league action.

“When evaluating drafts, that has to say something for that particular draft and that particular team,” Wilken said. “You’re always grading scouting departments on performance, but when you get four guys giving you that much time in the big leagues – that should count for something. You might have a year where you put 10 guys in the big leagues, but that might be 21 total years of service. You’re paying for quality, not just for getting guys there.”

– – –

The Blue Jays’ scouting staff was facing obstacles as the 1997 draft approached. The Labatt Brewing Company – the majority owner of the Blue Jays since their inception in 1976 – had just completed the process of selling the team, and finances were not as available to Wilken as they had been during previous drafts.

The Blue Jays – winners of back-to-back World Series in 1992-1993 – had struggled over the few years following those championships while an ownership transition was taking place. A 74-88 campaign in 1996 gave Toronto the fifth overall selection in the ensuing draft. Meanwhile, in an attempt to become relevant again at the big league level, the team made an off-season splash – signing right-hander Roger Clemens. As a result, Toronto gave up its second-round pick as compensation for the free-agent signing.

“Our budget for the draft was compromised; a lot of people thought the Blue Jays were still operating on a big budget, which we weren’t,” Wilken said. “We weren’t necessarily looking for a deal in the first round because we were picking in the five-hole, but at the same time we weren’t super-equipped to take on a monster sign if one of those style players had fallen to No. 5. We had to stay as close as we could to the budget.”

Those “monster sign-style” players – Rice pitcher Matt Anderson, Florida State outfielder J.D. Drew and UCLA third baseman Troy Glaus – were taken 1-2-3 as expected by Detroit, Philadelphia and Anaheim. If any of the first three had dropped, Wilken would not have been prepared to deviate from the plan.

“I don’t think we could have come up with the money – because those three were going to get a fair amount more than we could afford,” Wilken explained.

As the draft got closer and closer, Wilken’s plan was to select a two-sport prep star out of Bowie High School in Arlington, Texas, by the name of Vernon Wells.

There had been a lot of talk that Wells and another player who would later be selected 26th overall (outfielder Darnell McDonald, by Baltimore), would be heading to the University of Texas to play football. The more Wilken and the Blue Jays’ scouting department saw Wells play, the more they knew he was their type of guy. In the eyes of the draft prognosticators, though, Wells was not thought to be a Top 20 pick.

Vernon Wells

“We thought Vernon would be the right move for us. He was a true center fielder,” Wilken said. “He was just a natural player, and he was way ahead of himself mentally. (Toronto general manager) Gord Ash left the night before the draft and flew down to Dallas – and negotiated with Vernon and our area scout, Jim Hughes. After talking to him, Gord knew that there would be an excellent chance that we would sign him the next morning.”

Once the first three picks went as expected, only one team could prevent Wilken from selecting Wells: San Francisco.

“We didn’t know what the Giants were going to do,” he said. “I think we all knew who the first three picks would be, but no one knew what was going to happen at No. 4. The Giants were very tight-lipped, so we didn’t really know if we’d have our man.”

San Francisco selected Seton Hall pitcher Jason Grilli, and Wilken had his man.

“We took Vernon, and we paid him exactly what the slot was bonus-wise,” he said. “We thought Vernon was a true center fielder – and that he’d have a chance to hit. We thought he was mentally mature beyond his days, and that proved out – because he got to the big leagues at 20 years of age. We were honed in to him pretty good. There weren’t too many guys we would have taken over him – and definitely not the first three. Probably the only other guy you could argue that could have gone in that spot was Lance Berkman. We couldn’t have taken J.D. Drew at No. 5 with the money we had available.

“After we selected Vernon, I remember a writer saying that the Blue Jays had run away from their values and what they had done in years past – which had been taking the athlete-type guy. I thought that was a slap in the face to Vernon – since he was a pretty good athlete. As time went on, he showed that he was definitely a guy that should have been taken there.”

Wells, who made his big league debut in August 1999, developed into a three-time American League All-Star, a three-time Gold Glove Award winner and a 2003 Silver Slugger Award winner. He played in over 1,700 major league games for the Blue Jays (1999-2010), Angels (2011-2012) and Yankees (2013), batting .270/.319/.459 with 270 homers and 958 RBI.

– – –

Somehow, Michael Young lasted until the fifth round of the draft. Somehow, despite being a kid out of Division I, it took Young four minor league seasons just to reach the Double-A level. Somehow, a late-season, two at-bat cup of coffee after a 2000 trade to the Texas Rangers’ organization proved to be the jolt that Young’s career needed.

The best way to sum up the somehows: Young was your classic late bloomer.

“It’s kind of funny … there wasn’t monster play on him,” Wilken said. “Michael was originally a center fielder and went to Bishop Amat High School in the L.A. area. He got a scholarship to go to UCSB (University of California-Santa Barbara), where he was learning how to play shortstop. He had this mentality – almost like a football player – in the sense that he’d run right through ground balls … he had a big motor. A lot of professional instructors will tell you that it’s easier to tone down a player than it is to perk him up, and he fit that mode that you want to see. He was a good baseball player. His tools did not actually punch you in the face, except that he had a tremendous arm. And I mean … tremendous. Probably a ‘7’ from short – and he threw better from center field.”

Wilken was referring to the 2-8 scouting scale, with an ‘8’ being Hall-of-Fame equivalent, ‘7’ being All-Star, and so on.

“I remember the first time I watched Michael play,” he said. “UCSB was playing against Westmont College – which was an NAIA school. Even back in 1997, you didn’t see a lot of Division I schools playing NAIA teams. He had the cycle by the fourth inning – and they won something like 26-2. In the fifth inning, he made an out, and all the players on the bench started booing him.

“Chris Buckley, one of my assistants, was with me. So was Billy Moore, who was one of our better area guys; he had gotten guys like Reed Johnson, Jay Gibbons and Chris Woodward for us in the late rounds of previous drafts. I remember Buckley leaning over and saying, ‘Geez Billy. If you don’t get this guy, I don’t think you’ll ever get a higher pick.’

“I would say if you were to ask the other 29 clubs what kind of power grades they had on Michael … at that time, it didn’t look like that swing path was going to play. I don’t know if anyone had ‘50’ power on him. But look at some of the years he had in the big leagues – with close to 70 extra-base hits. It shows you what kind of player he made himself. He learned how to close the hole in his swing.

“One thing that helped us was that UCSB was a little bit off the beaten path travel-wise. He wasn’t the easiest guy to see – especially when they played at home. Knowing he was making a position switch also helped us; I don’t think ‘raw’ is the right word for it, but not many can come into the infield from center field – which he did. We just kept watching him play, and we nonchalantly took Michael in the fifth round. You know the story from there.”

Young – who was traded to the Rangers as part of a July 2000 trade for Esteban Loaiza – didn’t become a big league regular until he was nearly 25 years old. He made an A.L. All-Star team for the first time at 27 – and went on to appear in seven Midsummer Classics, winning All-Star Game MVP honors in 2006. He won the A.L. batting title in 2005, a Gold Glove at shortstop in 2008 and went to two World Series. In 1,970 games for the Rangers (2000-2012), Phillies (2013) and Dodgers (2013), he hit .300/.346/.441 with 185 homers and 1,030 RBI.

– – –

In Wilken’s first draft as Toronto’s scouting director in 1996, he used a 33rd-round pick to select a skinny high school kid by the name of Orlando Hudson. The Darlington (S.C.) High infielder opted to go the junior college route, spending one year at Spartanburg (S.C.) Methodist College.

Over that 1996-1997 school year, Hudson got a little bigger and a little stronger. When the baseball draft rolled around, Wilken once again chose Hudson – this time in the 43rd round.

“It shows you how smart I was, taking him in the 33rd round one year and in the 43rd the next year – and then he goes on to play 11 years in the majors,” Wilken joked. “We had a scout by the name of Mike Russell who originally drafted him his high school year, then a guy named Steve Williams joined us – and he continued the relationship with Orlando.

“Orlando was going to go to the University of South Carolina. Draft-and-follows don’t usually work out, but he had gotten a little bit bigger and a little bit stronger. We were able to put together the right combination of school and bonus. We had lost Ted Lilly a couple years earlier because we hadn’t gone a little bit further, and I said I wasn’t losing another player whose baseball ability we believed in.”

Wilken thought that if Hudson continued to get stronger, the contact would play up – which it did. The second baseman made two All-Star teams and won four Gold Gloves, seeing big league action with six teams from 2002-2012. In 1,345 games, he hit .273/.341/.412 – and the one-time skinny guy even homered 93 times.

“Orlando was a wonderfully animated guy who knew how to play the game. He was a ball yard rat,” Wilken said. “He always had good hands and a good-enough arm. He was a baseball player, but his strength hadn’t come in yet. At that point, he was a below-average runner – and that’s why he got to be where he was in the draft. As he got bigger and stronger, he started running better – and he was a good baserunner.

“He was just acutely aware baseball-wise – which is what separated him later on as he got stronger. It’s the same thing that happened with Chris Woodward a couple years earlier; he also was thin and underdeveloped at the time, but he was a really good baseball player with good hand/eye coordination. On top of that, Orlando was a switch-hitter. The foundation and the basis were there.”

– – –

During his time in Toronto, Wilken was an important cog in the drafting of a solid core of players that included Wells, Young, Hudson, Casey Blake, Chris Carpenter, Carlos Delgado, Ryan Freel, Jay Gibbons, Shawn Green, Roy Halladay, Reed Johnson, Steve Karsay, Jimmy Key, Alex Rios, Shannon Stewart and Craig Wilson. But it was the draft class of ’97 that really put him on the map.

“Looking back, you can smile and say we did a pretty good job – but we were also fortunate at the same time, too,” Wilken said. “Vernon Wells, in the eyes of a lot of prognosticators, was considered a way-too-high pick at the time. Michael Young made himself better and became a pretty darn good player. If anyone truly believed Orlando Hudson would become as good of a baseball player as he did, then shame on us – especially me – for letting the guy get to the 43rd round. That’s kind of the purist in me.”

Throw in Mark Hendrickson’s 10 seasons on a big league mound, and “those four put 50 years in,” Wilken said. “We had great area scouts that made it all possible. I can sit back and smile and say, ‘Hey, our department did pretty good that year.’ It’s rewarding mentally to see what did happen.”

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

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Inside The Draft Room MLBTR Originals Toronto Blue Jays

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Zack Collins (University of Miami) Interview: Draft Prospect Q&A

By Chuck Wasserstrom | May 17, 2016 at 4:03pm CDT

MLBTR continues its Draft Prospect Q&A series in order to give our readers a look at some of the top names on the board in this year’s draft. MLBTR will be chatting with some of the draft’s most well-regarded prospects as they prepare for the 2016 draft on June 9-11; we’ve already spoken with Florida outfielder Buddy Reed, prep outfielder Blake Rutherford, Mercer’s Kyle Lewis, Oklahoma’s Alec Hansen and Louisville’s Corey Ray.

University of Miami catcher Zack Collins has been down this path before. Three years ago, he was projected to be selected as high as the second round of the MLB draft – but he wasn’t picked until the 27th round due to signability questions. This time around, he figures to hear his name around the middle of the first round.

The 6’3”, 230-pound Collins is a left-handed power hitter with a very patient approach at the plate. Heading into the final week of regular-season play, he ranks among the Division I national leaders in walks (59) and on-base percentage (.560) as part of his .387/.560/.655 slash line.

Last week, Baseball America listed him No. 16 on its Top 100 Draft Prospects chart, and he’s currently 20th on the Top 100 at MLB.com. ESPN.com’s Keith Law recently wrote, “I’ve heard he’s in the mix for at least two teams in the Top 10, including Oakland.”

Collins talked with MLBTR earlier this week:

Chuck Wasserstrom: Hi Zack. Thanks for talking to me today. I want to start out with a couple draft-related questions. Coming out of high school, you could have been a high-round pick, but you weren’t because of signability – and the Cincinnati Reds selected you in the 27th round. Was there any scenario where you would have turned pro instead of going to college?

Zack Collins: “It was a number thing. My family and I set a number, and it wasn’t matched. So I had no problem going to college. It was my dream school, and I think I made the right decision.”

It still must be pretty cool to be 18 years old and know that Cincinnati just drafted you. Was it tough to say, “Thanks – but no thanks?”

“At that point, it was the 27th round – and they were offering nowhere near the number that I set. I was really excited and honored to be drafted by them – and to just be drafted at all – but it honestly wasn’t very tough to say ‘No.’ ”

You grew up less than 30 minutes from the University of Miami campus. Really, how tough of a recruiting process was it for them to lure you there?

“I always wanted to go there. I don’t think there was any other school that I had in mind. I don’t know. I went to all the camps and they liked me. One of the first offers they made to me … I said ‘Yes.’ It was pretty easy.”

There have been some pretty big-time bats that have gone through that program – like Pat Burrell, Ryan Braun and Yonder Alonso. How does it feel to have your name mentioned in the same sentence as them?

“It’s honoring, but it’s kind of tough to put my name in with them. They’ve done a lot more than I have so far. But, honestly, it feels great to be mentioned in those categories. Hopefully, I can keep it up just like them.”

[Interview continued after the page break]

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Tell me about your whole college experience. How you have evolved as a player and as a person?

“The college experience has been great. Just hanging around with all the guys all the time – and being in that locker room. It’s been great. I think I’ve matured a lot. Looking back at the high school days, I don’t know if I was ready for the pros yet. I think it’s a good thing that I went to college. I’ve just matured and got a lot better at baseball, and got three years in college.”

Zack Collins

I like to ask people for their own assessments. In your own words, what would you say is the scouting report on Zack Collins?

“I think I’m just a guy who goes out there and works hard every day to be as good as I can. I’m a team player; I’ll do whatever helps out the team. Obviously, I’m an offensive catcher, but I’m working on my defense a lot lately. I think I’ve gotten a lot better defensively, and I’m just trying to prove to guys I can catch at the next level.”

You’re human. You’ve heard the scouting reports. First round bat, don’t know where he’ll play defensively. What can you do to dispel that?

“I think I’m actually doing that this year. I’ve worked a lot on my blocking and receiving and throwing and footwork – all that kind of stuff. We actually have a new catching coach down here in Miami (Norberto Lopez), and he’s helped me a ton. I think I’ve answered that question this year.”

I like hearing that. You sound very confident about your defense. And everyone knows about your power numbers. But you’re very patient as a batter; you’re among the Division I leaders in walks and on-base percentage. What does that mean to you?

“It means a lot. I’m just trying to be a team player. I’m not going to go up there and try to hit a home run every time. Sometimes, it gets a little bit frustrating to walk three or four times in a game, but I’ll take it if that’s going to help the team win. I’ll take my walks and go on to the next game.”

There are stories that I recently read about your parents signing you up to play in an organized T-ball league when you were three years old. It sounds like baseball has always been in your blood. Has baseball always been your No. 1 sport?

“No, I’ve always played baseball. Baseball has been the main sport. My dad grew up as a football player and he tried me out in football a couple times, and I think he wanted me to play football, but I don’t think that was the sport for me. He’s the type that is just … whatever you’re going to play, just be as good as you can at it – and that was baseball.”

What is your fondest memory of growing up “all things baseball?”

“I’d have to say it’s probably winning a Gold Medal (Collins was a member of the USA Baseball 16U National Team in 2011) or a national championship in summer ball. I think winning the Gold Medal was the best. You’re playing for your country, and we beat Cuba in the Gold Medal game in Mexico.”

Other than USA Baseball, how many summer league programs have you played for?

“I grew up in summer ball probably with one team – it was an elite squad throughout my high school career. I’ve always played with the same kids growing up. A lot of them have moved on to big colleges or even the pros. I haven’t played with many teams; it’s been the elite squad, Team USA, and recently in the Cape.”

Since you’re playing all the time, do you get much of a chance to sit down and watch Major League Baseball?

“Not lately. We’ve been playing so much, and I’ve been working out so much, that you don’t really have the time. I see a lot of highlights and I like to watch certain players, but not really.”

When you need to get away from baseball, what do you like to do? What are your hobbies?

“I like to have fun with my dad. We actually do a lot of cool stuff together. We collect remote-control planes. A lot of people don’t know about it. Those are pretty fun to see those things fly. We’re into a bunch of stuff.”

I just read a story about you last night – that you have remote-control planes and cars and trucks.

“I used to be into jet skis and four-wheelers and all that kind of stuff. But once baseball got serious and I knew I had a chance to move on to the next level and make it a career, I got away from that stuff and stayed off the machines – and held the remote control in my hand and not get hurt.”

And you said that’s a “Dad and Me” sort of thing, right?

“Yeah, for sure. He’s pretty much my best friend. We spend a lot of time together.”

I also saw in that same story that you like to watch Nickelodeon.

“Yeah (laughter). My roommate for three years has been Willie Abreu. He likes Nickelodeon, and we’re both kids at heart. We don’t watch the little kid stuff, but we watch SpongeBob.”

I didn’t know if it was cartoons or Nick at Nite. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask.

“You know, we like Friends and all that kind of stuff.”

You seem comfortable doing interviews. How much of this stuff is exciting and how much is really a distraction?

“It’s not a distraction. It’s very exciting. Honestly, it’s humbling to talk to all these different people and have them want to talk to me. It’s just great knowing how many relationships you can build through the game. Just going through the process has been fun.”

I know Miami has been playing very well. Have you allowed yourself to think about what you’re going to do on the day of the draft?

“No. I’m trying to think about our next game. Every game is a big game for us right now. I’m trying to get my first (championship) there. Just taking it day-by-day.”

I’m not asking you to compare yourself to him, because you’re your own person, but it sounds like you’ve heard a lot of the same things people were saying about Kyle Schwarber. Big-time left-handed power – but he’ll have to move out from behind the plate. When I say that, do you want to hear that?

“It’s always good to be compared to a guy like that. Obviously, I love catching. I’ve worked on it for a long time now. But again, just like he did, whatever the team needs for me to do – or whatever the team thinks I would be best at – is what I’m going to do.”

To wrap this up, I do want to ask about the high school you graduated from – American Heritage School. There have been a bunch of guys drafted from American Heritage over the last 10-15 years (22 since 2001, according to Baseball-Reference.com). What kind of a baseball factory is it?

“It’s a powerhouse – not only in baseball, but in basketball and football, too. And even softball. That school has a ton of state championships, and they’re also well known for academics. I think it’s just a powerhouse school down here, to where everyone pretty much wants to go to it. It’s a really nice school. Good academics … good athletics. You couldn’t really ask for anything more. They don’t accept you unless you have the grades, too.”

So it sounds like you’ve had a pretty great experience the last few years between high school and college.

“Yes, for sure.”

– – –

Chuck Wasserstrom spent 25 years in the Chicago Cubs’ front office – 16 in Media Relations and nine in Baseball Operations. Now a freelance writer, his behind-the-scenes stories of his time in a big league front office can be found on www.chuckblogerstrom.com.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

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Draft Prospect Q&A Interviews MLBTR Originals Zack Collins

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Buddy Reed (University of Florida) Interview: Draft Prospect Q&A

By Chuck Wasserstrom | May 12, 2016 at 10:35am CDT

MLBTR continues its Draft Prospect Q&A series in order to give our readers a look at some of the top names on the board in this year’s draft. MLBTR will be chatting with some of the draft’s most well-regarded prospects as they prepare for the 2016 draft on June 9-11; we’ve already spoken with prep outfielder Blake Rutherford, Mercer’s Kyle Lewis, Oklahoma’s Alec Hansen and Louisville’s Corey Ray.

Center fielder Buddy Reed is one of the more intriguing names in this year’s draft. The 6’4”, 207-pound University of Florida junior ranks as one of the top all-around players in college thanks to his speed and defensive ability, but the big question is how teams look at the switch-hitter’s bat.

Reed grew up just outside of Baltimore, where he was a well-regarded hockey player. He went to boarding school nearly seven hours from home at St. George’s School in Middletown, R.I. – a tiny school with a vast array of recognizable alums (the Bush family, the Vanderbilts, as well as many politicians and journalists). Reed went there on a hockey scholarship, where his coach was former Washington Capitals center Ryan Mulhern.

Reed, a 35th-round selection of the Texas Rangers in the 2013 draft, figures to be selected considerably higher this time around. Last week, Baseball America listed him No. 21 on its Top 100 Draft Prospects chart, and he’s currently 16th on the Top 100 at MLB.com. He leads Florida in runs scored (41) and stolen bases (22-for-24), including a straight steal of home April 22 against Georgia.

Reed and his No. 1-ranked Gators squad have a big SEC showdown series this weekend against No. 7 Vanderbilt. He talked with MLBTR earlier this week:

Chuck Wasserstrom: Hi Buddy, thanks for taking the time to talk with me. I’ll start out by saying there haven’t been a whole lot of Buddy Reed stories out there, but it looks like you have a pretty fascinating background. I’m going to start off with a couple baseball questions, then get into your story. There are some talented college outfielders out there right now. What makes you different?

Buddy Reed: “I haven’t been playing baseball as long or as seriously as other people in the SEC and other conferences around the country.”

I want to hear about Buddy Reed the player. Describe your game for me. I don’t want a scouting report that I can read on the internet. I want to hear you tell me about your game.

“I would describe myself as a streaky guy. I’m a tall guy who can bunt. I can get on base. I can steal second, third, and even home. I’m a threat on the base paths. I’m a threat from the outfield with my arm and my speed; I can track down a lot of balls. And I can hit.”

[Full interview after the page break]

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I’m finding your background very intriguing. But first I’d like to know, how did you wind up “Buddy” when your given name is Michael?

“It started when I was first born. My mom always called me Buddy. From there, she just kept it – and it stuck.”

You landed in Gainesville after attending St. George’s School, a boarding school about seven hours from where you grew up. How did you wind up at a boarding school in the northeast?

Buddy Reed

“I got a scholarship for hockey. It was a small school – ninth grade through 12th grade, about 350-380 kids. We had (the Atlantic Ocean) across the street. It’s a prep school, so you get a lot of people who go on to Ivy League schools from there. Sports are starting to come along, but it’s really not a sports school. It’s more of an academic-based school, but sports are getting up to date. And it’s fun – it gives you that college experience and you’re away from home. You have to do everything on your own. The biggest thing is you create relationships with the people you meet. I’ve got friends from all over the country and the world since I went there. So it was pretty cool.”

There are some pretty strong alums from St. George’s, but not much from the athletic side. What would it be like if people said, “He came from our school?”

“That would be pretty cool. I haven’t been back there in a while, but I think that would be pretty cool. My hockey coach (Ryan Mulhern) played for the Washington Capitals. He went to St. George’s then went to Brown University before playing for the Capitals. That would be cool to be remembered as one of those guys who went to that school and made a name for himself in a pro sport – and to have had the athletic and academic support.

What position did you play in hockey?

“I played right wing, left wing, and center.”

So you played on the offensive side.

“Yes I was.”

You also played soccer. Offense there, too?

“Same there. I was an attacker.”

Growing up … hockey fan first, or a fan of all sports?

“I’m actually a fan of all sports. Growing up, I played hockey mostly – and soccer. I still watch hockey all the time. Whenever I get a chance to skate, I skate. I watch soccer – English Premier League, MLS. I play FIFA a lot. I’m a fan of the sports that I played. And I’m a fan of basketball, football – and baseball, obviously.”

You said you try to skate when you can. Do you get a chance to do that in Gainesville?

“No, usually when I’m home.”

Is it true at St. George’s that you went to school six days a week?

“Yes, six days – Monday through Saturday.”

The school’s official street address is listed as being on Purgatory Road. How tough was it there?

“It was different. Not everyone has to go to class six days a week. It wasn’t bad. We lived on campus. You would see the same people every day. It was a change, actually, from boarding school to college and getting that Saturday off. But it was fun. They got as much as they could out of us. You had to learn a lot more, I guess. Saturday, you just woke up and said, ’OK, I have to go to class.’ You still had the night off. The schedule worked out, because we had athletic competitions on Wednesdays and Saturdays – so they wanted us active in class on Saturday.”

I read about a famous Geronimo sloop that’s connected to St. George’s.

“The boat that goes from our school to the Bahamas.”

Did you get to do one of those voyages?

“No, I didn’t get to do it because I was playing a sport all three seasons. That was usually for people who didn’t play a sport – or for those who don’t play all three.”

You went there for hockey, but when did the shift begin toward baseball as a potential college scholarship sport for you?

“After my sophomore year, I played summer baseball and did one of those Perfect Game showcase things. I guess I decided I wanted to play soccer, hockey and baseball to see which one worked out for college.”

Did you have any hockey scholarship offers?

“I had a couple schools. The one that had the most interest was Providence.”

What about on the baseball side? Who was looking at you in addition to Florida?

“After I committed to Florida, there were other schools that wanted me like Texas and Texas Tech. But Florida stayed on top of me, and a lot of schools stopped talking to me. But I still got some late calls from some northern schools.”

When the Rangers drafted you in 2013, did you give them any serious consideration – or had you already decided you were going to college?

“I did a little bit, because I didn’t really know what the whole baseball draft process was like. I was so unsure what to expect so I gave it some consideration, but then I told my parents that I thought I’d develop more as a player and academically if I went to Florida for three or four years – and then hopefully get drafted higher after that.”

How much culture shock was it going from a school of under 400 students to one with nearly 50,000 students?

“It was pretty different. I didn’t know what to expect. The people that I met and the people that I’ve gotten to know really well have given me the opportunity that I probably wouldn’t have gotten if I had gone to a smaller school. It’s not just baseball; it’s building relationships with people in my mode here – communications. Baseball will only last so long for me. There’s a lot more to it after. It’s pretty cool meeting a lot of new people and seeing what the college experience has to offer.”

Tell me a little bit about your switch-hitting. Everything I’ve heard is that your swing mirrors itself pretty much the same from both sides of the plate.

“I’d say so. It depends on how I set up. It’s still a work in progress. For now, I’m just ‘See the ball, hit the ball.’ I try to keep it as simple as possible. If changes need to be made, I’ll make adjustments.”

Are you one of those players who looks in the mirror to visualize how you look from the other side?

“Yeah, definitely. And watching videos from my previous at-bats after practice.”

Is it true that your mom taught you to switch-hit?

“Yes, she did when I was growing up. I don’t remember how old I was, but she put up a tee and told me to hit from one side – and when I got tired, just hit from the other side. So I kept doing that.”

Quick question, since you’ve done both this year: Walk-off homer or straight steal of home?

“Oh jeez, that’s tough … I think the steal of home was pretty cool.”

What was going through your head in the game against Georgia when you got the sign?

“I was given the sign. The pitcher was pretty slow to the plate, and he was pitching from the windup. I knew I had to be aggressive. The pitcher started his motion and I got a big jump – and I slid in pretty easily. That was pretty big.”

What’s bigger for you – a highlight offensive play or a highlight defensive play?

“I’d say a defensive play. That’s more of a highlight, just because I like the things that hold off runs being scored.”

Any significance in your wearing No. 23?

“You know, everybody wants to be like Mike. Freshman year, it was available. Twenty-three – everyone likes it.”

Have you allowed yourself to think about what you’re going to do on the day of the draft?

“No, I’m not focusing on that at all. I’m focusing on winning – and doing whatever I can for the team to win. We’re all here supporting each other. Whether it’s my last go-around or not, I just want to win, and I want to have fun doing it. That’s what it really comes down to … having fun and being a good teammate … on-and-off the field … caring about the guys that I’ve met here. The draft isn’t a big concern; that will take care of itself. I just want to win a national championship.”

How close-knit is your team?

“We’re really close. Chemistry was one of the biggest things we put a lot of emphasis on going into this season. This is one of the closest teams I’ve ever been on. We hang out with each other all the time. We always have each other’s backs. We’re like brothers. It’s cool to see it, because I’m an only child. So it’s like I have 30 other brothers when I want to see them. We care for each other. We want to get the most out of each other. And that’s pretty cool.”

– – –

Chuck Wasserstrom spent 25 years in the Chicago Cubs’ front office – 16 in Media Relations and nine in Baseball Operations. Now a freelance writer, his behind-the-scenes stories of his time in a big league front office can be found on www.chuckblogerstrom.com.

Photo courtesy of UAA Communications.

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2016 Amateur Draft Draft Prospect Q&A Interviews MLBTR Originals Buddy Reed

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Blake Rutherford (Chaminade Prep) Interview: Draft Prospect Q&A

By Chuck Wasserstrom | April 26, 2016 at 11:46am CDT

MLBTR continues its Draft Prospect Q&A series in order to give our readers a look at some of the top names on the board in this year’s draft. MLBTR will be chatting with some of the draft’s most well-regarded prospects as they prepare for the 2016 draft on June 9-11; we’ve already spoken with Mercer’s Kyle Lewis, Oklahoma’s Alec Hansen and Louisville’s Corey Ray.

It’s wait-and-see time for Blake Rutherford. The left-handed-hitting centerfielder has been at the top of the prospect ranking charts all year – and figures to be among the first high school players selected in the June draft.

Rutherford, who attends Chaminade College Preparatory School in West Hills, CA, has been known in scout circles for years. In fact, he committed to UCLA as a freshman and played on the international stage last summer – earning a Gold Medal as a member of USA Baseball’s 18U world championship-winning team in Japan.

The 6’2 ½”, 195-pound Rutherford was recently called “the most advanced pure bat in the class, college or high school” by ESPN.com’s Keith Law – who ranks him as the draft’s No. 4 prospect. Rutherford began the spring as Baseball America’s No. 3 prospect, while MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo has him coming in at No. 6. Rutherford took some time out to talk with MLBTR:

Chuck Wasserstrom: Your brother, Cole is a first baseman at Cornell University. What have you been learning about college from your brother?

Blake Rutherford: “He’s told me that college is a great experience. Obviously, it’s hard sometimes to juggle both school and baseball, and he’s at a real prestigious school in Cornell. But he’s having a great time … he loves it. He just said it’s a really good experience for him, and he’s happy that he went across the country to go play baseball so that he could get a whole other perspective on life.”

How much of that is going to play in your decision as to whether you’re going to go to UCLA?

“It probably won’t. I’m going to have to make my own decision as to what’s best for me. He made the decision what’s best for him. He got into a good school like Cornell to play baseball. UCLA is another amazing school where you can get a great education. But I’m going to have to wait and see what happens with the draft. I’ll talk to him about it. We’ll talk about everything. When it comes down to it, I’m going to sit down with my family and make a decision that’s best for me – like he did when he made the decision to go to Cornell.”

I want you to describe your game for me. I don’t want a scouting report that I can read online. I want to hear you tell me about your game. So, Blake, how would you describe Blake?

“I would describe my game as someone who can do all things on a baseball field. I truly believe I’m a five-tool player who has a very overall strong game. I feel like the main thing people have always talked about is my hitting, but I really feel like my fielding, my running and my throwing have all taken a huge step this year. I’m also someone who’s super competitive, and I’m not going to stop until I get what I want – which is winning. I’m just someone who’s passionate and loves to play the game, but stays calm and cool during all situations.”

For most readers not in California, you’re a name. What do you do on the field that makes you unique, or at least makes you stand out?

“The thing that makes me stand out is I can try to change the game with my bat, on the base paths or in the field. I can make a diving catch that can save runs or save a game. I can steal bases consecutively; I’ve stolen home a couple times. I have the ability to hit a home run, hit a ball in the gap or get the base hit to get a rally started.”

Your high school was selected to the play in the National High School Invitational last month in North Carolina – where you went 9-for-14 facing some of the elite high school pitchers in this country. What was that experience like?

“That experience was unbelievable. USA Baseball did an amazing job putting us up and getting us around and getting the fields ready. But the competition out there was crazy. Every team had a couple guys on the mound that could deal. A lot of teams had hitters 1-through-9 that could absolutely mash. We knew going into it that we were going to have to play our best games. We did for three games, but in the fourth game we kind of ran out of energy and a couple things went the other way. I was really happy with how we did as a team. My performance individually … I was pretty happy with it because it helped my team win a couple of those games.

Baseball-wise, you’ve played on some pretty big stages already and done some pretty neat things like playing overseas. What stands out for you?

“This last summer, going to Japan (with the 18U USA Baseball national team) – I think that really stands out. We faced some adversity. We lost a couple exhibition games. We lost an earlier game to Japan. So we were kind of down a little bit. Then we came together as a team and bonded. We really got super close and we were able to pull it off. We came from behind in three or four of those games. And then to be able to defeat Japan in their big stadium in front of all their fans for the Gold Medal – that’s something I’ll probably never forget.”

To get there, you needed a 9th-inning rally against South Korea in the tournament opener – and you hit a clutch go-ahead three-run homer.

“We started the inning with a Will Benson walk. And then Hagen Danner had a pinch-hit double to set it up. Second-and-third, no outs … I knew somehow I had to get one run in. Their pitcher had thrown me all fastballs. I fouled a couple off. It got to 3-and-2, and I just got the barrel to the ball and it took off. At first, I didn’t know if it was gone; it’s kind of hard to hit the ball out of the park there. I never saw it go over. I just heard the crowd go crazy. And I saw the runners stop running – so I knew it must have gone out. I remember that I felt happy because we were now winning, but I wasn’t out of control or too excited because I knew South Korea still had to come up to hit – and they had a couple good hitters. Luckily, we were able to get a couple more insurance runs.”

You won the Gold Medal there, and as a result – your team was honored prior to Game Four of the World Series last fall (at Citi Field in New York). How amazing was that?

“That was so exciting. Not only were we at the World Series, but it was the first time the USA players had gotten together (since Japan). So we were just hanging out and loving every second of it. But just going on the field and meeting a lot of the guys and seeing the atmosphere of the World Series. It made all of us want to make it that much more.”

Growing up in Southern California, what are your favorite things to do?

“Obviously, going to the beach … Hanging out with my friends … Anything competitive. We might go hit on the local baseball field or go laser tagging. Me and my brother always grew up super competitive. We have a lot of friends who are competitive. So we ended up playing baseball or football. There was always some activity going on outside.”

Read on for more after the break …

Read more

What about a favorite baseball team?

“The Yankees.”

I was expecting a California team. I’ll ask … Why?

“I was born in New Jersey. I didn’t live there that long, but I was born there, and my favorite player growing up was Derek Jeter. So growing up watching him play, I just loved the Yankees.”

Obviously, different positions, but do you try to pattern yourself after his game in any way?

“I played shortstop until I was in eighth grade, so we played the same position for a long time. From three years old until 14, I played shortstop. Then I made the transition to the outfield. But I do pattern my game after him. The way he carried himself. Obviously, we hit a little different and have different stances, but I don’t think you pattern a mental game any better than Derek Jeter … the way he carried himself in the biggest moments in baseball and really in sports.”

You seem really comfortable doing this interview. Is this really natural for you, or is it because it’s the draft year?

“I’m pretty comfortable with it. When I committed to UCLA as a freshman, I had to do some interviews. It seems like every year, there are more and more interviews. I don’t feel a whole lot of pressure during this situation. I love getting to talk to people and like talking about the whole process and everything that’s been going on. It’s not something that I’ve really been uncomfortable with. It’s something I’m becoming more comfortable with, and I’m grateful. If I do get lucky enough that I am drafted and I sign, the media is a big part of what baseball is.”

Have you allowed yourself to think about the draft, or is it something you’re trying to keep at the back of your brain?

“There’s times when I’ll start thinking about it, then I’m like ‘You can’t start thinking about it. There’s a long season to go.’ But now, my main focus is winning the Mission League championship. There’s times when all of a sudden I’ll start thinking about it. Really, it’s in the back of my head. I’m not going to think about it until June 9. I’ll catch myself at times. Other than that, I’m just going to keep working hard and hopefully make a team want me enough to draft me.”

I’m guessing you do hear what people say. If you do get picked as high as it sounds like you will, is college an option for you? Has that decision been made?

“We honestly haven’t made a decision. We really haven’t talked about it yet. My family and I aren’t going to talk about it until my season ends. And then we’ll decide what the best situation is. I’m just going to have to wait and see what happens. Obviously, I want to play professional baseball. That’s my dream. I think that’s every kid’s dream who really loves baseball. So I really want that. But I have to wait and see what happens.”

– – –

Chuck Wasserstrom spent 25 years in the Chicago Cubs’ front office – 16 in Media Relations and nine in Baseball Operations. Now a freelance writer, his behind-the-scenes stories of his time in a big league front office can be found on www.chuckblogerstrom.com.

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Draft Prospect Q&A Interviews MLBTR Originals Uncategorized Blake Rutherford

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Rob Antony Discusses University Of Minnesota: MLBTR College Series

By Chuck Wasserstrom | April 25, 2016 at 9:05am CDT

MLBTR continues a series where we interview top baseball executives about their college years. We’ll ask about why those chose their school, memorable moments, their favorite professor, important connections made, college learnings they still use today, their path to a big league front office and more. 

Thus far, we’ve already chatted with Tigers GM Al Avila, Cubs GM Jed Hoyer, Phillies GM Matt Klentak and Reds GM Dick Williams. Next up in our question-and-answer series is Minnesota Twins Vice President and Assistant General Manager Rob Antony – a graduate of the University of Minnesota.

* * * * *

Hi Rob! Thanks for talking to MLBTR. Just like me, you began your baseball career in media relations before moving into baseball operations. Tell me about your start.

“I grew up in Minneapolis, about 15 minutes from the Metrodome. I went to high school in Minneapolis. When I graduated, I was all set to go play baseball at Minnesota Morris, which was 2 ½ hours away – and I was excited. I wasn’t a Division I player by any stretch of the imagination, but I was looking forward to being able to keep playing while getting a good education. Of course, the summer before I went there, I got a call from the head coach – and he told me he just got fired, and a new guy was taking over and that he’d be in touch. Well, he did get in touch, and he let me know he was going to recruit his own people. It was understandable, but at the time, it was disheartening. Now, as you get into the business and you see everything, you understand how that goes. I just opted to stay home and go to the University of Minnesota. I was done playing. I didn’t play college ball. I focused my sights on becoming a sports journalist. I just wanted a career in sports, whether it be writing about hockey or baseball – which were my two preferences. When I went to the University, I started on the journalism path. After about a year, when they started telling me I needed to take magazine layout and editorial classes and all these different things, I started thinking to myself – ‘I just want to write.’ I wanted to cover the Twins or the North Stars. So I shifted gears into speech communications and broadcasting. And that was a good move for me. The journalism classes have helped me throughout my career. But I just felt more comfortable in communications. It ended up leading to an internship with an NBC affiliate here in Minneapolis – KARE TV – in the sports department.”

Rob Antony

And that led you to the Twins, correct?

“I got a large break in 1987. They recommended me to the Twins; they needed somebody in the media relations department. The guy who was their intern in the summer had to go back to school in August. At the U. of M., we were on a trimester system and didn’t start until the end of September. I was available to come in and work all day every day. And the Twins of ’87 were marching their way towards the playoffs – which was an unbelievable experience. I was then fortunate enough to intern in media relations all of 1988. There was some movement, and I was hired after I graduated … My time in media relations was great. Some of the things I learned were the continued development of communications – which is so important in our business. I think that’s the case in any business. And the ability to write, and to speak to people, and in front of people has been invaluable as my career has progressed.”

Let’s talk about your time at the University of Minnesota, which is a big commuter school. Did you live at home, or were you able to live on campus?

‘“I lived at home, and I did not have that ‘great’ college experience. A lot of my friends from high school went there as well and lived at home, too. It was an economic thing as much as anything. We could drive 20 minutes. We carpooled together. But we didn’t have a lot of money and we couldn’t afford to just live on campus. I have two kids now that are in college, and one of the things I told them was, ‘You pick where you want to go. You decide what you want to do. But whatever you do, you’re going to go and live on campus and get the entire college experience. That’s something I wish I could have had that I wasn’t able to do, and I want you guys to have that.’ For me, it was a different deal. It was about getting the degree and learning as much as I could – and then moving on to a professional life.”

But there must have been college learnings that have become part of your day-to-day work life, correct?

“Most definitely. Some of that just comes from going to a major university the size of the University of Minnesota. There were 60,000 students. When you had to register for classes, you’d get up there and say you’d want this class, and you’d get ‘Sorry, full.’ You’re now at the front of the line, so you’d get ‘What’s your next choice?’ and you’d have to react on the fly. You needed to know exactly what you needed to take and everything else to make adjustments. Some of the logistics of dealing with those things … I had to learn how to study. I had to learn how to organize and manage my time – especially when I was interning, when I was working 30-4o hours as well as going to class, trying to get my homework done. As it turned out, it probably couldn’t have worked out better with me staying home. I probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity with KARE TV, which wouldn’t have led to my opportunity here. So it’s funny how things can work out for you. I met a lot of good people at school. You do some things with them, but it’s altogether different when people can live on campus. That’s just a whole different lifestyle.”

Did you have favorite professors or influential classes that really helped prepare you?

“Even though I moved out of journalism, I think some of the introductory journalism classes really set the tone for me to know that communication is an important part of things. It became a strength because, during the rest of my college career, I really leaned toward writing-intensive classes. In your article on Jed (Hoyer), he mentioned that he got his degree in American History. I guess if I had to do it all over again, I would have taken more statistics classes and some other things that might have helped me out. I know I would have focused on Spanish; I would have taken Spanish for four years and done everything I could to become well-spoken and bilingual. In this game, it would be such an advantage – and it is for those people who are.”

That sounds like something you tell students who are seeking college advice.

“I give advice to a lot of kids who call and write letters – asking for advice how to get into the game. What are the best ways to get into the game? It’s not an easy thing to do. But there are so many different avenues. My recommendation is – go to college and get your degree in what you have the most interest in. If you put all your eggs in one basket and you go for sports management, there’s a chance that will work out quite well for you. For some clubs, that’s a big separator – and you might get the nod over somebody else.”

On your transcript, what does it say? Bachelor of …

“Speech communication, with a minor in English.

Growing up, were you a Twins fan?

“Absolutely. And I’ve always been a Gopher fan. I continue to cheer for them.”

If you had the choice to do it all over again, would you have stayed at home and gone to the University of Minnesota – or would you have left the area?

“I don’t have any regrets about staying in the area. Minnesota is home for me. Not a lot of people get to grow up cheering for a team and then work for that team. So many people in baseball work where they can – because there’s an opportunity. I was just fortunate to have the opportunity here. If I wouldn’t have stayed at home, I don’t think it would have all fallen in line the way that it did. I don’t know anything other than Minnesota. I don’t know anything other than the Twins. I’ve been fortunate enough to be with them since 1987. I like talking with people from other organizations to see how they do things and get other ideas. I don’t regret staying at home; I’m a Minnesota guy. I’m very appreciative of everything I’ve gotten from the Twins – and I’ve been able to stay home and be where I want to be and do what I want to do. And with this organization, we’ve had so much continuity. There’s always been a definite structure in the hierarchy. Everybody gets their voice heard.”

* * * * *

Chuck Wasserstrom spent 25 years in the Chicago Cubs’ front office – 16 in Media Relations and nine in Baseball Operations. Now a freelance writer, his behind-the-scenes stories of his time in a big league front office can be found on www.chuckblogerstrom.com.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

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Interviews MLBTR College Series MLBTR Originals Minnesota Twins Rob Antony

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Al Avila Discusses St. Thomas University: MLBTR College Series

By Chuck Wasserstrom | April 22, 2016 at 11:10am CDT

MLBTR continues a series where we interview top baseball executives about their college years. We’ll ask about why those chose their school, memorable moments, their favorite professor, important connections made, college learnings they still use today, their path to a front office and more. 

Thus far, we’ve already chatted with Cubs GM Jed Hoyer, Phillies GM Matt Klentak and Reds GM Dick Williams. Next up in our question-and-answer series is Detroit Tigers Executive Vice President, Baseball Operations and General Manager Al Avila – a graduate of St. Thomas University (Miami Gardens, FL).

* * * * *

Al, first off, thanks for talking to MLBTR. You have taken a different path than most – in that you played professionally before going to college. Can you talk about the initial college steps after your playing career?

“I went to St. Thomas University for both undergrad and graduate school. Both majors were the same – Sports Administration.”

How did you arrive at St. Thomas?

Al Avila

“I graduated high school when I was 17, and that fall I went to Miami-Dade Community College for a year. The following summer, I was signed by the Dodgers’ organization as a non-drafted free agent. I played with their rookie team, but was released the following spring. I didn’t go back to school until I was 24. I went to St. Thomas as a student and as a coach for the baseball team. The head baseball coach was Paul Mainieri – who is now the coach at LSU. So I went to school and worked for free as a coach. After I graduated, I did an internship with the Dodgers in Vero Beach during spring training of 1986. The Dodgers actually then sent me to Latin America to help out in the building of their baseball complex in Las Palmas (Dominican Republic). In 1987, I worked for the Daytona Beach Admirals, an expansion franchise in the Florida State League. That team didn’t last very long. Lucky for me, Paul Mainieri called me back and offered me a full-time assistant coaching job at St. Thomas University.”

So basically, once you got to college, you stayed in college for quite a while.

“Yes. I went back there working for him as an assistant coach. After the 1988 season, he got the head coaching job at the United States Air Force Academy, and the university hired me as their full-time baseball coach. The following year, they made me the athletics director. I was the athletics director and baseball coach there until I joined the Florida Marlins when they first came into existence.”

Can you tell me why you picked St. Thomas when you decided to go back to school?

“There were two reasons. First, they had the Sports Administration program. At that time, they were only the second school in the entire country with that program. The first one was at Ohio University. Back in those days, Sports Administration was pretty much a brand new program. Now, every school pretty much has it. Second, I grew up in the game. My dad (Ralph Avila) worked as a scout with the Dodgers. I played baseball; it just didn’t work out for me as a player. It was about the shortest career you could imagine. So in order to stay in the game, I felt I had to get that degree in Sports Administration. At the same time, what made it perfect for me was that Paul hired me as an assistant coach. I was able to get coaching experience at the college level. That, with the degree, helped me tremendously.”

Can you tell me about some of the other important connections you made at St. Thomas that led to your eventual front office career?

“Being in Miami, I established relationships with Ron Fraser at the University of Miami. I was around Don Shula, the Miami Dolphins coach, since St. Thomas University was their training camp – and Don had an office there. Those relationships helped me get my job with the Marlins. Ron Fraser was one of the guys helping spearhead trying to get a Major League franchise in South Florida. And Don Shula worked for (Dolphins owner) Wayne Huizenga, who was buying the Marlins. They both put in a good word for me. I had other relationships in the game, like Tommy Lasorda through my dad. Peter O’Malley was the Dodgers’ owner at the time – and I had interned with them. So I had some good references.”

While your biggest route to where you are now came on the college baseball field, can you tell me about things you learned in the classroom that apply to what you do today?

“At St. Thomas back in those days, they had a lot of adjunct professors who were in the sports business. At the time, there was a Miami Grand Prix, and they had people come in and do a class. There was a guy who worked for the Dolphins who was an adjunct professor there. We had a guy from CNN who was there. So we had people who worked in different parts of sports who came in to teach for a semester. They brought in people working in the sports industry who gave you a realistic perspective of the day-to-day operations of working in sports. A lot of it had to do with marketing … sales … budgeting … things of that nature. And we also learned the legal aspects of sports – another area that it was great to get familiarized with. And of course, communications. For me, the uniqueness of it was that Paul Mainieri also taught a Sports Administration class. So I was on the field as a coach and going to school at the same time – which was very helpful. Then, when I became the athletics director, I gained actual work experience in budgeting, hiring and firing, and managing people. And as a baseball coach, I was recruiting players and coaching players. All those things were huge for me in building up the experience needed to run a department.”

Do you ever get back to visit your alma mater?

“It just so happened that we opened this season in Miami, so it was a homecoming for me. When I was there, St. Thomas University reached out to me. They want to put me in their Hall of Fame. I haven’t talked to them yet about it, but I’d like to think I’ll be going back there in the fall for that.”

Your road to being the Tigers’ general manager is pretty different from just about everyone else in the game. You have a different perspective than most. What type of advice do you give students who are looking to one day work in a Major League front office?

“I get asked that a lot. One thing I tell people is that everybody’s path is different, period. Not one path is the same. The biggest thing I can tell people is … whatever job you can get – go get it, and do that job as if it were your first and last job and the job you want to do forever. What you leave behind in that job is going to dictate the next job – and if you’re going to get the next job. My first internship was with the Vero Beach Dodgers – but I also helped in media relations with the big league club during spring training. After that, I worked at Daytona Beach. That job didn’t have anything to do with baseball operations; it dealt with sales, marketing, ticket operations, and the day-to-day operations of running a minor league baseball team. I wanted to be on the field, but that was my start – and that’s what I did. And I was lucky I did that. A couple years later, Paul (Mainieri) asked me to come back to coach. What I initially told Paul was I didn’t want to coach in college; I wanted to work in pro baseball. Paul said, ‘Hey listen, you don’t know how things will work out. I could be moving on, and you can be the head coach of this school someday. Or, this job can lead to another job – like scouting. So you don’t know where this job will take you.’ I took his advice and took the job. And I loved it. It was probably the best job I had my entire life, as I thoroughly enjoyed coaching in college. I tell people that I didn’t plan on being a college coach. I didn’t plan on working in minor league baseball selling advertising. I didn’t plan for it. I just took the route where the door was open – that’s the route I took. Wherever you go, work your butt off. Don’t go there as a stepping stone job. Work it like it’s your last job. And if you do a great job, people will take notice.”

What other advice can you give?

“What people call networking – to me, it came natural. In college and the jobs I had, I just met people. You don’t have to send out 100 letters and 100 emails. Go out and meet people. That’s how relationships are established. And when the timing is right, things will happen. You can’t force timing. Just put yourself in a position where someone will want to hire you when the timing is right. I know how hard it is to get a job. I’m 57 years old. You see how fast and how young some of these guys are who have become GMs. I’m the opposite. It took me a long time.”

But you earned it.

“That’s right. And I can say Paul Mainieri really helped me the most. It was tough going back to school at an older age. I was already married. My wife was working. I wasn’t making any money. The beginnings were very humble and there was a lot of sacrifice. Sometimes you started to think, ‘Where is this taking me? Where is it going? Is it all worth it? And Paul was very helpful to me – almost as a mentor, and he’s only a couple years older than me. He was always very helpful, always very encouraging, always teaching. Having a guy like that was very important – and he helped me a lot. And his dad was the same. Doc Mainieri helped many people in the same way during his long tenure at Miami-Dade, guys like Jim Hendry and Randy Bush, to name a couple.”

Safe to say your college experience is a little more unique than most of your colleagues.

“Everybody gets to different positions in a different way. No two routes are the same.”

* * * * *

Chuck Wasserstrom spent 25 years in the Chicago Cubs’ front office – 16 in Media Relations and nine in Baseball Operations. Now a freelance writer, his behind-the-scenes stories of his time in a big league front office can be found on www.chuckblogerstrom.com.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images

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Detroit Tigers Interviews MLBTR College Series MLBTR Originals Al Avila

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