Atlanta Braves outfielder Jason Heyward is hitting darn near .300/.400/.600 through his first 40 games in the Major Leagues, and he won’t be able to buy himself an adult beverage until August 9. From what I’ve seen, he is an aggressive line-drive hitter with a phenomenal ability to hit the ball on the screws.
Here is an interesting story about how the Braves got him with their first pick of the 2007 Draft – after 13 other teams had passed on him.
I was sitting in the War Room of one of those 13 teams, and I wouldn’t use the words “passed up” to describe what happened. Of course, Heyward’s name came up in the weeks and months before the Draft, but our regional scouts’ and cross-checker’s comments were very similar to what Carroll Rogers reports in the story:
…Heyward walked 43 times in less than 100 plate appearances his senior year [of high school].
“I never saw him swing the bat until the third or fourth game I went to,” [Braves Scouting Director Roy] Clark said of Heyward’s senior season. “They just didn’t pitch to him. Even though area scouts might like him a lot, the cross-checkers and the scouting directors come in and they would get frustrated.”
Sure enough, we went through our video and had frame after frame of Heyward taking pitches. Our cross-checker relayed what the area scout had told him about Heyward’s ability, and of course the cross-checker was able to talk about Heyward’s body and athleticism. In the end, however, we had better information on other players and Heyward’s name fell off the list of possible players to take with our first pick.
Truth be told, several position players had similar stories that spring, and I’m sure that it happens every spring. High school coaches who want to win aren’t going to have their high school pitchers throw to the men playing among boys, and the fact that Barry Bonds was walking hundreds of times a season in the Major Leagues only a few years ago only strengthens the rhetoric behind the walk as a defensive weapon.
Rogers hints that there may have been something more sinister going on to keep clubs from getting a good look at Heyward and gently points a finger in the direction of Atlanta’s front office.
There are stories of phantom bad medical reports on pitcher Adam Wainwright and a fax circulated saying [Jeff] Francoeur wanted a $4 million signing bonus. In Heyward’s case, Clark was supposedly in cahoots with [Heyward's] high school coach to throw bad batting practice so other scouts couldn’t get a good look.
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“Roy will tell the story where, he laughs about it now, he’d be at the games in the spring and he’d go up to scouting directors and go, ‘Man, too bad he doesn’t take the bat off his shoulder more,”‘ [Baseball America editor Jim] Callis said. “They really worked it.”
How delicious! A bit of the old-fashioned smoke-and-mirrors that still has a place in modern scouting. All told, the story of how the Braves got Heyward with the 14th pick is a story of diligence and savvy the likes of which any good scout ought to have.
The Marlins, for their part, weren’t fooled – at least, area scout Brian Bridges wasn’t. He had his eye on Heyward and compared his swing to that of Willie McCovey – very high praise for a ballplayer at any level. What’s more, the Marlins had the 12th pick in the Draft and stood in perfect position to snatch the high-hanging fruit away from the Braves.
But just before the draft, Bridges learned the Marlins were going another route, blaming Heyward’s “signability.” The Marlins took high school third baseman Matt Dominguez out of California instead. They ultimately paid him $1.8 million, more than Heyward’s $1.7 million bonus with the Braves.
While Clark and Goetz were high-fiving in an elated Braves draft room after the Marlins passed on Heyward, Bridges was shaken.
“It was the sickest I’ve ever been as a scout,” he said.
Looks like there may have been some faux faxes going around about Heyward’s contract demands.
Sneakiness and cunning are all well and good in baseball, but there is a distasteful underside to this story that shows up in the middle of the article:
…Heyward was different; the Braves started tracking him at age 11.
[Al] Goetz, then a part-time scout for the Braves, was coaching his son’s team at the East Cobb Baseball complex in Marietta when he first got a glimpse of Heyward.
“I thought he was a coach,” Goetz said of Heyward, already pushing 6 feet. “I called (Braves scout) Rob English, and I said, ‘I know it’s crazy, but there’s an 11-year-old that we need to keep an eye on.”‘
I sincerely hope that this remark was made in as much privacy as was possible and that Heyward had no notion of Goetz’ thoughts at the time. Scouting kids younger than 16 makes my stomach turn. Baseball is supposed to be fun all the way up through high school, and having professionals stand around salivating at players who can’t even drive yet does not sit well with me.
With the international signing age set at 16, there is no way around scouting players younger than that. If your club wants to sign a 16-year-old out of the Dominican Republic or Taiwan, it needs a history on the boy.
This disturbs me on such a deep level because, on a slightly shallower level, I am not in favor of giving kids millions of dollars before any work is done. That doesn’t teach them anything about the way the rest of the world works, and, unless the money is dealt with smartly, doesn’t leave players in a good position in the very likely case that they fail to live up to expectations.
To do this to boys at an even younger age is inexcusable to me. The big, bad machine of MLB isn’t going to change this system or stop doing this, but that doesn’t mean that I have to participate directly. I was asked last year to go look at a pair of Japanese junior high boys, and I refused on those grounds.
It was the sickest I’d ever been as a scout.
The kid in the middle has above average hands, and the one on the left has plus determination. The kid on the right looks a bit stiff and doesn't project well as an outfielder.
