Baseball Beginnings

By John Klima
September 2, 2010

James Shields would have never imagined himself as the pitcher he is today. As a young, hard-thrower back in the day at Hart High School, he was the kind of kid who lit up radar guns and did the dalliance with the scouting world. He was nobody’s secret, but when he went down with a series of arm injuries that wiped out his senior year and buried him to most scouts, he quickly learned the first lesson that greets every young player who aspires to follow in his footsteps. It’s never going to be as easy as it looks or feels when you’re young and the best.

Fast forward to Shields today, 28, a veteran of more battles than he can count. Baseball Beginnings and Sheilds have known each other since one was called John and the other was called Jamie. We caught up in the tunnel at Angel Stadium a few minutes before stretch, 5:25 on the nose, and looked back in time to help other young pitchers understand how to become who they want to be.

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Tags: James Shields, Tampa Bay Rays

By John Klima
September 1, 2010

The devil came to visit Stephen Strasburg a few summers ago. I’m not sure exactly when or where, but it might have been after he was a nobody in the New England Collegiate League or maybe after he was tired of being questioned as an ordinary bad body right-hander with ordinary velocity. I’m not sure exactly what the devil told him, but I am sure what he promised. And for one glorious contract and a few big league starts, the devil kept his word.

Strasburg’s deal with the devil has officially expired, and in old sarcastic scouting jargon, it’s time to cash in that discount coupon with Dr. Jobe. Tommy John surgery awaits and it isn’t the end of his career, but it’s the end of the beginning. Time to do that running, time to train that core, and time to learn how to become a pitcher and not a thrower.

These big arms should read the fine print. You can be a rock star rookie, you can be a cover-boy prospect rag darling, you can even get paid for lighting up a radar gun and scribbling on a few baseball cards. But when the game itself interferes, be ready to read the fine print, and remember this. You can feel for a kid who is undergoing the laser, because it’s a hard way to learn never to read your own press and never to be treated as more than a kid who knows nothing about how to pitch in the big leagues. Never before has so much energy been expired over a guy who proved nothing, save for being a star in a hype machine. Fourteen strikeouts against the Pirates didn’t prove it. Laboring to get through five innings didn’t prove it. Kerry Wood was better before he blew out – 20 strikeouts in a game with two Hall of Famers in a lineup smack dab in the middle of the steroid era.

Being protected and cocooned as a trophy kid did nothing to help Strasburg learn how to be a pro pitcher. The devil had it written up well, but he’s not going to be the one on his back, slowly counting back from ten.

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Tags: Stephen Strasburg, Washington Nationals

By John Klima
August 27, 2010

We don’t often do scouting updates on big league players unless we have seen them before. In this case, I had my second look at Dodger reliever Kenley Jansen Friday night from the press box at Dodger Stadium. The first time I saw him was in a one-inning look was in 2009 at the Arizona Fall League. In that scouting report, I noted that I thought Jansen would be in the big leagues by the middle of 2010 despite the fact that he was a newly converted from a position player. That report was spot on. Here’s what the guy showed me Friday, using the in-house scoreboard gun.

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Tags: Kenley Jansen, Los Angeles Dodgers

By John Klima
August 24, 2010

“How goes it young one?” Jim Edmonds asks the rookie right-hander sitting quietly in the locker stall a few feet away. The rookie lifts his nose from his text messages and allows a small smile.

“Nothing much,” Mike Leake tells him.

There are seldom rookies who are rookies in name alone. Only a few of them come around every year, those with talent and perspective. Talent allows them to be here and perspective helps them stay. Simplicity. It’s the same game, oldest saying in the book. It doesn’t matter how good the other guy is. It matters how good you are.

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Tags: ASU, Cincinnati Reds, Mike Leake

By John Klima
August 16, 2010

California high school right-hander Dylan Covey has been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and will honor his commitment to play college baseball at the University of San Diego, bypassing signing a professional contract with the Milwaukee Brewers, who drafted him with the 14^th overall pick, Covey told Baseball Beginnings exclusively Monday night.

Covey said that college baseball would be a better fit for adjusting to his new lifestyle than would professional baseball at this point. He stressed that there were no ill feelings toward the Brewers organization, and decided for himself that college would make the transition to a diabetic lifestyle smoother.

Covey, whose late-season slump fueled speculation that he had a shoulder injury, received a clean bill of health for his arm in a pre-draft medical examination last weekend.

However, blood work showed that he has Type 1 diabetes, a condition he previously did not know he had. The diagnosis explained his late season velocity drop and threw a curveball into Covey’s future plans.

Covey said the decision became about how to manage his health in the immediate future. He said he believed that college baseball is a better option to learn how to regulate and maintain the lifestyle. Both Dylan and his father, Darrell, expressed positive feelings toward the Brewers. They both said negotiations were not acrimonious, but conducive to what was best for Covey’s future. The family declined to discuss financial specifics.

“The news was such a shock to me,” Dylan Covey told Baseball Beginnings Monday night. “It explained a lot of what went on late in the season. At this point, it’s going to take about six months to get used to the treatment cycle. I’ve got about six months till the college season begins. This is all new stuff and a lot of it is hard to remember. I just felt like it was going to be easier to get used to what this lifestyle is going to be in college than in pro ball.”

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Tags: Dylan Covey, Milwaukee Brewers, University of San Diego

By John Klima
June 27, 2010

You can tell what the Yankees are thinking. At some point, they need to think about replacing Derek Jeter at shortstop. Of course, just because another guy will play short in the future doesn’t mean you replace Jeter. But the Yankees, every now and then, go back to their roots and look for athletic high school players with tremendous upside. Yet there is one danger in this – don’t take away what a player does best just to fill an organizational need.

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Category: 2010 Draft, Baseball Beginnings Exclusives | No Comments »
Tags: Angelo Gumbs, Cito Culver, New York Yankees

By John Klima
June 21, 2010

Angelo Gumbs will always remember the moment his family learned he that had been drafted by the New York Yankees. The story goes that a guy on the subway during the draft exalted aloud that the Yankees had taken a California kid in the second round. Gumbs, whose mother is Puerto Rican and has family in New York City, said his Aunt was on the subway when she heard the fan. Before she could ask the kid’s name, the fan said Angelo Gumbs aloud, and Gumbs’s poor Auntie almost fainted.

Baseball Beginnings had a chat with Gumbs for this exclusive Q&A. In the meantime, we’ll see if the Yankees can sign Gumbs, and if they get it done, what they do with him.

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Tags: Angelo Gumbs, New York Yankees

By John Klima
June 18, 2010

Welcome to the second Baseball Beginnings mailbag. The draft brought us a slew of comments and emails. (more…)

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By John Klima
June 16, 2010

For months on end, we heard how catching was at such a premium in this draft that good young catchers would have value. When push came to shove, that’s not how the 2010 draft played out for three Southern California catchers, Stefan Sabol, Jake Hernandez and Aaron Jones.

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By John Klima
June 7, 2010

Today is the Baseball Draft and I thought I’d share with you a history lesson about the phrase “Bonus Baby,” where it came from, and why, to this day, it is considered every bit as much a derogatory term for a ballplayer as is the crudest name you can imagine someone calling you.

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