Q&A with Preston Guilmet, RHP, Arizona, 275th overall, Cleveland Indians (2009 Draft)
By John Klima
July 1, 2009
(photo: UA)
Preston Guilmet will never be the guy who blows you away. He’s long understood that he’ll have to exceed expectations at every stop. Guilmet achieved that in the draft, upping his stock from a 22nd rounder as a junior in 2008 to a 9th rounder in 2009.
Guys like this sometimes surprise people in the baseball industry. They get outs, they eat innings, they grind, they never miss a start and next thing you know, they have 15 wins.
Guys who do that tend to move up, even if it’s slower, and even if they’re never going to be anyone’s radar gun darling. It never worked that way for the tall and lean right-hander at the University of Arizona, where he was a workhorse for four seasons.
It won’t work that way in pro ball, where he will have to dispel a whole new set of expectations. But you never know – there are guys like this who end up in the big leagues after being told they have no business there at all. You just never know which kid is going to make it.
Guilmet knows this is what he’s in for as a professional, but as he explained to Baseball Beginnings a month before the Cleveland Indians drafted him, that’s nothing new. He’s got the right name for what he pitches with – guile. Sometimes guile resonates longer than stuff. A pitcher geared for a marathon instead of a sprint, he discussed what it is like to be a marksman in a machine gunner’s game.
