Shi’s Notebook: CanCon in the MLB draft
Posted June 6, 2011 11:35 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The pressure to perform and the constant scrutiny inherent to a player’s performance during draft year effects young prospects in different ways.
Some love the attention and rise to the occasion, others struggle to handle it and wilt.
Tom Robson – a 6-4, 205-pound right-hander expected to be the first Canadian selected in the 2011 baseball draft – has been relishing the experience.
“It kind of gives me energy to do well because I know people are going to be watching me,” Robson explains during a March interview. “Since I was 10 or 11, I’ve always watched baseball on TV, I’ve always been around people playing baseball and when I was in Grade 9 I joined the BCPL (British Columbia Premier League).
“Seeing the scouts talk to them and them getting drafted and going places, now it’s my turn to do so. So far, so good, I’m really looking forward to it.”
Robson has certainly been making the most of his pivotal season, starring for the Canadian national junior team and earning the opportunity to pitch against the Toronto Blue Jays in a spring training exhibition.
Over a dozen scouts have visited him at home in recent months, and he gets regular calls from them asking when he’s next set to pitch for the BCPL’s Langley Blaze. Various projections suggest he will be chosen somewhere between the second and fifth rounds of the draft.
“Tom has a chance to have a real bright future in the game,” says Greg Hamilton, Baseball Canada’s director of national teams. “In addition to having a real good arm he’s got size to go with it and projection around it.
You can watch the draft live Monday at 6 p.m. ET on Sportsnet ONE.
“He’s got good makeup in terms of his aptitude and his work ethic, and his feel for pitching.”
Catcher Kellin Deglan of Langley, B.C., was the first of 32 Canadians chosen in last year’s draft, going 22nd overall to the Texas Rangers. The Blue Jays were especially active north of the border, selecting seven Canucks, but signed only two: third-rounder Marcus Knecht of Toronto; and fellow outfielder Dalton Pompey of Mississauga, Ont., a 16th-round pick.
This year’s crop of draft-eligible Canadians isn’t considered quite as deep – “I would say it’s OK,” says Andrew Tinnish, the Blue Jays’ scouting director – but that doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t any finds beyond Robson.
Other junior national team players like catcher/third baseman Dustin Houle of Penticton, B.C. (also Robson’s teammate on the Blaze), and right-handers Skyler Janisse of Maidstone, Ont., Jesen Dygestile-Therrien of Montreal, and Ethan Elias of Enwistle, Alta., are also garnering attention.
In its rankings of the top Canadian prospects, canadianbaseballnetwork.com lists Robson first, Houle, Dygestile-Therrien third, Janisse fourth and right-hander Vaughn Covington, recovering from Tommy John surgery, fifth.
None has as much polish as Robson, whose fastball sits 90-92 m.p.h. He features a two-seamer that cuts in to righties and away from lefties, along with a curve and change, plus a tenacity on the mound that serves him well.
“When I pitch, I’m not really afraid of much,” he says.
That was most evident from his performance at the world junior championship in Thunder Bay, Ont., last summer, when he was twice called upon to start against powerhouse Cuba. Canada lost both games, but Robson showed well in each outing.
The experience left a lasting impression on him.
“It’s a special feeling when you have that many people from your country cheering for you,” he says. “I remember I was in the bullpen with (pitching coach) Paul Quantrill and we looked each other saying, ‘Wow, this is a huge game.’
“In the round robin I pitched six shutout innings (against Cuba), that was a game I’ll never forget.”
The draft will open the door to a whole new set of fond memories.
LATE-ROUND VALUE: The baseball draft lasts 50 rounds, but the vast majority of players who will ever make some sort of impact in the majors come among the very early picks.
“Really, even after you get out of the first couple of rounds, the percentages aren’t very high,” says Tony LaCava, assistant GM for the Toronto Blue Jays. “Anything you get out of deep in the draft is like found money.
“The draft is rather efficient,” he continues. “The more tools a guy has, the higher he generally will go. The guys that last longer in the draft, they have lesser tools, or maybe they have one tool that could possibly get them to the big-leagues. In some cases they are drafted as organizational players, guys that have to fill out rosters.”
On rare occasions, such players do buck the odds and make it all the way up to the majors and have productive careers. The Blue Jays have three such examples on their roster, including reliever Jason Frasor (33rd round, Detroit, 1999), outfielder Rajai Davis (38th round, Pittsburgh, 2001), and right-hander Jesse Litsch (24th round, Toronto, 2004).
Late-round selections that make it need a relentless determination, as they typically get fewer opportunities and have less margin for error than high picks, who receive pricey signing bonuses.
That’s not the case at the bottom of the draft.
“The area scout for the Tigers came to my house and said, ‘Here’s a thousand bucks, take it or leave it,'” Frasor recalls. “I said, ‘Thank you very much, where do I sign and where do I go from here?'”
Frasor’s remembers the anxiety he felt as the draft approached, uncertain about what would happen. He at least understood that he wasn’t going to be an early pick, which helped him keep perspective until the Tigers chose him.
“I thought I’d get drafted, but I was a 5-9 right-handed pitcher who’d already had Tommy John surgery,” says Frasor. “I knew I’d get a chance, but I didn’t know when because I already had a couple of strikes against me.
“I knew there were a couple of guys that liked me but I wasn’t great in college and I was coming off surgery. At that point all I wanted was a chance.”
Frasor began his pro career as a starter in 1999, and remained in that role through the 2002 season, his first back after a second elbow surgery. Late that year, he was traded by Detroit to Los Angeles and the Dodgers converted him to a reliever.
He quickly progressed out of the bullpen and after his trade to the Blue Jays in the spring of 2004, he eventually broke through, realizing a dream.
“The high guys have to prove they can’t do it, I had to prove I can do it,” Frasor says, reflecting on his path. “But once you put on that uniform, if you show signs, flashes of being pretty good, then they’ll keep you around.
“I’d see guys get drafted who maybe I thought I was better then, so I knew I had the ability. Deep down inside I think I knew it was going to happen, but I don’t know if I ever thought I’d be (in the majors). But it worked out.”
TALKING TOUGH: Sometimes the draft is the easy part, and the real challenge is in signing players.
The Toronto Blue Jays have experienced that in the past two drafts, failing to reach agreements with Canadian pitchers James Paxton and Jake Eliopoulos in 2009, and going down to the wire with first-round pick Deck McGuire last year.
A key platform of the Blue Jays’ approach to negotiations is to set a value on a player and not bend from that.
“It’s our brand,” says Anthopoulos. “Whether it’s negotiating with free agents, negotiating with arbitration-eligible players, we’re going to try to be fair, try to do the best we can to sign all the players, we take them to sign them, but we can’t get emotional about it. When you start saying I have to get this player, that’s when you make mistakes. We objectively put a value on these guys before the draft, if they fall to us and we can sign them for that value, great, if not we’ll take the pick the following year.”
