To Pitch, Or Not To Pitch? That Is The Question
Scouts prefer high school outfielder Jordon Adell as a hitter, but he has touched 95 mph on the mound and throws a power breaking ball (Photo by Alyson Boyer Rode)
Usually, come June, the question every major league team and scouting department is asking itself is: “Which player should we draft?”
This June, that question has an added wrinkle. Now, it’s: “Which version of which player should we draft?”
Two-way players aren’t unique to the 2017 draft class; two-way amateur players have been rampant since the dawn of the game. What is unique to this year’s class, however, is the number of players who are legitimate top-scale prospects as both pitchers and position players. In a sense, they’re two pro prospects jammed into one.
Louisville’s Brendan McKay and Sherman Oaks, Calif., prep product Hunter Greene are the most notable players within that phylum. The Twins have scouted both as potential No. 1 overall picks. But in the top 100 draft prospects alone, there at least 10 players who could profile as either a hitter or a pitcher. The list includes high schoolers Jordon Adell and Nick Pratto as well as college star Adam Haseley.
Greene and McKay are two of the toughest calls, with scouting reports on Page 11 detailing their all-around abilities. So why not let players like Greene and McKay do both at the next level? Why pick one or the other? In short: it’s too risky. Teams commit so much money to top draft picks that they are hesitant to take on the financial risk of having a player do both and break down.
“I don’t think it’s going to happen—as much as I’d love it to,” said one National League scouting director. “I don’t think a team is gonna take on the risk. They’re both big leaguers both ways. And you’ve got to be comfortable with what the kid wants, too.”
Most of the time, a two-way player leans one way or another—even if it’s just ever so slightly. There’s a two-way continuum of sorts, with hitters on one end and pitchers on another. That continuum is depicted here with examples of two-way players from the past, present and recent drafts. It’s the job of a scout to determine where a player best fits.
Mickey White helped make that call twice, once with the Pirates in 2001, when they drafted John Van Benschoten—the Division I home run leader—as a pitcher. The next year, while working for the Orioles, White helped convince the club to take Nick Markakis out of Young Harris (Ga.) JC as an outfielder when the rest of the industry leaned pitcher. White, now retired, said it came down to one factor.
“If the hardest thing to do is hit a baseball,” White said, “and you have someone with the ability to hit baseball, then you have to give them a chance to do that. If you can do that—hit—that’s a determinant.”
Casey Kelly had three real options coming out of Sarasota (Fla.) High in the 2008 draft. Not only was he a legitimate prospect as both a shortstop and as a righthanded pitcher, Kelly also had a Tennessee football scholarship in hand as a quarterback.
The son of a long-time minor league manager and coach Pat Kelly, Casey was a first-round pick of the Red Sox that spring and signed for $3 million. In a unique setup, Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein and front office lieutenants Jed Hoyer and Jason McLeod had Kelly hit in his pro debut in 2008, then had him pitch in the first half of the 2009 season. He pitched in the Futures Game before going back to shortstop in the second half and in the Arizona Fall League.
Kelly became a full-time pitcher in 2010 and is trying to work his way back to the majors with Epstein’s current team, the Cubs. He hopes one of this year’s two-way players will get a chance to both pitch and hit as a pro, like he did.
“The thing I learned,” Kelly said, “(is) you have to go with what’s in your heart, what you really want to do. Doing it every day, if you don’t love it, it will be tough to succeed. Going through that grind of playing every day or every fifth day and the work in between (is difficult). If they find a team open-minded and unique enough to let play both . . . You have to be true to yourself.
“With Theo and Jason McLeod and Jed Hoyer, the plan they had for me was unique. They were very open-minded about the two-way player. It definitely was fun while it lasted, but I figured out quickly that hitting is really hard.”
— John Manuel
Will Craig (Photo by Carl Kline)
The announcement caught everyone in the MLB Network studio off guard. Even Will Craig was caught off guard when the Pirates announced they’d select him with the 22nd overall pick in the 2016 draft—and they’d take him as a pitcher.
“I was a little shocked at first, obviously,” said Craig, laughing. “That’s not what I was expecting. My whole family was shocked.”
Why the surprise?
When people generally think of Will Craig, they think of the big-bodied, country-strong slugger from Wake Forest who was among the country’s leaders in slugging percentage and homers in 2015 and 2016. They don’t think of him as “Will Craig, righthanded pitcher.”
As it turns out, neither did the Pirates. They called Craig seconds after the selection and informed him there was a miscommunication; they were drafting him as a hitter.
Craig was then coming off a .379/.520/.731, 16-homer season with the Demon Deacons, while also tallying nine saves and a 3.54 ERA as the team’s closer. There was a time—when Craig was in high school in Johnson City, Tenn.—when he was more coveted as a pitcher because of his arm strength. He touched 95 mph at times with Wake Forest while flashing a serviceable breaking ball.
But Craig always wanted to be a hitter, and with an illustrious career in the Atlantic Coast Conference, he proved he could handle the bat. Still, now playing first base only at high Class A Bradenton, Craig admits he occasionally misses pitching. He’s volunteered multiple times to pitch, should his team run out of bullpen arms. More than anything, he misses the sense of control.
“I felt like when I went out there I flipped a switch,” Craig said. “I’m a care-free guy, but when I was out there, I felt like I had all this control and almost a mean streak out on the mound. I miss that part of it.
“Being where I am now, I always talk about pitching to the pitchers, and they’re like, ‘Will, come on. You’re not a pitcher anymore.’ But I still like to talk about it sometimes.”
— Michael Lananna
John Van Benschoten (Photo by George Gojkovich)
John Van Benschoten led Division I with 31 home runs at Kent State in 2001 while leading the Mid-American Conference with eight saves as a pitcher and striking out 63 in 49 innings. While most teams saw him as a prototypical right fielder, the Pirates drafted him on the mound. He both hit and pitched in his pro debut with short-season State College. The next year, Van Benschoten worked 148 innings as a full-time pitcher, and while the athletic 6-foot-4, 210-pounder reached the majors, a left (non-throwing) shoulder injury stunted his progress. He recorded a 9.20 ERA in 90 career innings while going 2-13.
“Just focusing on one—it’s just all a mindset,” Van Benschoten said. “Before, playing every day, I was very busy. I was so busy in college. You’re exhausted by midnight in college. In pro ball, I felt like I was not doing anything at all (as a pitcher). I had to keep my mind focused in the down time. For the first couple of years, I really felt like, with those four days off, what am I doing? (As an everyday player), I was usually mentally in the game and that was a big change in pro ball . . . Mentally, I think I was more suited for playing every day, but I think that’s true of most people.
“It’s a whole other thing (pitching) all year round (versus) doing it for one game every once in a while. That is the challenge for all of these guys. Even if the personality fits, you still have to throw something away and you’re going to have empty time.”
— John Manuel
Brad Wilkerson (Photo by Robert Gurganus)
Brad Wilkerson had a decorated two-way career, pitching and hitting USA Baseball’s 18U team to gold at the 1995 World Junior Championships, then leading Florida to College World Series trips in 1996 and 1998.
An Olympic gold medallist in 2000, Wilkerson had a strong start to his major league career with the Expos before injuries curtailed his production and forced his retirement at age 31. He blamed most of his injuries on his Expos career due to travel and bad artificial turf, and said going both ways in college helped him once he got into pro ball.
“Being a pitcher helped me as a hitter tremendously, because I thought about how I’d pitch myself and work from there. (But) it’s a grind on your body. You’ve got to be detailed in your workouts and your training. I mean, when I was a sophomore, I remember running 12 poles right before the game! That was stuff I didn’t think twice about back then. I just played did and what I was told to do at that time. What helped me adjust to pro ball and just focusing on hitting was getting into a routine—when to lift, when to stretch, when to hit.
“I do know that when I played, there was an amazing amount of great two-way players. Tim Hudson (of Auburn) was the best pitcher with the best stuff I ever faced in college, and he hit 20 homers (in 1997). The Southeastern Conference had Todd Helton at Tennessee, Bobby Vaz at Alabama, and there was Mark Kotsay. It was a special time for two-way guys.“
— John Manuel
Bobby Dalbec
Start after start in the 2016 postseason, from the 8.2 scoreless against Mississippi State in the super regional to the 26 strikeouts he posted in Omaha—the second-most by one pitcher in Omaha in 30 years—Bobby Dalbec dominated on the mound. He was Arizona’s stone-faced assassin, helping lift the Wildcats to the College World Series finals against eventual champion Coastal Carolina.
Yet start after start, Dalbec insisted that he wasn’t truly a pitcher—that his pitching days would soon be behind him.
“I’ve never been a big fan of pitching,” Dalbec said immediately after a seven-inning, one-run performance against Oklahoma State that advanced Arizona to the finals. He sat in the low 90s, threw two different breaking balls and showed what coach Jay Johnson called a “major league-ready” changeup.
Still, that night Dalbec said he was ready to be a position player full-time—and he meant it.
Though the third baseman had a better junior year on the mound than he did at the plate, Dalbec was taken in the fourth round last June by the Red Sox as a hitter and immediately flourished. He batted .386/.427/.674 with seven homers in 132 at-bats at short-season Lowell.
Though Dalbec said he misses some aspects of pitching—he relished the pressure and competitiveness of it—giving it up has liberated his offensive game. He’s able to spend more time working on his swing and in the weight room, doing workouts he couldn’t do as a pitcher because they would limit his range of motion.
“I wasn’t an analytical pitcher,” Dalbec said. “I wasn’t always watching video on my mechanics or anything like that. I would just go up there and chuck it. And then hitting, I was—and still am—fairly analytical. It’s something I’m working on because I get too analytical sometimes.”
— Michael Lananna
Brendan McKay (Photo by Brian Westerholt)
Brendan McKay, as his head coach Dan McDonnell likes to say, is a ballplayer. He’s not one to ever wear his emotions on his sleeve. Ever.
When he hit four home runs in one game April 25 at Eastern Kentucky, his response to the accomplishment was a classically even-keeled: “I guess you could say it feels great.”
He doesn’t tout his achievements when he’s doing well, and he doesn’t make excuses when he—rarely—struggles. He just wants to play. And because of that, McDonnell and the rest of the Louisville coaching staff have to be vigilant in how they protect him.
McKay has been one of the best players in the country on the mound and at the plate this year. He was batting .361/.478/.683 with 15 home runs—all career highs—through 183 at-bats as the Louisville first baseman. And as the Friday starter, he was 8-3, 2.22 with 116 strikeouts to 27 walks in 85 innings.
Still, when playing both positions at such a high level, it’s impossible to avoid wear and tear. Though McKay wouldn’t use it as an excuse, his stuff clearly wasn’t quite as crisp in a May 12 start against Clemson. While he normally works in the low 90s, he sat more in the upper 80s that game and threw 100 pitches in just five innings. He didn’t allow a run but he had to battle through every frame.
“We’re always trying to watch his body, making sure we’re smart with what he’s doing,” McDonnell said. “(Pitching coach Roger) Williams does a phenomenal job with pitchers and making sure they’re at their strongest come postseason, so it’s really more of the first-base work, the baserunning all those types of things, making sure we’re not asking him to do too much.
“. . . And this is what he wanted. He came to me and he was adamant: He wants to be the first baseman. He wants to be in the lineup every day, and the more we get him out there, the better we are.”
— Michael Lananna
Adam Haseley and Pavin Smith (Peter Aiken/Getty Images)
Back in November, Virginia two-way junior Adam Haseley began doing injury rehab, which wouldn’t be particularly notable if not for the fact that Haseley wasn’t actually injured.
That’s how seriously Haseley takes his preparation. Having done it for three seasons in college, the Windermere, Fla., native knows the kind of toll starting on the weekends and playing center field can take on the human body. He takes every precaution he can to thrive on both sides of the game.
“I think the biggest thing for it is the ability to separate the two, and that’s honestly as much for a game as it is for practice,” Haseley said.
Haseley admits that separating the two hasn’t always come naturally, especially his freshman year, when he was thrown into the fire as a starting outfielder and weekend pitcher on a championship club. He hit leadoff and started the second game of the College World Series finals in 2015—and threw five scoreless innings to help the Hoos avoid elimination.
The lefthanded thrower and hitter has been a mainstay in both of those roles, and while he continued to provide steady innings this year, he’s taken a leap forward offensively. Haseley hit just seven home runs combined in his freshman and sophomore years. This year, through 205 at-bats, he hit 14. While some of that stems from physical growth, Haseley also tweaked his stance—and approach.
“Now, my front foot is in the air, and all last year in the spring it was not,” he said. “And I feel like that gives me a better opportunity to see the ball a little better. And people have talked a lot about different batting angles and launch angles, and I don’t really know all the numbers to it, but I do believe in giving yourself a better opportunity to stay in the zone and drive the ball in certain counts. That’s something I worked on in the fall, seeing how I could get my barrel in the zone for a longer period of time.”
— Michael Lananna
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