Q&A with Kevin Gausman, RHP, LSU (2012 Draft)
By The Baseball Beginnings Guy
May 29, 2012
Any high profile high school right-hander that chooses college over professional baseball for any reason is taking a risk. That’s my opinion, pure and simple. I’ve been to this rodeo long enough to have seen some pitchers go in to college with a 70 fastball and come out with a 50, or a 60 and come out with a 40. College baseball isn’t always the place where dreams come true, sometimes it’s the place where pitching careers go to die, with bad instruction, bad reasoning, bad influences, and the all-around placement of someone else’s priorities over a kid’s priorities. Any time the dollar sign is deemed more valuable than professional development, you take a risk, period.
Usually, it’s the luck of the draw on who comes out better, only that and nothing more. Not everyone is a Trevor Bauer, a guy who was defiantly hands off. Mike Leake was the same way – don’t tell me, I’ll tell you. But some guys fall victim to bad advice or bad coaching, even at very big name places. As scouts, we know this to be true. We won’t tell you the names we have seen this happen to. But we know it happens. We call it going backwards.
Which makes the case of a guy like Kevin Gausman all the more impressive. Always gifted with a wiry and whippy frame and a fast and strong arm, he turned down the Dodgers in 2010 and went to Louisiana State. (Zach Lee ought to send Christmas cards to Gausman for the rest of his life, but that’s another story.) Gausman and I have a little bit of history, and we caught up again a week before that…thing…where the teams pick…you know…ah, nobody gives a shit where you were drafted when you’re between the lines.
