By The Baseball Beginnings Guy
May 21, 2013
Nick Vander Tuig has had a pretty good season in that UCLA program, where you throw strikes or you sit while others throw strikes. To the video:
By The Baseball Beginnings Guy
March 1, 2013
Adam Plutko is another one of these guys I have seen since we started the site. I understand he turned down the big bucks out of high school to come to UCLA. Here’s a look from the sophomore year.
By The Baseball Beginnings Guy
February 1, 2013
David Berg is a guy I liked the first time I saw him pitching for Amat. I’d tell you that story, but pretty soon, everybody would be telling that story.
By The Baseball Beginnings Guy
June 1, 2012
Yeah, I remember Jeff Gelalich from high school baseball. Here he is three years later and he’s done a nice job turning himself into a good draft prospect.
By The Baseball Beginnings Guy
May 31, 2012
Tyler Heineman has been the feel good story, the gutty little Bruin who waited for his turn and made the most of it as a junior. I mean, if I could grade fan favorites, he’d be way up there. Instead, here’s what he is – a left-handed hitting catch-and-throw guy. Those guys always get drafted.
By The Baseball Beginnings Guy
May 30, 2012
Beau Amaral has been around the block at UCLA. Comes from a pro family and a good college baseball program. Little guy with a wiry body and two tools that always stand out.
By The Baseball Beginnings Guy
May 25, 2012
Daniel Robertson is a guy out in Upland that has been known here in SoCal scouting circles for a few years, which means he’s no secret in the scouting industry. It’s also no secret that this is a shoddy year for hitters out here, which means this guy is probably a top ten player on a lot of pref lists. If you like him, you go in on the gamble that you see bat speed, swing path and hand strength for power to all fields, namely right field as a right-handed hitter. He’s a shortstop in high school, but that won’t last longer than the ink on his contract, and eventually, he’ll end up at first base regardless of what his arm is today. I can go with a low everyday number on him at best, but I’m not overbuying.
By The Baseball Beginnings Guy
April 24, 2012
Max Fried has pretty much everything you want in your top-shelf high school left-handers. The height, the arm strength, the size, the stuff. What he needs is to develop consistency and to not take the mound like he is afraid to get hit. That’s a tough love statement but its true — in more recent looks, he has shown the ability to put that aside and shove baseballs where the sun don’t shine. Then in other looks he pitches like a guy afraid of his own shadow.
By The Baseball Beginnings Guy
April 17, 2012
You blink, you miss Scott Griggs. He’s the best arm out of UCLA this draft and he’s got a solid chance of walking from Westwood to a big league bullpen in about, oh, 24 months.
By The Baseball Beginnings Guy
February 29, 2012
Bauer 2009: He picked the school, but the hat picked him. (Photos: UCLA)
Pretty soon, there will be more e-bay pages of Trevor Bauer stuff than Trevor Bauer actually has pitches. And if you know anything about Bauer, you know that’s really saying something. One item I am most certain you will not see for sale anytime soon is Bauer’s legendary UCLA hat. I imagine the moment that Bauer first met this hat had to be something like the sorting hat scene from the Harry Potter movies: “This one is highly ambitious, clever and cunning, creative and crafty, not for the common mold. Oh, skipped his senior year of high school ball for this fitting? Send him to the house of Savage, and leave him be for three.”
And then, of course, the hat faded from Bruin blue to battery acid. At least the sorting hat got washed off every now and then, or at least I think it did. But like Crash Davis said, when you put up big numbers, you can do whatever the hell you want and the media will think you’re colorful.
As Bauer said to me a few days ago, “You were really the first person on the bandwagon before there was a bandwagon.” In 2009, literally a few weeks after we started the site, I went out and put Tim Lincecum Jr. on this guy. Then in the 2010 College World Series, he’s on TV, and we’ve got all these hits from Bristol…and the play-by-play guys are calling him Timmy Jr., thinking the fading hat is colorful, and wondering what the hell this guy is doing with the rubber bands and the wiggle stick.
