games to draft in the top ten (though they would willingly surrender the first of those ten). Their futility earned them four number-one overall picks, with no selection lower than eighth. That collection of top draft picks helped form the core of a team that would wash away a decade of embarrassment in Tampa Bay. But despite several successful picks, the team’s many draft misses during Chuck LaMar’s decade as general manager remain damaging to this day.
By the time a baseball man rises to the position of GM, his scouting days are usually all but over. General managers seldom travel to small-town ballparks to follow A-ball prospects in other organizations who could someday make for interesting trade targets. They don’t venture to the Dominican Republic to find sixteen-year-old diamonds in the rough. And with apologies to Billy Beane and his legendary chair-tossing skills, they rarely pull the strings ondraft day, at least not after the first round; LaMar had little say in who the Devil Rays drafted beyond the early rounds. But he did assemble the team of scouts, coaches, and instructors who helped identify and mold some of that talent—including a few late-round picks—into winning major league players.
One of them was scouting director Dan Jennings. “He’s fun to talk to, a great storyteller from Alabama,” said
Baseball America
’s John Manuel. “The classic scout that you drum up in your head.” Jennings’s scouting proclivities mirrored LaMar’s: he loved strapping pitchers who threw blazing fastballs. For position players, he targeted speed and athleticism first—he’d find the athletes, the team could turn them into ballplayers.
Thanks to Major League Baseball’s restrictions on expansion teams, Tampa Bay and Arizona were forced to pick at the end of each round in each of their first three drafts. Both franchises cried foul, complaining that the decision was unfair to a pair of expansion teams starting from nothing. Making matters worse was the challenge both teams faced in building complete scouting and player development departments from scratch. Simply forming and implementing an organizational plan and getting to know the preferences and quirks of everyone from the scouting and farm directors on down can take several years. Without the benefit of high picks, and with everyone simply getting to know each other’s philosophies, the Devil Rays’ first three drafts went horribly.
Dipping into the high school ranks—as they would many times in the ensuing years—the D-Rays grabbed an outfielder from North Carolina with the twenty-ninth overall pick in 1996. But Paul Wilder was a six-foot-five, 240-pound bruiser, far from the speed demons Jennings preferred. Wilder didn’t play a single game in the big leagues, nor did the team’s second- or third-round picks. The Devil Rays didn’t draft a significant major league contributor that year until fifth-rounder Alex Sanchez, a slap-hitting speedster who hit a career .296 with little power and 122 stolen bases—while playing all but 43 of his career games with other teams. The D-Raysdidn’t find another good major leaguer until thirty-fourth rounder Dan Wheeler.
In 1997, Tampa Bay led off with a prototypical pick. With the thirty-first selection, the Devil Rays took Jason Standridge, a six-foot-four, 215-pound right-hander out of an Alabama high school, the kind of power pitcher who sets scouts’ hearts fluttering. But again the pick bore little fruit: Standridge appeared in just eighty major league games (started just nine) and compiled a 5.80 ERA. The next seven picks? Kenny Kelly, Barrett Wright, Todd Belitz, Marquis Roberts, Doug Mansfield, Eddy Reyes, and Jack Joffrion, who combined to appear in thirty-nine major league games. Toby Hall, drafted out of UNLV in the ninth round, became a useful big league catcher for a few years. The draft yielded no one else of note for the next
sixty
rounds, until Heath Bell became a throw-a-dart success
By the time a baseball man rises to the position of GM, his scouting days are usually all but over. General managers seldom travel to small-town ballparks to follow A-ball prospects in other organizations who could someday make for interesting trade targets. They don’t venture to the Dominican Republic to find sixteen-year-old diamonds in the rough. And with apologies to Billy Beane and his legendary chair-tossing skills, they rarely pull the strings ondraft day, at least not after the first round; LaMar had little say in who the Devil Rays drafted beyond the early rounds. But he did assemble the team of scouts, coaches, and instructors who helped identify and mold some of that talent—including a few late-round picks—into winning major league players.
One of them was scouting director Dan Jennings. “He’s fun to talk to, a great storyteller from Alabama,” said
Baseball America
’s John Manuel. “The classic scout that you drum up in your head.” Jennings’s scouting proclivities mirrored LaMar’s: he loved strapping pitchers who threw blazing fastballs. For position players, he targeted speed and athleticism first—he’d find the athletes, the team could turn them into ballplayers.
Thanks to Major League Baseball’s restrictions on expansion teams, Tampa Bay and Arizona were forced to pick at the end of each round in each of their first three drafts. Both franchises cried foul, complaining that the decision was unfair to a pair of expansion teams starting from nothing. Making matters worse was the challenge both teams faced in building complete scouting and player development departments from scratch. Simply forming and implementing an organizational plan and getting to know the preferences and quirks of everyone from the scouting and farm directors on down can take several years. Without the benefit of high picks, and with everyone simply getting to know each other’s philosophies, the Devil Rays’ first three drafts went horribly.
Dipping into the high school ranks—as they would many times in the ensuing years—the D-Rays grabbed an outfielder from North Carolina with the twenty-ninth overall pick in 1996. But Paul Wilder was a six-foot-five, 240-pound bruiser, far from the speed demons Jennings preferred. Wilder didn’t play a single game in the big leagues, nor did the team’s second- or third-round picks. The Devil Rays didn’t draft a significant major league contributor that year until fifth-rounder Alex Sanchez, a slap-hitting speedster who hit a career .296 with little power and 122 stolen bases—while playing all but 43 of his career games with other teams. The D-Raysdidn’t find another good major leaguer until thirty-fourth rounder Dan Wheeler.
In 1997, Tampa Bay led off with a prototypical pick. With the thirty-first selection, the Devil Rays took Jason Standridge, a six-foot-four, 215-pound right-hander out of an Alabama high school, the kind of power pitcher who sets scouts’ hearts fluttering. But again the pick bore little fruit: Standridge appeared in just eighty major league games (started just nine) and compiled a 5.80 ERA. The next seven picks? Kenny Kelly, Barrett Wright, Todd Belitz, Marquis Roberts, Doug Mansfield, Eddy Reyes, and Jack Joffrion, who combined to appear in thirty-nine major league games. Toby Hall, drafted out of UNLV in the ninth round, became a useful big league catcher for a few years. The draft yielded no one else of note for the next
sixty
rounds, until Heath Bell became a throw-a-dart success
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