The Vanderbilt Thing

If Vanderbilt third baseman Pedro Alvarez isn’t the first pick in Thursday’s Major League Baseball draft, he’ll likely be in the top five, which is lucky for him because the draft has been known to go on for days and encompass over 1,000 players. Imagine standing on the proverbial playground and being taken 1,499th—that was Darrell Fisherbaugh last year. No, Alvarez won’t have to wait long, and he’s just the latest player to raise his profile, draft position and tax bracket by playing for Vanderbilt rather than taking the money and running straight into the pros out of high school.

The draft is an odd thing, really. The team with last season’s worst record gets this year’s best player. Or at least they get to pick first. Even if Stephen Colbert is right when he says that reality has a well-known liberal bias, sports, as a rule, do not. (Winner takes all. Make it, take it.) But the draft is a peculiarly progressive institution, especially in a sport whose payroll disparities are well documented.

So it is, as Alvarez prepares to hit pay dirt on Thursday. Meanwhile, incoming Smyrna phenom Sonny Gray is so hopelessly devoted to Vanderbilt that he went so far as to write a letter to Major League Baseball asking teams not to draft him. Please! Don’t offer me ridiculous amounts of money! I won’t take it! (I’m paraphrasing.) A little presumptuous coming from a kid who spent this spring pitching against teenagers from Rutherford County? Maybe so. But also a testament to coach Tim Corbin and the program—and, perhaps more importantly, the relationships—he’s built.

“I’ve been recruiting this kid since 10th grade,” Corbin said of Gray on 104.5 FM last week, adding—whether for clarity or emphasis was not clear—“legally.” (It was an odd moment, but I don’t think Corbin’s done anything unsavory. In fact, he’s refreshingly un-smarmy for someone whose job includes, well, recruiting 10th-graders.) As for Gray’s giving pro baseball the Heismann, Corbin added, “I think that’s where the Vanderbilt thing comes in a little bit.... We’ve provided him with kind of a model of what’s happened with kids who have maybe turned down...the opportunity to be drafted high and then come to school and...see good things come from that.”

Good things indeed. The “Vanderbilt thing” has done wonders for some recent alumni.

Pitcher Jeremy Sowers was drafted in the first round (20th overall) by the Cincinnati Reds in 2001, but opted to go to Vanderbilt. Three years later, he was taken sixth overall by the Cleveland Indians, signing for a cool $2.475 million, a club record. Granted, Sowers is currently in Buffalo working out some kinks, but we’ll let that slide for the moment. After all, in 2006 he became the first Cleveland rookie since 1972 to throw back-to-back shutouts.

The same year Sowers went pro, Murfreesboro native David Price was drafted in the 19th round by the Los Angeles Dodgers but did not sign. Three years of Commodore baseball later, he was the No. 1 overall pick, pocketing a bonus of $5.6 million—the second highest in draft history. And this year the sport is abuzz with his arrival. At a recent Nashville speaking engagement, ESPN senior writer Buster Olney said that when he asked a group of Yankees players at the end of spring training what one thing stood out, they answered it was Price’s appearance against them. (Price struck out the side and, no, that wasn’t the game where they let Billy Crystal lead off.)

In 2005, fresh off The Greatest Comeback in the History of Sports, the Red Sox drafted Pedro Alvarez in the 14th round. He is rumored to have turned down somewhere around $900,000 to play for Corbin’s Commodores. Having never turned down—or, for that matter, accepted—$900,000 in my life, I can’t imagine what that must have been like, but I’m sure I would have chosen college. I think.

At any rate, it looks unlikely that Alvarez will join former teammate Price in Tampa Bay. The Rays just locked up their young third baseman, Evan Longoria, with a long-term contract. Let’s just hope Alvarez doesn’t end up wearing black and gold again, because that would mean he got drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates, who, despite having nowhere to go but up, keep not going there.

Alvarez, on the other hand, seems destined for good things. No matter who drafts him—prognosticators expect it to be Pittsburgh with the second pick or Kansas City with the third—they’d better back up the Brinks if they expect him to sign on the dotted line. He’ll have agent Scott Boras riding shotgun—Boras negotiated Alex Rodriguez’s spreadsheet-immolating $252 million contract, and has advised lesser talents than Alvarez to hold out for more money.