Connolly: Hobgood and Jordan

[weams]

Quote

“I think if you look at 2006 and look at 2009, just those two years, where (Rowell and Hobgood) were taken, it would have been nice for Buck Showalter and his staff, after I was gone, to have a Max Scherzer or a Tim Lincecum,” said Jordan, who left Baltimore in 2011 to join the Philadelphia Phillies as farm director. “There were some good major league starting pitchers taken (in 2009) that they could have really used. So, hell, I might have cost them a chance to go to the World Series, and that bothers me. That really does.”

 

[DrungoHazewood]

I like people who are honest and introspective.  

[tntoriole]

Excellent article about Hobgood in the Athletic!  I saw his second game as a pro at Bluefield and he did not go over 90 the entire 5 innings he pitched and I thought right then...”This is not good”. 

[glenn__davis]

Dang it - the rare Athletic article that I'm actually interested to read and can't.

Hobgood always seemed like a good guy.  And I think Jordan's approach to draft him and save some money to spend on later picks was a sound one.  Unfortunate that it didn't end up working out.  I think his arm was shot from day one.

[TINSTAAPP]

Yeah, those mid to late 2000s drafts outside of the Wieters pick were disasters. Wheeler was the consensus pick to be the first pitcher selected after Strasburg in 2009 and he would helped the starting rotations in 2013 and 2014 tremendously. The decision to pass on Lincecum wasn't that bad because his peak lasted from 2007-2011 when the Orioles were dreadful. He would have been wasted on bad Orioles teams. Passing on Scherzer OTOH was a massive mistake and probably did cost the Orioles chances to go to the World Series. Also in 2004, the Orioles won a bunch of meaningless games down the stretch in September that cost them the opportunity to draft Jay Bruce or Andrew McCutchen. Those drafts were just one misfortune after the other.

[TonySoprano]

3 minutes ago, glenn__davis said:

Dang it - the rare Athletic article that I'm actually interested to read and can't.

Hobgood always seemed like a good guy.  And I think Jordan's approach to draft him and save some money to spend on later picks was a sound one.  Unfortunate that it didn't end up working out.  I think his arm was shot from day one.

 

Quote

He not only won Gatorade’s High School Baseball Award for California, but also captured the national prize, given previously to future MLB stars such as Alex Rodriguez and Clayton Kershaw.

“We saw a big, physical right-hander who was a two-way player. Gatorade National Player of the Year that could also swing the bat,” said Joe Jordan, now an Atlanta Braves crosschecker who was the Orioles’ amateur scouting director in 2009. “We saw an athletic kid that had some size and arm strength. There was power with the fastball and breaking ball.”

Jordan didn’t care that so-called draft experts didn’t expect Hobgood to go as high as fifth. Jordan was hunting upside, and he believed that, other than San Diego State’s Stephen Strasburg, the consensus No. 1 pick, Hobgood had the highest ceiling of any amateur pitcher that year.

So, when the Orioles were on the clock with the fifth pick on June 9, 2009, they drafted Hobgood, who, a few weeks later, agreed to a $2.422 million signing bonus. Some speculated that Hobgood was a budget-conscious selection, but that wasn’t the case, Jordan said. He signed for only $98,000 under the suggested slot of $2.52 million.

“Mr. (Peter) Angelos gave me the money that I needed to sign the players that I wanted to sign. He did that for seven years. So, I can’t point the needle in that direction,” Jordan said. “No, it didn’t have anything to do with money.”

 

[LookinUp]

I think the problem with that pick was the prior spike in velocity. It wasn't consistent with what Hobgood had been. People said it was a red flag at the time too. 

I don't know exactly why. I can imagine guys gaining a few ticks pretty quickly as they mature. That's, I assume, what Jordan thought. In the end, we never got the high school kid Jordan saw with the same velocity. It's hard to knock Jordan for wanting the upside. If Hobgood pitched like Jordan expected, he would probably have been a good pick. I think Jordan's knocked for not appropriately weighting the downside in the end.. 

[weams]

28 minutes ago, glenn__davis said:

Dang it - the rare Athletic article that I'm actually interested to read and can't.

Hobgood always seemed like a good guy.  And I think Jordan's approach to draft him and save some money to spend on later picks was a sound one.  Unfortunate that it didn't end up working out.  I think his arm was shot from day one.

Hobgood denies the steroid allegations. 

[weams]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I like people who are honest and introspective.  

I find Dan to always be honest, I've not seen a lot of introspection. 

[TonySoprano]

6 minutes ago, weams said:

Hobgood denies the steroid allegations. 

Quote

The Orioles conducted a full medical review before signing Hobgood and found nothing untoward. And that means something, given the club’s reputation.

“One thing that people know very well is that the Baltimore Orioles’ medical evaluation and pre-draft or pre-free-agent-signing physical process is pretty stringent. Always has been, and it was during those times,” Jordan said. “So, he went through what everyone else was going to go through that you were gonna give two-and-a-half million dollars to.”

So, what does Jordan think happened?

“I personally believed that he was injured. I’ve always felt that way. It just never showed up. It was the most disheartening thing,” Jordan said. “You’re always at risk when you’re gonna take high school pitching. Hell, that’s not rocket science. But usually, when you see guys two or three weeks before the draft, or even the week of the draft, and (the velocity) is all still there, and then you never see it again, well, I don’t know.”

That brings us back to the dot-connecting theory. The kid threw exceptionally hard when his every move wasn’t monitored as an amateur. Then he didn’t once he was a pro, and the potential of random drug-testing became a reality.

Quote

The steroids theory could solve the mystery of Hobgood’s rarely reappearing velocity. And it would clear the Orioles of making a mistake on Hobgood. But Jordan won’t go there.

“I never did think that was in his makeup and DNA to do something like that,” Jordan said. “He was a big kid, but if you really, really got close to him, it wasn’t like he was chiseled or looked like he had been spending a lot of time in the weight room. So, no, I never really considered that. I just think maybe there were shoulder issues that showed up pretty quickly and maybe they were there at the front end of that, and we just didn’t get that part right as well.”

 

[Moose Milligan]

Whiffed on a high first round pick.  Wasn't the first time, won't be the last.  

[Can_of_corn]

23 minutes ago, TonySoprano said:

 

He didn't look like it?

But Bartolo Colon and Dee Gordon both got caught, did they look like it?

I have no idea if he used, but as I said at the time, no way would I use a top 5 pick on a kid that just got in shape for his senior year and had a huge velocity spike.

[DrungoHazewood]

29 minutes ago, weams said:

I find Dan to always be honest, I've not seen a lot of introspection. 

I was referring to Jordan and Hobgood.

[Tony-OH]

I had a ton of interaction with Joe Jordan during his time here, more than any there Orioles scouting director.

Maybe not everyone remember this, but when I was out in Hawaii I was basically an associate scout for the Orioles Southern Californian area guy Gil Kubski in which I sent him reports on guys that I saw who came through and played out there including Tim Lincecum. I had many conversations at minor league stadiums with Joe before and after my time in Hawaii, so I have a pretty good understanding of what really went down.

I have a ton of respect for Jordan as a person and a scout and as I remember things, the Hobgood pick was a little bit about several things, not just one reason. He's 100% truthful in saying that Angelos gave him the money to spend on the 1st round picks, but he didn't just get unlimited amounts and this was before the slotting system that we have now so players could hold out for much more money if they wanted.

As I remember being told (not by Jordan), is that Joe had questions about the makeup of Zack Wheeler and particularly Tyler Matzek when it came to the amount of money they were going to want. They were the two others pitchers that he was considering with that pick. 

At the end of the day though, it was Hobgood's makeup and personality, and the fact that he knew he could get him signed for a reasonable amount that I believe sealed the deal for Joe to take a chance on the lesser known and liked by general consensus in the scouting community of the three. I also remember Joe telling me that he didn't think all three of those high school pitchers were that far apart when it came to potential. So if you think about it, if you think they are fairly close, why not take the kid with the best makeup and price tag?

Since he didn't have unlimited funds, he felt the money could be spent on other high school overslot such as 11th round Mike Ohlman and 22nd round Cameron Coffey, each of who he gave around a million to (Can't remember there exact bonus). The fact that they both failed as well made the 2009 draft a gigantic bust for Jordan and the Orioles. So I would surmise that Jordan felt he could get Hobgood, Ohlman and Coffey for the price of Matzek or Wheeler, who both came down significantly on their asking price after being drafted.

Because Jordan is such a high quality person, I'm sure it does bother him that he had such high profile bust picks as Hobgood and Rowell (I have a whole other story on the Rowell situation but I save that for another time if people are interested), but at the end of the day, the man is an outstanding elevator of talent and I learned a lot from him over the years I spent having conversations about scouting.

[Can_of_corn]

Ohlman did make the majors, so I guess I wouldn't call him a failure.  Coffey was a huge disappointment.