Here's Another One

In the past couple of weeks I posted a couple of pieces about Toronto starter Scott Richmond, who graduated from college at age 25, went undrafted, pitched for 3 years in the Northern League, was then picked up by the Toronto organization and is now in the majors.  Well, to my great surprise, there’s another one: Mariners’ pitcher Chris Jakubauskas (he’s got to be Lithuanian with a name like that).  Apparently, he blew out his elbow and had to have Tommy John surgery at some time during his college pitching career (he went to Oklahoma and Cal State Fullerton, two good baseball schools) and went undrafted.  He then spent four and a half years pitching in the Independent A leagues until the Mariners’ organization signed him in 2007.

His first three years as a professional (2003-2005), he pitched in the Frontier League.  The Frontier League is one of the Independent A Leagues which I did not cover in my post a few days ago about the Independent A’s.  It started play mainly in southern Ohio, West Virginia, and eastern Kentucky, places decidedly underserved by professional baseball.  It has since become a broader Midwest league having abandoned West Virginia, but now sporting teams in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, and Illinois, as well as Kentucky and Ohio. It’s  been going strong (maybe) since 1993, progressively moving to larger towns to increase market size.  In 2000, the River City Rascals set a then single season franchise attendance record by drawing 157,000 fans.  The league had total attendance over 1 million for the first time in 2003, and drew a league record 1.5 million fans in 2007, split between 12 teams.   That’s an average of 125,000 fans per team.  The Southern Illinois Minors located in Marion, IL, drew 259,392  that year, a league record.

The Frontier League strictly limits the roster in the sense that it requires about half of each roster to consist of rookie professional players and allows only three “veterans” (3 or more years of professional experience) per team.  By way of comparison, the Northern League has a cap of 5 veterans with at least 5 years of professional experience and must have at least 5 rookies per team.  Teams in the Frontier League have salary caps of $60,000 each and the minimum salary is $600/month, meaning that most players live with host families.  Again, by way of comparison, a typical salary in the Atlantic League is $3,000 a month (at least for veteran players) and there is no hard cap.  The Frontier League currently plays a 96 game season, up from only 52 games in 1993.

Toiling for three years in the Frontier League, Jakubauskas pitched poorly until his third season when he went 5-4 with a 3.34.  The next year (2006) he played for the Fullerton Flyers in the Golden League, improving to 8-1 with a 3.09 ERA and 76 K’s as against only 21 BB’s in 96 innings.  The next year he moved on to the new American Association, probably a better league than either the Frontier or the Golden League, and for the Lincoln Salt Dogs (once a Northern League team) he started the 2007 season 6-0 with a 2.42 ERA and K per inning pitched and was signed by the Mariners.

He didn’t pitch all that well for the West Tennessee Diamond Jax in the AA Southern League in 2007, posting an 0-4 record and an ERA of 4.94.  However, his K’s to BB’s ratio was almost 2-1, so the M’s didn’t just dump him even though he was already 28 years old that year.  He pitched extremely well in AA and AAA last year, and just made the M’s roster this year with a great Spring Training.  He pitched his best game of the season last night throwing 6 shutout innings and only allowing 2 hits.  His record improved to 3-4.  His ERA is now 6.10 and with only 16 K’s (as against 13 BB’s) in 41.1 innings, he doesn’t look anywhere near as good as Scott Richmond does so far.  In fact, he’s going to have to keep pitching like he did last night, if he doesn’t want to go back down to the minors right quick.

So why are guys coming out of the Independent A leagues and making it to the Show?  Why does it seem like there are so many old rookies nowadays?   I think there are several obvious answers to these questions.  First, the quality of play in the Independent A leagues is improving, to the point where players who play well there can come into, or more typically back to, major league organizations and progress to the majors. The second is expansion.  With 30 major league teams, major league organizations are beating the bushes to find anyone who can play a little ball.  Finally, with major league salaries being what they are, young minor league players stick to the game a lot longer than they once did (or did from about 1946 to 1980; players could make careers of minor league baseball when the minor league teams were more independent and had more local support before WWII).  Why not toil for peanuts doing something you enjoy at least through your 20’s, when, if you hit the jackpot and have a major league career lasting long enough to become arbitration eligible, you can make some real dough?  Or you may be able to play in Japan and make the big money that way.  Also, when a few of these guys start making it to the majors, it gives hope to all the others.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s definitely a positive trend.