Collegiate experience, sans college
By joshjacksonmilb
By Josh Jackson / MiLB.com
This offseason Josh Jackson is looking at some of the top prospects who prepared for professional ball by spending time in a collegiate wood bat league, considering how those summers got them ready for the Draft and future success in the Minors.
You might have the idea that one has to go to college to play in a collegiate summer league. Allow Joc Pederson’s story to disabuse you of that notion.
After his senior year of high school in 2010, Pederson suited up for the Waimea Whalers in the Hawaiian Collegiate Baseball League. The Palo Alto native had committed to the University of Southern California, but the Dodgers went ahead anyway and picked Pederson in the 11th round of the 2010 Draft a little more than a week before the summer-ball season started in the middle of the Pacific.
The HCBL began in 2005, so it doesn’t have the tradition or prestige of, say, the Cape Cod Baseball League (which has been around in one format or another since 1885), and it hasn’t yet established stability the way, say, the New England, Atlantic, Ripken or Shenandoah Valley CBLs have. In fact, the Hawaiian League had to cancel its 2013 seasons because of a lack of available housing for player. But the appeal of the league is obvious (baseball in a tropical paradise, anybody?), and several current Minor Leaguers played there. At least one alumnus –- №11 Nationals prospect Zach Walters -– has cracked a big league roster.
And Pederson, who hit .278 with 22 homers and 31 stolen bases for Double-A Chattanooga this year, apparently found it a comfortable enough atmosphere in which to start hitting with a wooden bat. Now the Dodgers’ top prospect, at the time he was an 18-year-old playing against guys with at least one NCAA season under their belts.
In 33 games that summer, he led the Waves with 37 hits and was second with 10 doubles. He batted .319 with a .417 OBP, walking 19 times while whiffing on 13 occasions. He also stole six bases in seven attempts, and won the league’s Player of the Week honors in the penultimate week of the season.
During his hot streak, the would-be Trojan did an interview with ESPN.com’s USC Report, and talked about what it was like to be out there playing on an island.
“I like it a lot here. It’s relaxing, and I’m not around the people at home that ask me for updates [on my decision to sign or go to school],” he said.
Pederson’s decision ended up coming after the HCBL season, on deadline day, and it was made easier by factors beyond his control. Seven days earlier, USC fired head coach and former big leaguer Chad Kreuter, who recruited Pederson and for whom Pederson was excited to play. It was a lucky break for the Dodgers. Although Pederson had reportedly intended to go to school unless a seven-figure bonus lured him away, after Kreuter’s firing, he turned pro for $600,000.
He only had time to get into three Minor League games that season, but hit .323 with 11 homers and 26 stolen bases in 84 games between Rookie-level Ogden and Class A Great Lakes the next year.
