Previously:
Andrew Baker: The Prince of Nowhere
The Journey Begins
Andrew Baker was grinning from ear to ear. While watching the CBL Rookie Draft on the CBL Network, he’d just heard his name called in the first round. His mentor and friend, Jimmy Boatright, was ecstatic.
“With the 15th pick, the Frisco Roughriders select Andrew Baker. Traverse City is now on the clock.”
It had been a tumultuous two years for the youngster. Being kicked out of his home, finding baseball to help turn his life around, making up with his parents… and then they died in a tragic tornado.
The first few days after Andrew’s parents passed away, he didn’t say much. He wandered around the lot where their house used to stand, amazed at the pile of rubble. He found old pictures of himself and his parents scattered throughout the neighborhood. He planned their funerals, with the help of Jimmy of course. Nothing seemed to matter anymore.
Jimmy didn’t want to push the baseball workouts for him at such a tough time, but teams had been calling all week trying to come see the young lefty throw. Every team picking in the top 5 wanted a final look at Baker before the draft, but Jimmy had to tell them what happened. He assured them Andrew would continue chasing his dream, he just needed a little bit of time to comprehend what had happened.
“I knew when he couldn’t visit those teams in the top 5, he might slip a little,” Boatright told me. “It’s tough to take a kid you’ve never seen play, especially when those franchises need to make sure they don’t draft another bust.”
The slide ended at #15.
Frisco had a lot of interest in Baker. After being eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, the Roughriders sent a huge contingency to Kansas to put Andrew through a workout.
“Has anyone seen the kid swing a bat?” Frisco bench coach Tim Bogar asked as they drove to the local high school.
Nobody had. He’d been pegged as a pitching prospect, but with his natural athletic ability and plenty of room to grow into his body, it was worth seeing the kid swing a little bit.
What nobody knew, was that Andrew had been going to the batting cage near his motel almost every day before Jimmy found him. By the third week, he was consistently hitting line drives in the 70 MPH cage. The fastest machine, 85 MPH, was one the youngster wanted to face, but it was being repaired for maintenance. The next day, Baker would meet Jimmy Boatright, and his pitching expedition would begin.
After the Frisco front office met with Andrew, they asked him if he’d mind taking a few swings on the field. Jimmy was nervous, but didn’t want to look like a control freak, so he asked Andrew what he wanted to do.
“I’ll hit,” Andrew said, smirking.
Hit he did. Frisco’s staff had come down to Kansas looking for a starting pitcher, because the team’s minor league system was in dire need of some arms. But what they found was a potential middle of the order bat instead.
Baker hit balls off the left-center and right-center wall, he smashed line drives up the middle, and he even managed to put one ball over the left-field fence.
“That was an impressive 20-pitch BP,” Bogar said to Baker following his showcase. “We didn’t even know if you could swing at all.”
Jimmy was equally surprised.
After putting Baker through a few infield and outfield drills, it seemed clear he’d be a first baseman or a pitcher. He didn’t have the instincts most baseball players develop on the defensive side of the ball, and he just wasn’t quick enough to play anywhere else.
“We like him more as a hitter than a pitcher, to be honest,” Frisco GM Erik told me. “We’re going to try and develop him as both, though. He’ll get 3 days as a starter, then 3 days as a first baseman, on and off all year long until he proves he can’t do one or the other.”
Baker has been through a lot in his young life, but being a first round pick brings even more scrutiny than one would expect. Frisco will be watching him closely, helping him any way they can as he adjusts to professional baseball. Jimmy Boatright is going to be living with Baker, at least for the first few weeks, just to help him get settled.
Andrew Baker had finally made it. Now he just needed to show he belonged.
