TORONTO – Stubby Clapp traces his nearly three decades in professional baseball – 11 years as a player, 18 as a coach, the last six as first-base coach for the St. Louis Cardinals – all the way back to a tryout for the Canadian national team.
A teenager at the time, the scrappy infielder from Windsor, Ont., didn’t make the senior squad then, but his style of play stood out enough that a coach at Winthrop University offered him a scholarship. That opportunity didn’t defray enough of the cost of studying and playing in the United States, but it did lead him to another offer, one from Paris Junior College in Texas that he accepted, one that eventually funnelled him to Texas Tech and, in 1996, a selection in the 36th round by the Cards.
“That tryout,” Clapp says during a recent interview, “was the start of what was going to take me to the rest of my career.”
So, the 51-year-old national team icon knows how to make an impression and with 157 players participating in this week’s Canadian Futures Showcase, hosted by the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre before 50-plus major-league scouts and college recruiters, he offers a simple piece of advice: “Play the game hard.”
“It’s so easy to stand out right now in the game by just playing hard, running a hard 90 feet and not taking anything for granted,” Clapp continues. “Everything’s about the flash and the show and it’s almost like a look-at-me-now type of type of game. You can stand out in the best way by playing the game hard and playing for your team. You’re going to stand out like a sore thumb, but in a good way because you’re playing for your team. You’re playing to win. It’s refreshing.”
Clapp bases the above not only on his own experiences as a player and a coach, but also those while going through the recruiting process with his son, Cooper, who just transferred to Middle Tennessee State University from Florida Southwestern College. He’s seen the increased emphasis on technology and isolated skill development from a number of different vantage points and sees a gap in the playability of young athletes across the sport.
“One hundred per cent,” he says. “Everything is all about exit velo, launch angles, how hard you can throw and how well you can spin the ball and everything like that. That’s great. But if you can’t play the game, it’s going to be tough to win a game, tough to do something productive on the field. All the tech stuff is fun, but it’s all it’s all measurements of individual success. In the end, it’s a team game. And it’s so, so tough to teach that, to play a team game with a bunch of individuals. When you get that, it’s rare. It’s special.”
No doubt and balancing the competing demands of showing off individual skill along with team tendencies in the showcase environment is incredibly difficult.
Pete Orr, another longtime national team stalwart who now scouts for the Milwaukee Brewers, praised the CFS’s set-up for providing a combine day, held Tuesday, ahead of four days of games, culminating in a home run derby and prospects contest Saturday.
And while he says “you don’t need to be a premier evaluator to see which tools stand out” at a showcase, he notes that it’s important to remain open-minded on players because “baseball’s not a scripted game where there’s one thing that necessarily works. … If you see adjustments they make and desire and fight in them, that usually turns out to be a good baseball player.”
At the same time, there are key elements players can always show, Orr adds.
“The big one is energy,” he says. “Not everybody’s an energetic player, but in these kind of things, if you see a guy going with energy, supporting teammates, you can catch someone’s eye with stuff like that. I look at the Blue Jays signing Owen Gregg from the national team (as an undrafted free agent in July) and this kid checks those boxes. Just a great teammate, fantastic energy, he’s not an Alpha leader necessarily, but he’s a supportive leader in the way he plays the game and encourages his teammates. That stuff catches your eye as an evaluator and a baseball person.”
Jasmin Roy, the Blue Jays scout covering Quebec, agrees, saying he pays close attention to the passion players take on to the field along with how they treat those around them, especially at a showcase when the heat is on.
“Often I see players here that have a bad round of BP and are like, it’s too much pressure and I’m bad and they are getting negative,” he explains. “So I really look at how it works above the shoulders and how they react. Sometimes they are the best players in their area and now they’re with all the other players – and that will happen, too, on their way to the major-leagues – how do you react to that new surrounding? My advice would be to give it your all and just not to think about baseball personally, but as a teammate, leader, person in how you react with coaches, how you react with other players and how you react to your good stuff, but also your mistakes or your failures. …
“It’s kind of easy to look at running speed. It’s a stopwatch and that’s the measure,” Roy adds. “The other stuff, it’s harder to find out and that will make the big, big difference at the end of the day.”
Jay Lapp, a veteran Blue Jays scout covering Ontario, echoes that outlook. He pointed to the array of former Canadian big-leaguers helping out at the showcase and noted the common thread between them was an unyielding belief in their abilities.
“Everybody here has good tools or they wouldn’t be here – what’s going to separate people as they go forward is how bad do you want it? How much you willing to give and how much you willing to give up to get to your dream?” Lapp explains. “The biggest thing that’s changed since I’ve been scouting is the availability of the analytic stuff and that’s become the focus. You see video after video of guys throwing into a net or hitting off a tee and you see their exit velocity. That’s nice and all, but it’s not how you play the game. To be able to see guys that compete at a different level, it’s a big separator, especially guys who do that on their own, that don’t have to be coached up to do that.
“The tools are a given,” Lapp adds. “It’s the makeup, the willingness to push through the hard times that makes the big-league player, I think.”
Rene Tosoni, the Blue Jays scout covering B.C., knows it from first-hand experience.
A 36th-round pick of the Minnesota Twins in 2005, he grinded his way to a 10-year pro career that included 60 games. A fireman now who also helps coach the Coquitlam Reds in the B.C. Premier Baseball League, he believes every little thing matters, from whether players run or walk on and off the field to whether they volunteer to pick up balls after batting practice.
“I’m kind of an old-school guy,” says Tosoni. “I like to see their makeup when they fail and when they succeed and what kind of teammate they are, but also knowing the game. Yeah, you may throw the ball 100 miles an hour or hit the ball 120 off the bat, but are you that baseball player that’s taking an extra base on an outfielder’s mistake throwing the ball over the cutoff man? Or trying to help your team win? That’s what separates the strong kids that throw hard from the actual baseball players, knowing the game and asking questions and trying to grow not just the analytic skills.”
Hence, when evaluating pitchers, Tosoni looks for players willing to tone down their velocity to throw strikes, use their defence “and not be selfish on the mound.”
“I’ve seen pitchers get a broken bat, jam job to second base that gets them out of an inning but the pitcher’s upset because he didn’t get the 0-2 strikeout,” he adds. “The kids are separating themselves from the exit velos and arm-strength stuff are the guys who carry themselves like ballplayers.”
Pat Griffin, the Canadian area scout for the Blue Jays, agrees with all of the above sentiments, adding that the way certain players can become overwhelmed by the moment offers up an opportunity for those who can show “a calm demeanour, presence – just acting like you’ve been there before and not letting the stage get too big for you.”
“A lot of scouts can notice that right away, as soon as you walk on the field,” says Griffin. “That’s an important part of it because a lot of clubs now put such an emphasis on makeup and background and what type of teammate is this person, what type of human being is this person? Some teams might weigh it more than others, but it can elevate a player’s stock in terms of what the club or what a college thinks about that player and what he might bring to your program or organization.”
For the players able to pull it all off, their showcase performance may very well be the first steps toward a career they can only begin to imagine.
