Justin Smoak
Cotuit 2006
First Baseman
South Carolina
When I think of must-see players in the Cape League, I think mostly of pitchers. Why? Maybe it’s the fact that you see a lot more of them — say, 100 pitches versus five at-bats. There’s also the tangible nature of their abilities — a 95 mph fastball versus good bat speed. I can’t necessarily identify bat speed, but I can tell when a fastball is really fast.
Whatever it is, pitchers draw the crowds. Unless there’s one of those rare must-see hitters around.
The league doesn’t have one every year, but when they come around, you’ll want to be watching.
Justin Smoak was one of them — and one of the most striking hitters of the decade.
He came to the Cape after his freshman season at South Carolina, a tall, switch-hitting first baseman who packed a ton of power on a Major League frame. He didn’t disappoint. Not even a little bit.
Smoak hit .286, smacked 11 homers, hit 20 doubles and drove in 27 runs. He also struck out just 36 times; a lot of Cape power hitters get into the 50s or the 60s.
Smoak was named league MVP and it wasn’t a surprise. Because, more than the stats, Smoak’s presence was impressive. If you saw him take a swing, you’d know he was a player with a really bright future, brighter than most. He just looked like a Major Leaguer.
Baseball America picked him as the league’s top prospect, ahead of Matt Wieters, who happened to be a high-school teammate of Smoak’s. Along with Wieters, I’d call Smoak one of the top three or four hitting prospects the league produced in the decade. Smoak was just at another level.
What makes his summer of ’06 even more amazing is that Smoak was doing it after his freshman season. He was 19 years old at the time.
It was easy to see that the sky was the limit.
After the Cape
Smoak was tabbed as a third-team All-American after his sophomore season, and he spent that summer with Team USA. The next year, he hit .383 with 27 home runs for the Gamecocks and was selected by the Rangers with the 11th overall pick in the 2008 draft. He has progressed quickly through the minors and was named by Baseball America as the organization’s second-best prospect after this season. He finished the year at Triple A.
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