RIGHT FIELD FOG

Daniel Bard
Wareham 2005
Pitcher
North Carolina

Power pitchers may light up radar guns, but they don’t always do it that frequently when they’re on the Cape. Over the years, bullpens have been a pretty common landing spot for flame-throwers, even for some who are starters on their college teams.

Daniel Bard did not take that path. Far from it. In 2005, Bard led the league in starts and innings pitched. He made 10 starts and logged 65 innings.

All the exposure was a very good thing. For the benchmarks that you think of when talking about power pitchers, Bard had probably the best single season of the decade. He led the league in strikeouts with 82, and that stood through the next four years as the best mark of the decade. He also had a 1.25 ERA, and he surrendered just 42 hits. His K/9 was 11.4.

Those are pretty remarkable numbers, especially when you consider how often Bard was on the mound. While more innings obviously pave the way for more strikeouts, they also create more opportunities for bad moments.

Bard didn’t have many. He allowed nine earned runs all summer. The most he allowed in any one start was three.

And Bard didn’t get tired either, despite pitching 89.2 innings for North Carolina in the spring. As the summer wore on, Bard actually got stronger. After he allowed three runs in a duel with UNC teammate Andrew Miller on July 20, Bard delivered his three best starts of the summer. On July 25 against Hyannis, he struck out 12 and walked one in seven shutout innings. Six days later, he went nine shutout innings, allowed one hit and struck out 10 against Brewster. He closed out the season by striking out 10 in seven innings against Bourne.

Fittingly, that last start came on the last night of the regular season. Bard was on the mound, just as he was on day one.

After the Cape

Bard was named the No.2 prospect in the league in 2005 and was drafted 28th overall by the Red Sox the next June. After some shakiness as a starter in 2007, Bard was moved to the bullpen in 2008, and the rest is history. He made it to Boston in 2009 and emerged as one of the game’s most exciting young power relievers. He struck out 63 in 49.1 innings and touched 101 mph on the radar gun.

Conor Gillaspie
Falmouth 2007
Third Baseman
Wichita State

His was a Cape League class full of big hitters and top prospects, from Gordon Beckham and Buster Posey to Yonder Alonso and Reese Havens. Conor Gillaspie might not have been in the same conversation as those guys when the summer of 2007 began.

He was definitely there by the end.

A late arrival after Wichita State’s post-season run, Gillaspie batted fifth in his Falmouth debut and turned in an unassuming 1-for-3 line. The next day he went 0-for-5.

A few days later, he went 4-for-5 with a home run, two doubles and three RBI. It was that kind of summer for Gillaspie. From humble beginnings came one of the best all-around offensive seasons we had seen in a while.

Gillaspie came to Cape Cod after his sophomore season with the Shockers. He hit .325 with six home runs. Good numbers, but not really enough to put him firmly on the national radar.

Once he came to the Cape, everything changed. That 4-for-5 performance was the beginning of a remarkable run. He caught fire in early July, getting a hit in nine straight games. As he got more and more at-bats, his name popped up on the batting average leaderboard. He was flashing power, too, and hitting a lot of doubles and driving in runs. By the time he hit two home runs against Hyannis on July 20, he had placed himself among the league’s stars.

He made the all-star team and didn’t stop hitting. He finished the summer by winning the batting title with a .345 average. He was fourth in home runs with seven, fourth in doubles with 12, second in on-base percentage, first in slugging and first in extra-base hits. Stars from recent years had put up numbers like those in one category, maybe two. Gillaspie shined across the board.

He beat out players like Beckham and Alonso for MVP honors, and it was absolutely the right call. When we talk about a great offensive summer down the line, Gillaspie’s 2007 campaign is one we’ll compare it to.

Yes, his was a class of stars. Gillaspie may have shined brightest.

After the Cape

Gillaspie’s Cape League performance forced scouts to take notice. There wasn’t much of a consensus among them about how his tools projected, but after he hit .419 with 11 home runs as a junior, he was drafted with the 37th overall pick in 2008 by the Giants. He had a cup of coffee with the big club later that summer, but he wasn’t meant to stick around. He spent 2009 in Single A, where he hit .286 with four home runs.

Gordon Beckham
Y-D 2007
Shortstop
Georgia

You probably couldn’t call Gordon Beckham the best power-hitting shortstop of the decade. He’s got stiff competition there. You couldn’t really call him the best hitter in his Cape League class, either, and by the time the next year’s draft rolled around, you couldn’t even call him the best prospect from his Cape League team.

But in the summer of 2007, Gordon Beckham was the best player on the best team we’ve seen in a long time.

And you can stack up what he did against pretty much anybody.

Beckham was the ringleader for the 2007 Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox, who hit a .278 as a team and steamrolled to their second consecutive league championship. In a lineup that featured four players who would become first-round picks, Beckham was the biggest power threat and the biggest run producer. Of all the great hitters on that team — Posey, Castro, Green — I think you’d want to steer clear of Beckham more than anybody else.

He came to the Cape after his sophomore season at Georgia, where he hit .307 with 15 home runs. It was a good year, but in the summer, Beckham took a leap — and he started his jump right away. In his first game, he had a double and an RBI. In his second game, he went 3-for-4 with a homer and three RBI. Pretty quickly, he became one of the big early stories in the league, and he never really faded.

Beckham finished the summer with a .284 average, a league-best nine home runs, nine doubles and 35 RBI, which tied him for the league lead. In the playoffs, Beckham helped Y-D secure its title with a home run and four RBI in four games.

After the Cape

If Beckham’s summer was huge, his next college season was enormous. He hit .411 with 28 home runs and 77 RBI en route to SEC Player of the Year honors. He was selected by the White Sox with the eighth overall pick in 2008, and he’s already made his Major League debut. He hit .270 for Chicago in 2009 with 14 home runs.

For a Cape League fan, the trickling in of rosters is one of the little joys of winter.

It’s less of a trickling this year. More of a deluge.

And I’m not complaining.

As you’ve probably seen, Commissioner Paul Galop released every preliminary roster on the league’s web site. No more wondering who will post a roster next, and no more waiting until June to see Chatham’s list.

By my count, there are 258 players currently on the rosters. It’ll change, of course, but all in all, we’ve got a pretty good and very early idea of the players who will arrive on the Cape a few months from now.

I will do my normal early look features once the college season gets going, but I thought I’d highlight some of the bigger names I noticed on my first look at the rosters I haven’t written about yet (I’ve already run through Wareham, Cotuit and Hyannis). These are just names that jumped out. There are plenty of other potential stars.

Bourne

Anthony Rendon – 3B – Rice – Probably the top freshman in the nation last year. Might have played in Bourne if not for an injury that kept him out all summer.
Anthony Meo – RHP – Coastal Carolina – At my real job, I actually covered Meo in high school. He’s a Rhode Island native who had a fantastic first season at Coastal.
Pierre LePage – IF – Connecticut – The heart and soul is back.

Brewster

Rob Brantly – C – UC Riverside – Top prospect in the Northwoods League in ’09.
Troy Channing – 3B – St. Mary’s – Hit .379 with 20 HR as a freshman.

Chatham

Brian Humphries – OF – Pepperdine – One of the top recruits in the country a year ago.
Aaron Westlake – IF – Vanderbilt – SEC batting champ last year.

Falmouth

Matt Purke – LHP – TCU – Maybe the biggest name. He was the 14th overall pick in the 2009 draft.
B.A. Vollmuth – SS – Southern Miss – He really emerged last summer and could be a top prospect this summer.

Harwich

Mikie Mahtook – OF – LSU – One of the heroes of last year’s College World Series.
Matty Ott – RHP – LSU – Made a huge splash as the Tigers’ closer.

Orleans

Mitchell Lambson – LHP – Arizona State – Had 99 strikeouts as a freshman.
Kolten Wong – OF – Hawaii – Hit .341 with 11 HR and made Team USA last year.

Y-D

Trevor Bauer – RHP – UCLA – Had a huge freshman season then spent the summer with Team USA.
Alex Meyer – RHP – Kentucky – Big hype last year as a freshman.

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.

Matt Murton
Wareham 2001 & 2002
Outfielder
Georgia Tech

He’s got an MVP award and plenty of great numbers, but it’s what Matt Murton did in 2002 that really pushed me to put him this high on the list.

He only played in 16 regular-season games that summer. It was the shorter and less impressive of his two Cape League seasons. The year before, he won an MVP award.

What makes the summer of 2002 amazing is that Murton could have very well spent it at home.

Coming off his MVP season in 2001, Murton hit .344 with 10 home runs in his sophomore year at Georgia Tech. He was slated for Team USA, a shoo-in to make the squad. At tryouts, he broke a finger.

That’s obviously not a major injury, but it’s enough to keep you out, especially in summer ball.

But as soon as he could play, Murton was suiting up for the Gatemen. He played in only 16 games, but he hit .400 and his presence in the lineup helped power the Gatemen into the playoffs. Once there, they surged, with Murton helping lead the way. In five playoff games, he had four hits and scored five runs. The Gatemen won their second consecutive Cape League championship.

Murton had a huge hand in both. As Cape League fans, I think we like to latch on to players who seem to “get it.” It’s fun following prospects and watching radar guns, but in the end, we love seeing players who view the league the same way we do — as a really unique and special place.

By all accounts, Murton was one of those guys. When you factor in his 2001 season — in which he hit .324 with 28 RBI — it’s no surprise that he was elected to the league’s Hall of Fame just six years after he was on the field.

After the Cape

The Red Sox picked Murton with their first-round pick in the 2003 draft. He shined in the minors and was traded to the Cubs in the Nomar Garciaparra trade. He made his Major League debut with the Cubs in 2005 and spent parts of four seasons in Chicago. He was traded to Oakland, then Colorado. In 2009, he split time between Triple A and the bigs in Colorado. In December, his contract was sold to Japan’s Hanshin Tigers, and it appears he’ll continue his career there.

Ben Crockett
Wareham 2000 & 2001
Pitcher
Harvard

I don’t know what’s more amazing: that Ben Crockett somehow went 1-6 in 2001 or that he averaged 70 strikeouts per season in a two-year Cape-League career.

For the purposes of this list, we’ll go with the strikeouts.

Crockett’s 1-6 record went along with a remarkably mismatched 1.67 ERA, one of the strangest statistical pairings you’ll ever see. But the strikeout numbers? Those are pretty rare, too.

And they’re the reason Crockett is here. He had 140 of them, and he’s the decade’s strikeout king.

Crockett, a Massachusetts native, came to the Cape as part of the Wareham-Harvard connection driven by John Wylde. Immediately, Crockett made a splash, going 5-1 with a 2.95 ERA and 66 strikeouts in 2000. He helped lead the Gatemen to a playoff berth and he shared Cape League Pitcher of the Year honors with Chatham’s Dan Krines.

He was back in Wareham in 2001, when he put together that strangest of statistical lines. Despite striking out 74, walking just nine and allowing just 11 earned runs, Crockett somehow picked up just the one win.

Initially, as I looked at the numbers, I had Crockett a little lower on this list, primarily because of that 1-6 mark. But when you realize that it’s an anomaly and a case of amazingly hard luck, you can start letting the rest of the numbers do the talking.

And they’re loud. In addition to the overwhelming strikeout numbers, Crockett also shined in the playoss. In game one of the 2001 West finals, Crockett pitched 7.2 shutout innings and struck out nine in a win over Bourne. He struck out seven in five innings in the decisive game of the championship series, which Wareham went on to win.

After the Cape

Crockett was drafted by the Rockies in the third round of the 2002 draft. He made it as far as Triple A before hanging it up. He has stayed in baseball, though, and is currently the Boston Red Sox’ Assistant Director for Player Development.

Tim Norton
Falmouth 2005
Pitcher
Connecticut

Some of my favorite Cape League stories have as their central characters the player who hooks onto a team as a temp and then turns into a star.

No story like that is better than Tim Norton’s.

In June of 2005, Norton was coming off a good– but not great — junior season at the University of Connecticut. His ERA was 3.07 and he had some good strikeout numbers, but he was still a swingman, pitching both as a starter and as a reliever.

Like a lot of New England players, Norton hoped to catch on with a Cape League team. He went to the annual tryout in Wareham. He did enough to get a temporary deal with Falmouth.

The next two months couldn’t have been scripted any better.

Norton went eight shutout innings in his first start, allowing just two hits and striking out nine. That probably would have been enough to earn Norton a full summer, but he continued to prove himself time and again. He struck out 11 in his next start and 12 after that.

Soon enough, he was picked for the all-star team, and he just kept turning in good start after good start. He finished the summer with a 5-1 record, a 1.77 ERA and 77 strikeouts in 61 innings. That strikeout total is tied for the third-best mark of the decade.

In a Cape class full of outstanding pitchers, Norton shared Pitcher of the Year honors with North Carolina and Chatham star Andrew Miller. He also won the John Claffey New England Top Prospect Award.

After the Cape

Norton was drafted in the seventh round of the 2006 draft by the Yankees. It hasn’t been smooth sailing since then. Norton had shoulder surgery that kept him out of most of the 2007 season and all of 2008. He finally worked his way back in May of 2009 and turned in a solid season for the High-A Tampa Yankees. In 23 relief appearances, Norton posted a 2.75 ERA.

Zane Carlson
Chatham 2001, 2002 & 2003
Pitcher
Baylor

Very few players spend three summers on the Cape. In the decade, you could probably count them on one hand.

Even fewer have the impact that Zane Carlson had in Chatham.

For three years, if it was the ninth inning and the A’s were winning, there was a good chance you’d see Carlson making his way in from the bullpen. In his three seasons, he saved 34 games, becoming the league’s all-time leader. Chatham won 66 games in his time there, so Carlson saved half of them. When you figure that plenty of games didn’t yield save situations, you’re looking at a remarkable percentage.

Long considered a Chatham great, Carlson was inducted into the Cape League Hall of Fame last month.

I’d say it’s a well-deserved honor. I can think of very few players who are as much a real “Cape Leaguer” as Carlson. He never went on to great baseball success in the professional ranks, so college and the Cape were his opportunities to shine. He was undersized and never really captured the attention of scouts.

But he was a player, one who seemed to thoroughly enjoy his time on the Cape.

He made his first trip to Chatham in 2001, after his sophomore year. The summer before, he had actually been with Team USA, so you couldn’t have predicted that the Cape would become a second baseball home.

That first summer, Carlson was lights out, putting up a 1.23 ERA and saving 12 games. He struck out 26 in 22 innings.

In 2002, Carlson took a medical redshirt at Baylor but when summertime rolled around, he was back in Chatham. He saved 12 games again but this time led the league.

By the time he headed back to Baylor, Carlson was already the league’s all-time saves leader, but he was back in 2003 to break his own record. He saved 10 more games, becoming the first player in league history to save 10 or more games for three consecutive seasons. He also ended up second in league record books in career appearances (61) and career strikeouts by a relief pitcher (91).

All in all, it was a remarkable Cape League career by a guy who seemed to really get what the league was all about. At the Hall of Fame induction ceremony, he said, “I was hoping this would be at the Squire, but Chatham Bars Inn is fine.”

A Cape Leaguer through and through.

After the Cape

Carlson set Baylor and Big 12 saves records and is still tied for 13th nationally in career saves. He was drafted in the 27th round of the 2004 draft and pitched three seasons in the minors.

A.J. Pollock
Falmouth 2008
Outfielder
Notre Dame

For a while back in 2008, it looked like No. 16 on this list — Grant Green — would be a shoo-in for league MVP honors.

But no one counted on A.J. Pollock sneaking in.

Pollock didn’t come to the Cape with as much hype as Green and he didn’t leave with as much, either. But along the way, he out-did Green and authored one of the best MVP seasons we’ve seen in quite some time.

Pollock, a Connecticut kid who shined in the NECBL in 2007, picked up where he left off upon returning to New England. From day one, he was in the lineup as Falmouth’s leadoff hitter and center fielder. He got himself in his base in his first 10 games, bringing it to a crescendo on July 2 when he went 5-for-5 in a win over Wareham.

From that point on, you couldn’t forget about Pollock anymore. He became one of the league’s biggest stars and continued to shine through the end of the season. While some other players saw their numbers dip, Pollock slugged through the all-star game, moved to the three-spot in the batting order and stayed consistent until the season’s last day, when he went 2-for-5 with two RBI in a win over Hyannis.

Pollock helped lead the Commodores to a play-in game win over Bourne, before they were edged by Cotuit in the West Division finals.

After the Cape

Pollock’s big summer greatly enhanced his draft stock and after a strong junior season at Notre Dame, he was taken by the Diamondbacks with the 17th pick in the 2009 draft. He was assigned to Class A South Bend, where he hit .271 in 63 games.