TAMPA — Brian Cashman calls Greg Bird “by far the best hitter” among Yankee minor leaguers, a group that includes the highly-touted Aaron Judge. Alex Rodriguez says Bird should be the No. 3 hitter in the Bronx for many years to come.
To which you can’t help but ask: Who is this guy and why was he only a fifth-round draft choice?
Not that he’s an unknown. Bird’s name has been out there among the hardcore prospect-watchers for a couple of years, hailed as much by some for his .428 on-base percentage in Single-A Charleston in 2013 as his 20 home runs.
But maybe because he was something of a sleeper in the draft, with little Baseball America hype coming out of high school, nobody was projecting Bird as a savior for the Yankee farm system.
Then last year the lefthanded-hitting first baseman punctuated a strong 2014 in High-A (Tampa) and Double-A (Trenton) by earning MVP honors in the Arizona Fall League, and now, suddenly, together with 6-foot-7 Judge, Bird is viewed as The Future at a time when that matters more than usual to this franchise.
Judge received the early attention in camp, due at least partly to his eye-popping, Giancarlo Stanton-like size. Yet as Cashman said, the Yankees consider Bird the superior hitter because of what scouting director Damon Oppenheimer calls “his combination of power, plate discipline, and hit skills.”
Meanwhile, A-Rod, who first noticed Bird in Charleston two years ago during his rehab from hip surgery, sees “a pure hitter” and perhaps a star in the making.
“I spoke to him in South Carolina and I was impressed then,” A-Rod said on Friday. “But from then to now it’s night and day; he’s stronger and more mature as a hitter.
“The first day here I only saw him from the back at first when he was taking BP, and I didn’t put 2-and-2 together. I walked up to (assistant GM) Billy Eppler and said, ‘Who the hell is that?’
“I mean, when you’ve been around for 20 years, you know who can play and who can’t. You see the way the ball comes off his bat. Then you see his work ethic, and how he watches and asks smart questions, and you know he’s got a great makeup. He’s going to be around for a long time.”
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If Bird lives up to all of this praise then the Yankees, whose inability to draft and develop impact players is at least partly responsible for their slide to mediocrity the last two years, should get credit for making a shrewd fifth-round pick in the 2011 draft.
Oppenheimer said he and his scouts rated Bird, then a kid at Grandview High School in Aurora, Colo., a Denver suburb, considerably higher than that, which is why they wound up forking over $1.1 million to sign him. Yet they were willing to gamble they could land him that late because they sensed he wasn’t in great demand.
“We were on him early and we liked him,” Oppenheimer said, “but it was weird, you just didn’t hear a lot of buzz about him.”
Oppenheimer says geography was probably the reason; that scouting in Colorado is often difficult because the weather is so unpredictable, and thanks to the thin air at such high altitudes that allows balls to travel farther, its tougher than usual to project the potential of high school hitters.
In Bird’s case, he demolished school records by hitting 39 home runs — as he recalls — over three seasons, but the altitude always raises questions about how such aluminum-bat power will play where the air isn’t so thin.
“Not a lot of position players have come out of that market,” Oppenheimer said.
Nevertheless, Bird had accepted a scholarship to the University of Arkansas, and he was also a catcher in high school with potential to catch in the pros, which added to his value.
Yet the Yankees went with their instincts and waited on draft day, finally taking him with the 179th overall pick.
“The draft is sort of like playing poker,” Oppenheimer said.
In this case nobody called their bluff on Bird and then they were willing to pay him what at the time was late first-round signing-bonus money to convince him not to go to Arkansas.
The big decision since then has been Bird giving up catching early in his pro career. He requested the change, partly because he said it was causing back problems, and by then the Yankees saw enough potential in his bat to agree to the move.
Now, Bird indicates the change was really more about starting to believe he could hit at any level.
“I think when I first signed, I was a little overwhelmed,” he recalled, “and you always hear that catching is the easiest way to the big leagues. Then as things started to slow down for me I think I realized I could hang with anyone offensively.
“When I started playing first base I remember people saying, ‘well, he doesn’t hit for enough power,’ but I think I realized I was going to be fine.”
Scouts now project him to eventually be a 25-30 home run guy. Yet the Yankees like the fact that he uses the entire field, having been taught early on by a youth coach to emulate Colorado Rockies all-time great first baseman Todd Helton’s approach.
That, and his patience at the plate, which translates to his impressive on-base numbers, apparently always came naturally.
“There’s not much baseball (background) in my family,” Bird said. “My dad played basketball in high school. I played a lot of sports when I was young, but baseball was just kind of a passion from an early age. My mom says I was hitting when I was in diapers.”
Now, in another year or two, certainly when Mark Teixeira’s contract runs out after the 2016 season, it appears Bird will be hitting in pinstripes. And perhaps, together with Judge, headlining a long-awaited, home-grown follow-up to the Core Four era.
