"Where's Our Guy?"
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One of my favorite quirks of Spring Training involves a folding chair. In a multi-billion dollar industry, the generic metal folding chair — no different than the kind that brought controversy (and an end) to so many wrestling matches — still has a place in baseball.
During the month of March, you’ll often find members of Major League coaching staffs seated outside of the dugout during games. They watch the action from a chair. From a folding chair, situated on the track somewhere in the general vicinity of the on-deck circle.
In 2009, the Padres were playing the Royals in Surprise. (Surprise!) As I’ve mentioned before, a road trip to Surprise never generated much enthusiasm from those within the Peoria office. The drive along Bell Rd., through Sun City — the age-restricted cloister that’s like a secular Vatican in the desert — past most major fast food chains, tattoo parlors and I-dare-you-to-eat-here taco shops, doesn’t encourage travel to a game where attendance is optional.
I must have been the only front office representative to make the trip. After all, it was the only time that our traveling secretary gave me seats in the front row, behind the screen, near the visitor’s dugout. Those tickets were usually reserved for ownership. Often these tickets went undistributed because the traveling secretary didn’t want to get caught empty-handed should a late-arriving VIP require suitable accommodations.
But, alas, there were no such concerns in Surprise.
So there we were — a friend of mine visiting from the east coast, a member of the Padres media relations department who was off the clock but was clearly an early adopter of FOMO, and me — sitting behind the screen at Surprise Stadium.
Sitting behind Padres manager Bud Black and other coaches on their folding chairs.
Big League Camp rosters at Spring Training consist of all members of the 40-man roster plus non-roster invitees. That latter group is comprised of select prospects and veteran players signed as minor league free agents.
Some minor league free agents have Major League experience; others have reached a developmental impasse and — after six full minor league seasons in professional baseball — exercise their right to hit the open market.
Teams explore this player pool to address upper-level depth (think of a team’s potential eighth or ninth starting pitcher), fill out the Triple-A roster, and — hopefully — catch lightning in a bottle and find a big-league contributor, perhaps a late bloomer who benefits from a change of scenery. For these players, Spring Training games are an open audition. Not only is their current organization evaluating them, but for every scout in attendance will take notice of a player who could make their club better.
Usually by the sixth inning, the regulars have hit the showers and the minor league free agents do battle.
I don’t remember the inning in which Padres pitcher Chris Britton took the mound. I don’t remember which Royals pitchers appeared earlier in the game, prior to Britton’s outing. The internet doesn’t remember either. Or maybe machine learning understands selective memory. If that’s the case, good for the web. I wish I could scrub any evidence of the game from my mind, too.
On that day, which the internet tells me was February 28, the Royals marched out at least two relatively unknown pitchers with serious stuff. The velocity — well before seemingly everyone in the bullpen threw 95+ — was at the upper end of the scale. It was live and it was intimidating, especially for hitters during the first few days of games.
Kansas City was not shy about investing in higher-risk teenage arms with stuff. On the other hand, the Padres drafting philosophy at the time valued command of the strike zone over velocity and upside.
Britton made it to San Diego via minor league free agency. As a 23-year-old with the Orioles in 2006, he enjoyed a successful rookie season, making 52 appearances out of the pen, keeping the ball in the park, and pitching to a 3.35 ERA.
Shortly after his rookie campaign, he was traded to the Yankees for Jaret Wright. Britton’s performance in New York (and in Triple-A) was enough to get him outrighted off the roster by the end of the ’08 season.
When Chris Britton, 2009 Spring Training non-roster invitee of the San Diego Padres, took the mound in Surprise, his fastball registered a comfortable 83 MPH. That number on the radar gun won’t even get you pulled over on the 101 Loop.
Britton stood about 6’3 and was listed at 275 lbs. The physical appearance and the velocity didn’t quite jive. Nothing about the performance, especially after the Royals showcased their big arms, felt right.
In the next half inning, the Royals deployed yet another pitcher with a live arm. After seeing a fastball in the upper-90s, Bud Black turned around and asked, “Where’s our guy?”
That guy certainly wasn’t Britton, who was ultimately released by the end of May and never again played affiliated baseball.
I had no answers.
Black delivered the rhetorical equivalent of the WWE folding-chair knockout blow.
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