The Choice of a Lifetime Posted on April 30th
It was here, in the front yard of a Bethesda home with the whir of the Beltway in the background, that Danny Hultzen would practice his pitching. He’d take a bucket of baseballs out in the front yard and — having already measured a distance of 60 feet 6 inches — would begin firing away.
“Inside, you would hear, ‘Clunk, clunk, clunk,’ ” said his father, Chris Hultzen.
The repetition and quiet work ethic helped mold Danny Hultzen into an All-Met pitcher for St. Albans School. But in the past year, a dedication to weightlifting and a well-timed growth spurt to 6 feet 2 have helped Hultzen blossom into a top prospect. His fastball is almost 10 mph faster than a year ago, now clocked in the low to mid-90s, and professional scouts — many of whom hadn’t heard of the lanky left-hander two months ago — have noticed. They are flocking to his games and raising their radar guns to take measure.
Before this season, Hultzen already was considered enough of a talent to be recruited by major colleges, and last fall he signed a partial scholarship to play baseball for the University of Virginia. But with the Major League Baseball draft just five weeks away, Hultzen and his family are in the unexpected position of weighing the value of a potential signing bonus and professional contract against a college education and the experience that goes with it.
“How do you prepare for something like this?” asked St. Albans Athletic Director David Baad, who coached Hultzen on the school’s baseball team the previous three seasons. “Except in very odd situations, you’re probably only going to have one child that throws 90 and is left-handed. It’s not something you do four or five times in your life.”
Many of the country’s top high school players eagerly await this situation. Some players and their parents, while attending prestigious youth baseball showcase events, sit through workshops on how to handle the draft evaluation process and make decisions. The Hultzen family didn’t see the need. “It never occurred to us that he would be drafted, or that anyone would want to draft him,” said Hultzen’s mother, Martha Martin. “We thought we might be thinking about it in a couple years.”
But then Hultzen was clocked throwing 90-plus in late March at a game against St. Anne’s-Belfield — with scouts in attendance to see NFL Hall of Famer Howie Long’s son, Kyle, play for the private school from Charlottesville. Long, a top pro prospect who has signed to play baseball at Florida State, was a known commodity among major league clubs. Hultzen was about to become one, too.
“Anybody that tells you they were on the guy is probably not telling you the truth. The only reason he got seen is guys were seeing Kyle Long,” one veteran scout said of Hultzen, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
“The word passed around within the scouting community,” another scout said. “He was the flavor of the week.”
Hultzen threw six shutout innings in yesterday’s 11-0 win over Episcopal, striking out the first nine batters he faced, 13 in all, and allowing only one hit. Overall, he’s 10-0 with a 0.74 ERA. He’s allowed 19 hits and 12 walks with 115 strikeouts and five earned runs in 61 innings.
When he’s not on the mound, Hultzen spends time thinking about his options.
“Going to college and having that college experience, you’re living in a dorm with 15,000 other kids your age,” he said. “With professional baseball, you’re moving around everywhere to different parts of the country. Which is still cool, but I’m more interested in college than that. I don’t know what it would take for me not to go to college.”
High school players who matriculate at a four-year college are not eligible for the baseball draft again until after their third year of college. This makes the baseball draft unique in that the perceived ability to get a player signed to a contract has a significant impact on his place in the draft; teams will not use valuable draft picks on players who might opt for college instead of turning professional.
According to scouts who have been following Hultzen, he is considered one of the least likely high school seniors to sign a professional contract. But two months ago the family didn’t think the possibility even existed.
Hultzen’s preference for college is shared by his parents, who are divorced. They’ve left blank the basic questionnaires sent by scouts to every prospect, papers that sit in a pile in Chris Hultzen’s home office. Chris and Danny have prepared a letter to send to major league teams, thanking them for considering Danny but informing them of his intention to go to Virginia.
“A number of people think we’re making a mistake,” said Chris Hultzen, a neonatologist at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington. “We have all kinds of people that are happy to give us advice, whether we ask it or not. Very, very well-meaning adults, who would choose otherwise for themselves if they were 18 years old or if they had kids with the opportunity Daniel has, sort of gently say, ‘That’s because you don’t have all the information.’ It goes on, somewhat to my frustration, a lot.”
For the time being, the letter remains on a computer and has yet to be printed for Danny to sign.
And scouts, a dozen or more at a time, keep coming to games, standing behind the backstop whenever Hultzen pitches. They watch him warm up, scrutinize his mechanics and keep a careful watch on the way he carries himself. In just a few weeks, Hultzen has become a potential selection in one of the draft’s first five rounds. He throws hard, has the makings of a nice breaking ball, and it’s easy to envision him growing another inch or two taller and filling out his frame.
“I’m still growing,” Hultzen said with a smile. “As you can tell, I don’t have any facial hair.”
Hultzen’s parents say they are being encouraged by Baad and St. Albans first-year coach Jason Larocque to let the evaluation process run its course. (Baad declined to comment on the nature of their discussions, calling them private.) Martin said her son might not change his decision, but it would be a better decision knowing all the facts.
Although the scouts are aware of Hultzen’s interest in college, some also believe that every player has his price.
“I’m curious, of course” about the money, said Hultzen’s mother, acknowledging that she is new to the draft process. “What are they talking about? One million? Two million? Five dollars? I don’t think it’s five dollars, but I’m curious. I think of this as his first opportunity, not his only opportunity, to get a drafting bonus.”