June 5, 2009
(Photo by John Russell)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Mike Minor hopes he is the next Vanderbilt player to make it in the major leagues.
Minor thought long and hard before rejecting a $750,000 offer from Tampa Bay as a 13th-round pick coming out of high school in 2006.
“When you have that in your face, it’s kind of difficult to walk away from,” Minor said.
He’ll soon be glad he resisted that temptation.
After three years with the Commodores, Minor is expected to be a top-10 pick in Tuesday’s amateur draft — and could go as high as No. 3. Wherever he goes, it’s going to be for a lot more money.
Thanks in part to Jeremy Sowers, David Price and Pedro Alvarez.
All former Vanderbilt standouts, Sowers is now in Cleveland, Price was the top pick in 2007 and Alvarez was No. 2 overall a year ago.
“If there had not been a resume, I don’t know if we would’ve kept him or not,” said Vanderbilt coach Tim Corbin. “But we’ve shown that we can develop kids, and we’ve shown even the highly drafted kids better themselves after they come here.”
Mike and Shirley Minor also wanted their son in college instead of working his way through the minor leagues coming out of tiny Forrest High School in Chapel Hill, 45 minutes south of Nashville.
Corbin says Minor won’t be the minors long.
“He’s going to get to the big leagues quick because he can pitch,” Corbin said. “Mikey is a warrior. When he gets to the league my wife and I will be there to watch him … if we can get some tickets.”
Minor is the sixth of seven children and it wasn’t easy making his mark in a big family.
“Lucky for him he was child No. 6,” his mother, Shirley, said with a laugh.
Playing professional baseball has been Minor’s goal since he was about 6.
All his older brothers and sisters played sports growing up, from football to basketball to wrestling or softball. But his mother said they weren’t as committed as her youngest son was to baseball.
“Mikey always looked at it like it was a job. He needed to go to practice. He needed to go to the game. He needed to be there. It was something very early on we knew it was what he wanted,” she said. “We did what we had to do. We worked as much as we could to make the money to where he needed to go because it was his dream.”
His father readily admits they probably couldn’t have done it if Minor had been among the middle children. Plus, he and his wife had watched their other children drift away from sports as they got older. So they tried to learn from those earlier experiences once they realized their youngest son’s dedication to baseball.
“It wasn’t as costly a burden on us as if all the kids were still at home,” his father said. “It helped him being one of the last boys going out of the household. It gives extra money to spend on him.”
And the Minors did just that.
His father got Minor pitching coaches starting when he was 12, got him on traveling teams and took his son to a couple of showcases including one in Florida, and college camps at Georgia, Mississippi and Vanderbilt.
The results were undeniable.
Minor won 12 of his 13 games as a senior via shutout and posted a ridiculous 0.08 ERA with 188 strikeouts in 86 innings in helping Forrest, a school with fewer than 400 students, to a state runner-up finish. He also played basketball all four years.
He arrived at Vanderbilt to compete in the Southeastern Conference and started as a freshman with his fastball and changeup. He went 9-1 with a 3.09 ERA. He added a slider for his sophomore season and a curveball for his junior year.
“He’s no longer that guy you can sit on a fastball and changeup,” Corbin said.
Minor also played for the USA National Team the past two summers, going 3-0 with a 0.75 ERA in 2008 with 37 strikeouts in 36 innings for a team that went 24-0. He was named 2008 Summer Player of the Year by Baseball America.
He also worked with Vanderbilt’s strength and pitching coaches on his fitness. Now the velocity on his fastball actually improves during a game instead of dropping off.
“He’s really, really trained his body well,” Corbin said. “He’s trained like an animal. The sacrifice he’s paid from weightlifting has really helped him in this field.”
Minor finished the NCAA tournament with a 6-6 record and 3.90 ERA — mostly a result of couple of tough outings. He gave up seven earned runs at South Carolina and five against Tennessee on May 15.
Each time, he came back with nine strong innings and victories. His best came May 20 to start the SEC tournament against top-seeded LSU in a 4-1 win that helped clinch a fourth straight NCAA tournament berth for the Commodores.
“I love the pressure. … That’s what I strive for in this game,” Minor said. “That’s why I play. That competition of playing the best team, pitching against the best team.”
That’s part of his perfectionist drive, his mother says.
“He’s always been his own worst critic, and he’s the one who beats himself up the most,” she said. “It’s good because it’s gotten him where he’s at now, keeps him focused.”
