Mitch Harris signed, but when will he pitch?
Posted on February 28th, 2009 by erik in 2008 MLB draft, Mitch HarrisPer DG, the Cardinals signed Mitch Harris. He will report after duty, which in the Navy equals five years. Meaning, he will be 28 when he starts his professional career, and I have no earthly idea how he will keep of the rust.
Loved the draft pick when it was made, glad he’s in the fold but I’m not sure how this all is supposed to work.
Baseball America ranked Mitch Harris the 2nd best senior draft prospect of 2008, behind only Josh Fields.
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I like this, just in that it makes in seem like the Cards aren’t afraid to be thinking outside the box. Granted, I’d also like to see them being aggressive when guys like Porcello drop to them, but that’s got more to do with ownership than with lack of creativity or analysis by management.
I also wonder how much the Cards experience with Ankiel influenced their willingness to essentially take a flyer on a 28-YO with no pro experience (and a 5-year layoff). The conventional prospect wisdom with Ankiel was that he started too late as a hitter to offer much development, especially being behind the curve with respect to plate discipline. But the x factor there was that, although old, he was also lacking in exposure/experience….and could be considered very young in terms of actual development time. In hindsight now, development years (fortunately) were as important as raw age was, since he has shown bona fide improvement as a hitter since then. This kind of assessment speaks not only to a Mitch Harris signing, but also to taking flyers on guys like Brian Barton (started late, too, albeit nothing like Harris or Ankiel).
This is good news. I have been hoping they could sign Mitch. I really hope that they can spring him from the Navy sooner than 5 years.
i just wish him all the best as he serves our country…here’s hoping that he is in a position five years from now where he can pitch for us
and there’s always this: his arm won’t have that 5 years of wear and tear from pitching on it
does it have to be 5 years? if he goes overseas doesn’t it knock a year off his commitment, or is that only enlisted? … not that 4 as opposed to 5 years w/o competitive pitching makes that much of a difference.
Good for the Cardinals for keeping up their end of the bargain, they knew most likely that he would not be able to play.
some guy in this thread over at the post said if he were to fail some kind of officers test he would be sebt home right then.Not sure if this guy knows what hes talking about but he could show up sooner than later
http://www.stltoday.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=610498 sorry heres the link from the post i spoke of
the navy has a policy where you can get released after 2 years if you’re pursuing some activity with positive recruitment value for the navy. that’s how david robinson was able to play in the nba after 2 years instead of 5.
the sec of the navy said that those policies would be waived during war, but perhaps that has changed? if so, he could be pitching next summer (i believe).
Any new news on this situation? This type of situation leads me to believe that it may be possible to sign Wilson and let him go to college while having him develop and play in the organization with us over the summer.
@Andrew–NCAA rules don’t allow that. If Austin signs, he’s a professional player and can’t play college ball.
@Forsch31: I think what he is saying is Wilson will go to school full time and not play baseball for Stanford. And he will work out with our team in the summers and breaks. I don’t see this being a possibility but that is what he is saying if I read if correctly.