Former top-10 picks Alex Gordon, Hunter Dozier and Homer Bailey reflect on the draft process in very different ways
The Major League Baseball draft, a day that sets the stage for the rest of a player’s career in professional baseball. It’s a huge step along the road to big hopes, dreams and childhood aspirations becoming reality.
While a uniformly unforgettable benchmark — the dawning of immense possibilities for any ballplayer — the draft experience remains distinctly individual and personal. From lead-up to the draft to aftermath, there’s wide variance in the way the draft process plays out, even for the cream of the crop.
Royals outfielder Alex Gordon (No. 2 pick overall in the 2005 draft), infielder Hunter Dozier (No. 8 overall in 2013) and pitcher Homer Bailey (No. 7 overall in 2004), all big-leaguers who were top-10 picks, shared two common elements to their draft episodes — excitement and uncertainty.
“I had no idea the Reds were going to take me at all,” said Bailey, whom Cincinnati drafted out of high school a month after his 18th birthday. “I don’t remember a lot of dialogue between them. Then all of a sudden they called my name. I was just as surprised as anybody I guess. I’d made a trip up to Arlington to talk with their GM and owner. So I knew that (Texas) was going to be an option. I just kind of rolled along with it.”
Bailey grew up La Grange, Texas, a community of less than 5,000 people, and Bailey, a University of Texas signee, had been viewed as the top of the high school prospect ranks. But he certainly wasn’t a household name the way players such as Bryce Harper was by the time he was drafted. Harper had been on the cover of Sports Illustrated at 16 as the “Chosen one.”
“It was a little different,” Bailey said. “The internet and social media wasn’t around. We didn’t have the internet quite as accessible. There were no iPhones back then, or iPads or what have you.
“I don’t even know if the iPod had come out yet. If it did, I damn sure wasn’t gonna have one. It’s not what it is now. It’s not the publicity. You just kind of rolled with it. It was just a different time.”
Gordon built up a following through his decorated high school and college careers. The top high school prospect in the state of Nebraska, he went on to star at the University of Nebraska. A two-time first-team All-American as well as two-time Big 12 Player of the Year, he also won the Dick Howser, Brooks Wallace and Golden Spikes awards as national player of the year.
Gordon assumed he’d be picked third overall by the Seattle Mariners, and years later he’d been told that was the Mariners plan. He really hadn’t had much communication with the Royals at the time, even though Kansas City was less than four hours from his hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska.
No hype accompanied Dozier as an amateur player. He’d flown under the radar out of high school in Denton, Texas. He’d received one scholarship offer and accepted it to stay in state and attend Stephen F. Austin State.
Dozier’s draft stock didn’t begin to rise until his last year at Stephen F. Austin.
“Going into my junior year, they were saying anywhere from the first round to the eighth round or something,” Dozier said. “Then as the season progressed it kind of kept going down. I think about halfway through the season they were like, ‘We see some team in the first one to five rounds.’ Then at the end of the season they were like one to three rounds. Right when my season was over they were saying most likely you were going to go on day one.
“I didn’t really know. It was kind of changing throughout the year. I didn’t really know I was going to be taken in the first round until probably a couple days before the draft or the day of the draft.”
A big day, kind of
Of the three, only Dozier had finished his season by the time the draft rolled around. He had a party with friends and family at his parents home. By the day of the draft, he’d gotten fairly comfortable with the idea that he’d likely get picked by the Royals, but that didn’t mean the night didn’t hold any surprises.
“I never expected to go eighth overall,” Dozier said. “We kind of had an agreement with the Royals that they were going to give me a set amount of money at their 34th pick, their second pick. We were trying to get teams to pass on me so I could make it there. Then stuff happened with the Royals, the guys they wanted with their first pick.
“The way it turned out was I took a pretty good deal at number eight. But I was never supposed to go top 10. I was going to be like 17, 18, 19, 20, so on.”
As things became fluid with the Royals plans, Dozier got a phone call from the Royals to see if he’d accept the money offered at the eighth pick. He said yes, and the team was going to call him back and let him know if it was “a for-sure thing.”
The call never came, and Dozier found out while watching the draft on television that he’d gone eighth overall.
“It was kind of cool because it made for extra excitement to actually hear my name get called and not knowing.”
Gordon was on a baseball diamond when the Royals picked him one spot ahead of where he’d expected to get drafted. He and his teammates were preparing to play in a NCAA super regional.
“We were practicing for Nebraska for super regional against Miami,” Gordon said. “During practice, I had my brother (Eric) in the stands, and he whistled to me and put up number two. So that’s how I found out from my older brother.”
At the time, Gordon and his teammates were so focused on their postseason run that he didn’t pay much attention to the draft because he knew he had no control over it.
In hindsight, he wishes he’d been able to celebrate the moment a little more, and that players didn’t have to carry that label with them for the remainder of their season.
“I kind of don’t like that you get drafted during the season for baseball,” Gordon said. “In college, I wish they’d wait until the season was over just so you can enjoy it maybe a little bit more. You get drafted and then you’re a number one or number two pick and then you have to keep playing. I don’t know, but it was still pretty special.”
When Bailey’s draft came around, he simply gathered around a computer with his family and high school coach and waited to see what straw had been drawn for him.
“I didn’t get to announce it on Twitter or any (crap) like that,” Bailey said with a chuckle. “I’m still not announcing anything on Twitter. It was just a different time, and my family was absolutely outstanding. They were pretty chill about everything.”
Just as it would be for Gordon, Bailey’s mind remained primarily on the season at hand. The people around him, particularly his family, never got wrapped up in the hype of the draft and urged him to sit back and let it play out.
“I was still involved in my high school season,” Bailey said. “I always tried to put my priority there because we had a really good team. We ended up winning a state championship. I wanted to win a ring. All the other stuff was kind of a nuisance, you have to take tests and meet with scouts. It’s like I’ve already been at school and practice all day. You know, like come watch me play. How’s that.”
On to the majors
Dozier spent most of 2013 through 2017 in the minors, showing great offensive potential before getting his first full-time chance in the majors last season.
Dozier, 27, has been having his breakout season in the majors this spring despite dealing with a back injury earlier this season. Dozier came out of Thursday’s game at the Texas Rangers with a right-sided thorax tightness, but he entered the night among the top 10 in the American League in batting average (sixth, .315), on-base percentage (seventh, .397), slugging percentage (third, .592) and triples (fifth, three).
Gordon talked with a Royals scout right away but then put professional baseball aside until after Nebraska’s season ended in the College World Series. His contract negotiations dragged out so long that they wiped out his chance of playing in 2005.
The next season, he went to the Royals Class AA affiliate in Wichita and played in a farm system with several former college standouts as well as other highly-touted prospects such as pitcher Luke Hochevar, Zack Greinke and Billy Butler.
Gordon, who originally came to the majors as a third baseman, is now in his 13th big-league season with the same franchise that drafted him. He’s won six Gold Gloves (one Platinum Glove), been a three-time All-Star and a World Series champion.
Bailey went from high school to the minors, and he recalls looking on television the next year while he was toiling in a tiny town in the Midwest League and watching the University of Texas win the College World Series. For a minute, he caught himself thinking about how fun that looked.
Of course, it turned out okay for Bailey. He’s one of a handful of pitchers with two no-hitters in the majors. He’s started more than 200 games and earned more than $100 million. Not bad for a guy who didn’t even know how to rank himself amongst his draft class, which included shortstop Matt Bush, pitchers Justin Verlander and Jered Weaver and the former Royals slugger Butler.
“Some of the high school guys you’d played against, so you kind of knew them,” Bailey said. “Then you had the college guys. You didn’t know them from Adam. You didn’t know if they were good, if they weren’t very good. You didn’t know how to rank yourself against them. Now, you can go online and find their favorite food and their allergies if you want.”
This story was originally published May 31, 2019 at 6:13 PM with the headline "Former top-10 picks Alex Gordon, Hunter Dozier and Homer Bailey reflect on the draft process in very different ways."