Former LAMP star Chavers might hear his name called in MLB Draft
Parker Chavers is in limbo regarding this year’s Major League Baseball Amateur Draft which will take place this week. The former LAMP star
By TIM GAYLE
He’s trained for this moment, similar to the way he’s trained himself to hit a breaking ball or run down a fly ball in center field.
Parker Chavers knows what to do when the ball is pitched or when the bat connects with a ball. But the Coastal Carolina junior outfielder has no idea what to expect when the MLB draft is held on Wednesday and Thursday.
“It’s unprecedented territory for everyone,” Chavers said. “It’s going to be different from drafts in the past, with the rounds being cut as much as they have been. You go from over 1,000 kids being drafted to 160. It’s unfortunate a lot of people aren’t going to be able to hear their names called. But this is new for everyone – the teams, the scouting directors, everyone. It’s not ideal but something they identified that in this year they have to have a shortened draft.”
The first round of the MLB draft will be held on Wednesday beginning at 6 p.m. and will be aired on ESPN. It will feature a total of 37 picks, including the first round and Competitive Balance Round A. On Thursday at 4 p.m., the final four rounds of the draft will be aired on ESPN2, featuring picks 38-160.
In addition to shortening the draft from 40 rounds to five, players will have until Aug. 1 to sign and will receive only the first $100,000 of their signing bonus, with the remainder deferred into two payments over the next two years. Players who are not drafted can be signed to free-agent contracts for no more than $20,000 and ballclubs cannot have any contact with undrafted players until Sunday at 8 a.m.
“There’s no guarantee with only five rounds,” pointed out Parker’s father, Scott. “It’s all uncharted territory. But it’s all a very humbling thing.”
Humbling because Chavers was a multi-position star at LAMP but largely overlooked by colleges as a senior in 2017. Humbling because he signed with East Tennessee State, secured a release when that school’s coach retired and wasn’t sure what to expect when he showed up in Conway, S.C., in the fall of 2017. Humbling because a freak accident wrecked his junior season but didn’t keep MLB.com from ranking him 107th among the nation’s prospects despite not playing a minute of baseball in 2020.
After getting his release from East Tennessee State, Chavers stepped into a vacancy in center field for Coastal Carolina and promptly became the most decorated freshman in school history at a program just two years removed from winning the College World Series. A Collegiate Baseball freshman All-American, he started 60 of his team’s 62 games and led the team with a .323 average.
A year later, he was all-Sun Belt Conference, starting 57 games and finishing with a .316 average that included 15 home runs, four triples, nine doubles, 54 runs scored and 54 RBIs. He missed six games that season, slipping on the steps of the Mariners’ T-Mobile Park dugout during the opening game of the Seattle Baseball Showcase against San Diego.
“I actually slipped going down the dugout stairs and dislocated my shoulder,” Chavers said. “I had an MRI and was told I had a small labrum tear but the doctor thought I could rehab it and play through it. I played the rest of the year and played that summer in the Cape (Cod League). Obviously, I didn’t want to miss that. The plan was, if it bothered me in the summer, I could do (surgery on his throwing shoulder) the first week of August. After the summer, it felt really well. This fall, it dislocated three more times.”
He was batting .389 at the time of the injury, but just .290 the remainder of the season. Still, a successful summer in Cape Cod hid the fact that his labrum, initially a partial tear on the backside of the shoulder, was more damaged than initially thought. While he was being selected to several All-America preseason teams, he underwent surgery in early December and would miss at least half the 2020 season. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit and he ended up getting a medical redshirt season, eligible to return in 2021 for his junior season.
“I’ve been rehabbing for a while now,” Chavers said. “I’ve been home since mid-March when everything got canceled and going to my physical therapist (Mike Ellis) from high school. I’ve been able to work out and had access to facilities to hit and throw and lift and do everything I needed to do to continue my rehab. I’ve been fortunate that all that worked out. I’m feeling close to 100 percent and ready to play again.
“Now that I’m healthy, I’m hoping to be even better than I was and just trying to show people I’m healthy and get back on the field.”
The 2020 season has been both a blessing and a curse for Chavers. On the one hand, the fact that he didn’t play is largely overshadowed by the fact that no one got to play more than a handful of games, making high school players who were evaluated as juniors even bigger risks and creating more uncertainty among professional scouts who studied college players who were still developing.
“In a roundabout way, it helped him because they had to revert back to older data, which he had, and he wouldn’t have had data for the bulk of his junior season,” Scott Chavers said. “He’s cleared by the doctor and all that, but there are certain teams that are like, ‘We only get five picks and his shoulder is too much of a risk.’”
That’s the curse. Chavers could have returned to the field in April and shown doubters there were no ill affects from the injury and subsequent surgery, but now those people will have to take his word and that of his doctor.
“There are teams that are more interested than others,” he said, “and some are out of the picture because of the medical stuff, which I understand. But talking to all these guys, you kind of develop a relationship and get an idea for who likes you the most and how you fit into their system. So, yeah, there are definitely a few favorites and front runners. We’ll see what happens.”
At 5-foot-11, 191 pounds, he’s put on 30 pounds since his playing days at LAMP, making an incredibly fast player even faster as well as a stronger hitter who not only hits for average but for power. He was projected as a second-round pick before analysts learned of his injury and now as a late third-round or early fourth-round pick. It seems a bit surprising that a player who didn’t even play in 2020 can still be projected so high.
“Maybe a little,” Chavers said. “I think after the summer, before I was hurt, I was (projected) even higher than I am now. The injury obviously set me back some. As crazy as the whole pandemic has been, I think it’s helped me. Instead of missing 40 games or however many it was going to be before I was ready, I missed 15, which is all anyone got to play.”
If you’re gauging the odds on who drafts Chavers based on the number of picks a team has, the Giants and the Cardinals each have seven picks, counting the five rounds and the three supplemental rounds. Fourteen teams, including the Rays, have six picks while seven teams have five picks. Six teams, including the Braves, have just four picks and the Yankees have just three.
“He has talked to 28 of the 30 teams,” Scott Chavers said, “and one of the big things they’re asking is how would you rate your signability? If you have 40 picks, that’s one thing, but if you’ve only got five, you don’t want to pick somebody who isn’t going to go.”
Chavers made it clear to each of the callers he would forego the remainder of his collegiate eligibility and enter the professional ranks if he was drafted.
“That’s the plan,” he said. “If everything plays out like we’re hoping, that’s kind of the plan at this point.”
After that, it’s anybody’s guess as to what happens next.
“I don’t think anyone knows what’s to come after the draft,” Chavers said. “We’re kind of waiting on MLB to see if they can reach an agreement with the players and the owners. Until that happens, I don’t see us doing a whole lot.”