The 2007 draft was, in my mind, the worst draft in Astros history prompting a change to the scouting department. Bobby Heck was brought in as Director of Scouting under General Manager Ed Wade and Heck, in turn, brought in Stevenson to serve as an Area Scout. The five years in which Heck and Stevenson worked side by side were productive years, culminating with 11 drafted players peppering the 2015 Astros postseason roster. In addition, several players drafted under Heck were traded for players instrumental to the success of that team.
Jim Stevenson - Twitter profile photo
Since coming to the Astros, Stevenson (who lives in Tulsa) has been the Area Scout for Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and north and west Texas (roughly north of I-20). He has had several success stories, but none quite so prominent as 2015 Cy Young winner LHP Dallas Keuchel. As a Friday night pitcher in the SEC, it isn’t surprising to Stevenson that Keuchel went on to have success in the big leagues, but he says, “At the same time, we didn’t get a whole lot of looks at him. I really banged the table for that one and Bobby was great. He trusted me.”
But Stevenson is very excited about another of his signings who he sees as having the chance to be a real impact player. Unfortunately, that impact will not benefit the Astros. Stevenson signed OF Ramon Laureano in the 16th round in 2014 out of Northeast Oklahoma A&M College (the Astros were the only team to actually call him to talk). Laureano was traded to the A’s in November 2017 for RHP Brandon Bailey (who was claimed by the Orioles in the Rule 5 Draft in December). Laureano went on to make his MLB debut in August 2018 and has since made quite an impression. As Stevenson puts it, “He was hurt last year and still hit .288 with 24 home runs.”
Laureano’s performance came as a surprise to a lot of people but not to Stevenson. Stevenson has a close bond with Laureano that is uncommon between scout and player. They still keep in close touch and it has given Stevenson the opportunity to really get to know the type of player and type of person Laureano is. Needless to say, Stevenson wasn’t a fan of the trade.
Laureano had struggled badly to start the 2017 season in AA. According to Stevenson, Laureano was his own worst enemy in that he was putting so much pressure on himself to succeed and, in retrospect, getting invited to big league camp that year probably added to the pressure he was feeling. At this point, some in the Astros front office had cooled on Laureano, but Stevenson felt that the team had overlooked the X factor of Laureano’s makeup. “That’s what separates the guys who get to the big leagues and stick and the guys who don’t. It’s the makeup. We knew he had great makeup. Hinch called him a machine in Spring Training that year,” said Stevenson. Despite Laureano’s turnaround later in the season, the Astros chose to make a trade within their division that may very well come back to haunt them.
The period from August 2018 through August 2019 was a particularly gratifying time for Stevenson as five players he signed made their major league debuts. Four of those five were from the 11th round or lower. “Your success when you look at yourself and you pride yourself in who have you drafted and gotten to the big leagues and then second, who have you drafted and gotten to the big leagues that was a later round pick. Those are the guys that really give you pride and make you want to go out and work harder at finding other ones,” said Stevenson. In addition to Laureano (16th round), Stevenson also signed RHP Dean Deetz (11th round, September 2018 debut); RHP Josh James (34th round, September 2018 debut); IF Jack Mayfield (NDFA, May 2019 debut); and 3B Abraham Toro (5th round, August 2019). Stevenson continued, “I was blessed. Toro was a fifth rounder, but still he was from a juco, a Canadian kid, not a real high profile guy. That five guys went to the big leagues over two years was pretty special. It never happens.”
Of those debuts, Mayfield is definitely the best feel-good story of the bunch. Stevenson “begged and begged and begged” to take Mayfield all day on Day 3 of the draft in 2013, but he went unsigned. According to Stevenson, he kept after (former Astros Director of Decision Sciences) Sig Mejdal about Mayfield, “I said, Sig please, just sign this kid. He’s a great player. His makeup’s off the charts. He’s bilingual. His teammates will love him. His coaches will love him.” Ultimately Stevenson prevailed in getting Mayfield signed as a non-drafted free agent. “He was always a really good player. You want to talk about just a baseball player. His tools don’t stand out. Nothing he does is great. But what he does, he brings his A game every night. He makes all the plays that he’s supposed to make. And he’s got some pop in his bat. And he’s always liked being there in the moment, the guy that you want up at bat. At all the levels, he’s like the team MVP that goes unrecognized every year with every club. And he’s one of the greatest human beings in baseball,” said Stevenson.
I also asked Stevenson if there was a player that stood out as one who got away and he told me a very entertaining story about A.J. Burnett. Back when Burnett was drafted in 1995, the scouting world was a lot different than it is now. Stevenson described the days before social media, before the showcase events when “you carried a pocketful of dimes and quarters” because you relied on payphones to make phone calls. “You went and found guys on your own. And now everyone knows who the top kids are. It’s on social media. It’s on twitter. It’s on the baseball blogs. Now you know who the kids are,” said Stevenson. But in the mid 90’s it was different.
On scouting Burnett, Stevenson said, “I thought this is a guy that I’m going to get. Nobody knows about him and it’s (only) weeks before the draft. He comes out of a tiny little Christian school in the middle of Arkansas.” At that time, only a few small college coaches had seen Burnett plus a bird dog scout for the Royals who “couldn’t keep a secret” and tipped Stevenson off. “I went and saw him and I was like, oh my God. You can dream on this guy all you want. He was only (throwing) 90, 91, nothing great, but the kid was 6’4” or 6’5”. You could just dream on him. His arm worked. He could spin the curveball. He had a feel for the changeup. But he was so immature on the mound. He had no idea what he was doing. He was green.” Even so, Stevenson had seen enough that he called for his crosschecker to take a look at Burnett.
Stevenson continued the story, “So now it’s three weeks before the draft. I kid you not. A.J. was great that day (when the crosschecker came to see him). If you watched his mannerisms during the game … he was playing air guitar on the mound … you have to overlook all that. He didn’t even know what professional baseball was. I was working with the Cleveland Indians at the time. I was the area guy. And I sat down and talked to him and we had a great talk and I really got to know him.” Stevenson went back to see Burnett for one last game, got to the parking lot and saw the Scouting Director for the Mets. “And I’m thinking, Oh my God, what is he doing here? He and the area guy are going to see another guy in Arkansas. They were at the wrong field and happened to stumble into this kid by accident. Everything I had in me was kind of deflated. That was the guy that I thought, I’ve got this one for sure. They ended up taking him in the 8th round that year.”
“That was before the internet and all this stuff that goes on now where everyone knows who everyone is. And that was the fun of it when we started. You had to go find your own. Now they give me a list of a hundred guys and (tell me to) go find some juco guys if you want to. They give me all the top high school names and the top D1 guys (to scout). We don’t have any information on the juco guys and we don’t have any information on any D2, D3 guys so those guys I can go find on my own. But that’s what it used to be like in the whole draft. Now you go to high school games with the top tiers, there are 50-60 guys there (scouting).”
Scouting has changed a lot with the advance of analytics, but it’s not just the Astros. The changes are industry wide. Scouts are encouraged to turn in reports on as many players as they can with the front office doing more of the "sifting out" than the area scouts do. The scouts still look for the unheralded players out there, but the scout’s influence in getting players signed has diminished somewhat. Stevenson’s opinion still counts, but maybe not as much as it did in the pre-analytics days. But that won’t stop him from looking for that diamond in the rough, that guy that nobody knows about. It won’t stop him from banging the table on Day 3 to get a Josh James or a Jack Mayfield signed.
Stevenson has just rolled with all of the changes in the industry. The fact that he has lasted 12 years in an Astros organization that has seen scores of people come and go is evidence enough that he must be doing something right. “I love the Houston Astros. I love all the guys I work with. It’s not the Houston Astros have changed. The whole industry has changed,” said Stevenson. He’s looking forward to working with the new GM, but most of all he’s looking forward to the draft. “Our Super Bowl is the draft. That’s what I’m looking forward to. I still enjoy the hunt, the hunt out looking for that guy. You may not get him, but I like finding that guy every year who’s flying under the radar. Those are the fun ones, the late round guys. I’m going to keep going and hopefully find some this year.”
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I truly enjoyed my conversation with Stevenson. We ended up on so many tangents that I didn't even get to all of my questions. But I have a feeling I'll be talking with Stevenson again and can get some of those other questions answered plus others that may come up because baseball people love talking about baseball. Thanks for your time, Jim!
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