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General  | Professional | 3/24/2016

WWBA? WS? Hosmer just wins

Jeff Dahn
Photo: Kansas City Royals

  Eric Hosmer Rawlings Profile

KC’s Yost praises LP, PG

SURPRISE, Ariz. – Manager Ned Yost of the World Champion Kansas City Royals joined forces with current Atlanta Braves’ manager Fredi Gonzalez and former Braves’ manager Bobby Cox as early backers of the colossal LakePoint Sports Complex near Cartersville, Ga.

With Perfect Game overseeing the attraction’s extensive amateur baseball operation, Yost told PG on Thursday that despite the day-to-day responsibilities involved in trying to lead the Royals to a third straight MLB World Series appearance and a second straight World Championship, the booming LakePoint complex – particularly its eight regulation baseball fields – is never far from his mind.

“I check the LakePoint Facebook site just about every day,” he said from the Royals’ Cactus League spring training facility here in Surprise. “I talk to my partners down there some, and there are a lot of great things going on down there.”

While there are soccer and lacrosse fields, sand volleyball courts and other attractions for just about any sporting taste at LakePoint, it is baseball that fuels the locomotive.

“What makes this work is the strength of Perfect Game. It’s hard to produce that type of facility and then just hope somebody (shows up)," Yost said. "What makes that facility work for us is our partnership with Perfect Game. They just keep bringing in extremely talented young men to LakePoint to showcase their talents and abilities daily; it’s a great thing."

Perfect Game Park South at LakePoint has grown to include the eight fields, each of which feature a 100 percent artificial turf playing surface, state-of-the-art scoreboards and video boards, the most efficient and illuminating field lighting available and stadium seating. PG Park South at LakePoint has already hosted hundreds of youth, high school and college games just since late February 2016.

As spring gives way to summer and fall, PG Park South at LakePoint will host thousands of more games showcasing the top high school-age travel ball teams at every age imaginable from all across the country. Tens of thousands of young ballplayers will see the benefits, a fact not lost the veteran big-league manager Ned Yost.

“It’s good for everybody when you can provide a place like that,” he said. “When I sit back and I look at my career, I’ve been so lucky to be able to play baseball and to experience success, and you kind of want the same chance for everybody else. You want them to have the same opportunity, and to provide a facility like LakePoint for people to try to accomplish their dreams is very, very special to me.”

– Jeff Dahn
SURPRISE, Ariz. – There is something special to be said about walking into a room filled with baseball players that have won multiple championships at the highest level, like many of the Kansas City Royals who were present in the clubhouse at their Cactus League spring training facility here in the far northwest Phoenix suburbs early Thursday morning have done.

In the past two seasons, the Royals have won two American League Division Series and two AL Championship Series, the latter meaning they have won back-to-back American League pennants. Those pennants sent the Royals to back-to-back World Series in 2014 and 2015, and they captured the World Championship last year by winning 4-of-5 games against the National League Champion New York Mets.

Almost everyone in the clubhouse Thursday is a proven winner, which brought a sense of relaxed ease to the surroundings. The only downer on this particular morning was the news that Royals’ left-hander Tim Collins was going to have to undergo his second Tommy John surgery in just over a year after an examination revealed that a ligament graft from the first surgery had not held.

Other than that somber storyline, the World Champion Royals seemed to be going about their business in a championship manner, including three-time Rawlings Gold Glove-winning first baseman Eric Hosmer.

“Everything has been really upbeat. There’s just that this sense of confidence around here right now that is instilled in everyone,” Hosmer told PG while sitting in front of his locker stall in the spacious clubhouse. “We feel that we’re fortunate to have the same group back and have another crack at winning a World Championship.”

Winning championships is really kind of old-hat for the 26-year-old native of South Miami, Fla. Back in his amateur days, Hosmer was a prominent member of three travel ball teams that won Perfect Game WWBA National Championship tournaments.

He was with the Florida Bombers team that won the 2006 18u PG WWBA National Championship in Marietta, Ga., and then joined the Reds Scout Team and the Braves Scout Team squads that won back-to-titles at the prestigious PG WWBA World Championship in Jupiter, Fla., in 2006-07. He was named the Most Valuable Player at the 2007 PG WWBA World with the Braves Scout Team.

“That’s something I really pride myself on,” Hosmer said. “We won those fall tournaments (in Florida) and we won during the summer down in Georgia, so I’ve been on some championship teams.” That includes this major league outfit that this year will try to become the first team to win consecutive World Series Championships since the American League’ s New York Yankees won three straight from 1998-2000.

The Royals won 95 games and the AL Central Division crown last season, and then beat the Houston Astros in the best-of-5 ALDS, 3-games-to-2. Next up came a six-game victory over the Toronto Blue Jays in the best-of-7 AL Championship Series before disposing of the Mets in five games in the best-of-7 World Series.

Hosmer enjoyed one of his best regular seasons in 2015, playing in 158 games and posting a slash-line of .297/.363/.459 with 18 home runs and career-highs of 93 RBI and 98 runs scored. In five seasons with the Royals (728 games), he has slashed .280/.336/.427 with per-season averages of 15 home runs and 74 RBI. He was third in the AL Rookie of the Year balloting in 2011 and has won three straight Rawlings Gold Glove Awards.

His postseason hitting numbers have generally been reflective of what he’s done during the regular season. In 31 postseason games over seven series, he’s slashed .276/.333/.398 with three home runs and 29 RBI; in 12 World Series games he hit .224 with three doubles and 10 RBI. He is crushing it this spring, going 13-for-33 with two home runs, four doubles and 10 RBI (.394/.421/.697).

The Royals made Hosmer the third overall pick of the first-round in the 2008 MLB Amateur Draft out of American Heritage High School in Plantation, Fla. His draft selection came after a 15-event Perfect Game career that included not only those three PG WWBA national championships but Top Prospect List recognition at four PG showcases: 2005 PG Sunshine East, 2005 PG National Open Top Prospect, 2006 PG National Underclass and the 2007 PG National Showcase. He seemed to thrive in those environments.

“(The showcases) were a tremendous help for me because that was the closest thing you could simulate, really, to a professional minor league game,” Hosmer said Thursday. “I can relate to a lot of tournaments and a lot of showcases I’ve done where they put you in the position to face the top guys; that’s what the scouts want to see, the top hitters facing the top pitchers.”

In addition to his participation at the 2007 PG National Showcase, Hosmer was also at the 2007 PG All-American Classic in San Diego where he shared the Petco Park field with fellow big-leaguers Sonny Gray, Gerrit Cole and Tim Beckham. He almost always succeeded when put in those situations and there is no doubt in his mind those successes played a big part in his rising draft status.

“As far as being a player it was the closest thing to a minor league game; when I got to the minor leagues that was the closest thing I could relate to,” Hosmer said. “As far as competition goes, it’s the same guys you’re going to be facing three years ahead in pro ball, and it just really made me familiar with a lot of the guys I’ve played with and played against.”

Having experienced Jupiter three times – he was at the PG WWBA World as a sophomore in 2005 with PG USA White – Hosmer said he came to realize that the presence of hundreds of scouts buzzing around the Roger Dean Stadium Complex grounds in their golf carts not only adds to the experience the players enjoy but is also essential to the work the scouts are doing.

“Scouts want to see how you perform when the pressure is on the line or at least when the (young player) feels like he has pressure,” he said. “When you’re in that tournament and you’re playing on one of the better teams … the scouts and the (college) recruiters want to see you perform under those kind of circumstances because that’s where guys separate themselves.”

Hosmer played only three seasons in the minor leagues and was 21 years old when he made his major league debut on May 6, 2011; he went on to hit .293 with what remains a career-high 19 home runs, with 27 doubles and 78 RBI that season. Five years later he’s ready for more.

The Royals’ clubhouse and dugout received a big jolt of energy late in the offseason when free-agent outfielder Alex Gordon decided to re-sign and return to the club for what will be his 10th season wearing Royal Blue. Gordon is a three-time AL All-Star and, like Hosmer, a three-time Rawlings Gold Glove Award winner, who was at the 2001 PG National Showcase in St. Petersburg, Fla.

“It’s not only his production on the field but what he does in the locker room for us,” Hosmer said of what Gordon’s return means to the club. “He’s our leader, he’s been here the longest – he’s kind of set the ground rules and we just kind of follow his lead. He’s a guy that leads by example and he’s a true professional, and it wouldn’t be the same seeing him a different uniform. It would have been tough for a lot of guys without him in the locker room.”

The Royals’ World Series victory parade in downtown Kansas City, Mo., last November drew an estimated 800,000 fans, so many that it was reported downtown restaurants and bars ran out of food and drink.

Hosmer said Thursday that he’s found the KC fans to be among the best in all of baseball ever since he and some other young Royals arrived in 2011, and he’s even noticed bigger crowds at the team’s Cactus League games, both in Surprise and at other venues spread across the Valley. People are excited. People know winners when they see them. People know champions when they’re surrounded by them. Yet, there is still work to be done.

“We feel like we’ve accomplished a lot as an organization but there is still a lot more for us to (achieve) out there,” Hosmer said. “There is history that can be made and this group knows that, and we want to be in the conversation of one of the better teams that ever played this game. There’s a lot on the line for us this year and we’re ready to go.”
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