By CHRIS COOKLongwoodLancers.com
Kyri Washington will soon have a decision to make. Within the next 48 hours, possibly much sooner, the Longwood junior will have the opportunity to begin pursuit of his lifelong dream of playing professional baseball.
That Washington, an All-Big South second team pick and Longwood's newly-minted Division I single-season home run leader, will soon have to choose between going pro and returning to school for his senior year is the result of a year's worth of lofty expectations that have been met, and even exceeded.
The 6-1, 215-pound outfielder is undoubtedly one of the highest-ranked prospects to ever come out of Longwood, the owner of a rare blend of power and speed that is so highly coveted by Major League Baseball teams. That he owns such a skillset at the age of 20 adds to the list of traits that makes him a consensus top-10 round draft pick in this year's Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft, which begins tonight at 7 p.m.
"There just aren't a lot of guys in this draft that have that combination of power potential and speed and athleticism," said Aaron Fitt, editor and national writer for the college baseball hub D1Baseball.com. "Major league organizations are always looking for that high-upside, multi-tool guy that can change a game in a lot of different ways. [Washington] fits that mold if he can really figure it out."
Washington enters the draft as a top-150 prospect according to Baseball America's pre-draft rankings, the fourth-ranked player in Virginia and the 15th-ranked college outfielder in the class. Fitt predicts Washington could go as high as the fifth round, which would make him the second-highest drafted player in Longwood baseball history.
The lofty expectations for Washington are based partly on a junior season in which he hit .279 with a Big South-leading 15 home runs, 52 RBI and 10 stolen bases as the only player in the conference with double-digit steals and home runs. However, the overwhelming narrative following Washington is that he has a ceiling that he only began to scratch during his breakout junior campaign.
"You can hit the lottery with this guy," Fitt said. "He can be a real impact player in the big leagues when he figures it all out. He seems like he has the aptitude. He seems like a good, hard-working kid who's smart and who can figure it out."
The work ethic is there – Washington has a 3.51 grade point average as an accounting major – as are the physical tools. However, the evolution Washington has undergone this year, from gifted, raw slugger, to a more polished and balanced player, is the result of a year's worth of adjustments, struggles and, ultimately, transformation.
A Diamond Unearthed The question with
Kyri Washington has never been talent. He is a muscular, athletic outfielder whose powerful swing does to baseballs what Paul Bunyan's does to entire forests. He runs the bases with the explosiveness of a running back, a comparison reinforced by his muscular 6-1, 215-pound frame. His batting practice displays have become the stuff of legend, elevating the offensive skills of the bearded outfielder to almost mythical proportions.
"The shows he puts on in batting practice, it's one of those things that almost creates folk tales," Fitt said. "You hear about him hitting cars driving by, that kind of stuff."
For years, the tales of Washington's windshield-shattering power were confined to rural Virginia. He grew up in the farm-flanked oasis of Prospect, Va., just miles from Longwood's campus. After a prep career in which he hopped from The Fuqua School in Farmville to Lynchburg Christian Academy and finally to York's Grafton High School as a senior, he came to Longwood as the final recruit signed by legendary and now-retired head coach Buddy Bolding.
That is a fitting honor for a player who could become the program's highest draft pick since 12-year MLB veteran Michael Tucker was taken 10th overall by the Kansas City Royals in 1992. But for all the buzz Washington has generated since last summer and will continue to create in MLB draft war rooms over the next few days, it wasn't until the summer of 2014 that tales of his batting practice brutality hit the mainstream.
Washington played in the renowned wooden-bat Cape Cod Baseball League last summer, the country's top collegiate summer league that has churned out over 1,000 MLB alumni. Professional scouts flock to The Cape every summer to take stock of the game's top prospects, or in the case of Washington, to unearth hidden gems.
Scouts pulled Washington's diamond from the rough on July 15 during a workout at Fenway Park. He put on a show for the ages during batting practice, spreading his mythos for the first time beyond the whispers of Virginia high school bleachers and Big South dugouts.
"A lot of people in the scouting industry sat up in their chairs that day and took notice," Fitt said. "You don't see that kind of power very often."
But for everything Washington's performance did to put him on the map that summer, it also raised expectations heading into his junior season. To complicate matters, he would have to acclimate to a new coaching staff headed by
Ryan Mau, the top assistant at Navy who Longwood announced as head coach less than 24 hours after Washington wowed the scouts at Fenway.
The Fall Before they even got their first look at Washington, Mau and his newly-appointed hitting coach, Chad Oxendine, had already the tall tales of his power and, similarly, the troubling anecdotes of his rawness. When Washington arrived on campus, his first impression confirmed it all.
"He had that power," Mau said. "But he was a guy we thought put himself in a position mechanically to not recognize spin on the ball as well as he was capable. He wasn't utilizing his power to all fields, and he didn't have a mental approach that he could trust when the swing wasn't feeling its best."
Mau was confident that with a few adjustments, Washington could work through his shortcomings. What he wasn't sure of was Washington's work ethic and willingness to submit to instruction. It didn't take long to recognize that stubbornness and arrogance weren't part of Washington's makeup.
"From the very first meeting, I could see Kyri completely locked in and engaged and buying in," Mau said. "There was zero resistance. He had an eagerness to learn, to tap into his potential."
The unfamiliarity between Washington and his new coaches allowed both to start with a clean slate. Oxendine made several mechanical changes to Washington's swing and approach, breaking down and rebuilding nearly everything Washington knew about hitting.
"I feel like Kyri is one of the most feared hitters in our league," Oxendine said. "Nobody's going to throw him a first-pitch fastball. Everybody starts him with a breaking ball, and he was always finding himself down in the count 0-1, 0-2. We just changed his approach a little bit and said if they're going to throw you 'get-me-over' breaking balls, then we're gonna hammer them."
Hammer them, he did. Washington homered twice in his first game, both to opposite field. Through four games he had four home runs, three of them over the right field wall. "People were expecting him to hit 35-40 home runs," Oxendine said. "I think he put a lot of pressure on himself after that."
Despite the hot start, revamping Washington's swing and approach was not without consequence. By the end of February, pitchers adjusted and he was batting just .237. That number dipped to .227 by the end of March. The power came in flashes, but Washington still lacked consistency.
"I started struggling in the middle of the year, but [Oxendine] helped me stick with the approach and not focus so much on the outcome," Washington said. "Coach Ox is very process-over-outcome oriented, so I think that mindset helped me a lot. When I started struggling, I just stayed with it and tried to learn my swing instead of worrying about where the balls were going."
Soon enough, opposing pitchers would be the ones worrying about where those baseballs were going.
The Rise The light came on for
Kyri Washington in April, but it started with a flicker. A double here, a single there. A three-game hitting streak. Two more hits. Another double. By mid-April, the flicker turned into a pulse.
Two more hits came against William & Mary. A home run against North Carolina A&T. The hitting streak reached eight games. Another home run against Virginia. Seven RBI in the UNC Asheville series. The pulse had become a steady glow. By May, the flicker would become a flood light.
Washington batted .392 in April. The next month, he homered in three straight games. He drove in 10 runs in a span of five days. He hit three more homers in his final five games, including a fourth-inning go-ahead bomb off the Big South Pitcher of the Year in the conference tournament. The bulb that was on the verge of shorting out in March had become a spotlight that Washington carried with him every time he stepped into the box.
"He worked an unbelievable amount of hours in the batting cage, and I just kept telling him that you have to allow the work you put in to be the confidence for yourself," Oxendine said. "I told him, you've worked hard enough that you now have to believe in what you put in and have confidence in your ability."
It's a reality that Washington may have hit his last home run in a Longwood uniform. Within the next three days, a major league team will call him and tell him they want him. They will make an offer. There will be negotiations. He may sign or he may return to college for his senior year, but the club that drafts him will have bought heavily into the folk tale that Washington's story has become. Their pursuit of the gifted prospect from Prospect will be aggressive.
Washington understands this. He is two semesters away from completing his Longwood degree, but he is intent on finishing it regardless of whether he is in pro ball next year. He has already begun researching how to best schedule his remaining classes around the minor-league lifestyle he may be living this time next year. "Next winter is the latest I want to be taking classes," he says.
That plan may soon have to come to fruition because Washington has done nothing to downplay his talent since the season ended. His pre-draft workouts for numerous MLB organizations have created more of the same Bunyanesque folk tales. Rumors of hitting scoreboards, launching balls out of the stadium, of cracking four home runs in 10 swings. He is doing things no college hitter should be able to do because they exceed the realm of what should be possible. Because nobody is really
that good, right?
Nah, they can't be. It's just a folk tale.
#GoWood
