Recent Waiakea graduate Kean Wong doesn’t want to give himself a headache, so he won’t pick up his cellphone during the three days of the Major League Baseball first-year player draft.
The draft will be streamed live all three days on MLB.com, and the MLB Network (Channel 208) will broadcast the first and second rounds starting at 1 p.m. Thursday.
Rounds 3-11 will take place on Friday, with rounds 11-40 on Saturday. The draft starts at 7 a.m. both days.
According to his dad, Kaha Wong, the general consensus from MLB scouts is his son will be picked within the top seven rounds in the second year of the new draft rules, which assign pool money and pick values for the top 10 rounds.
His brother, Kolten, was the 22nd overall selection by the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2011 draft. The Baltimore Orioles hold this year’s No. 22 pick, which has a suggested $1,947,600 value.
There are penalties for clubs that exceed bonus pools, including a tax penalty and loss of draft picks. If a first-rounder, especially a high school player with a college option as bargaining leverage, wants more money, that leaves less for others.
As if on cue, scouts are already calling to ask if the younger Wong will take less than slot money to sign.
“We’ve told all the scouts who call that he’s going to take slot money,” Kaha Wong said. “The bottom line is the scouts know that they missed out on Kolten, and they don’t want to miss on Kean. He’s two inches taller, and he’s bigger. They said he’s more advanced than Kolten when he was in high school.
“By getting drafted, Kolten helped Kean. Kean knows that. He helped himself when he went to the showcase (in front of MLB teams). He ran 6.5 seconds in the 60 yards, the fastest he ever ran. He ran 6.6 and 6.7 before. He went 3-for-3 off guys who were throwing 94 mph. He made unbelievable throws from the outfield, second base and at catcher. Everything fell into place.
“It was in front of 60 scouts. The Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Indians never came to look at Kean. When they saw him, I told them they were the ones missing out.”
During his last season in the Big Island Interscholastic Federation, Wong hit .435 with three homers and 26 RBIs. The left-handed hitter had a .563 on-base percentage and a .903 slugging percentage. But it was against high school competition with most pitchers throwing under 80 mph.
However, players are drafted on their potential, a reason scouts fill out two grades: present day tools and future tools. Position players are graded on their ability to hit for average, hit for power, field, run and throw.
At the MLB showcase, Wong weighed in at 192 pounds and measured at 6 feet — two inches taller than Kolten, who’s tearing it up at Triple-A Memphis. The difference between the brothers is experience, a reason Kolten Wong was a surefire first-round pick. He played at the University of Hawaii for three years, competed on Team USA and was named MVP of the Cape Cod League (.341 batting average), which is considered the top collegiate summer league in the country.
Kean Wong also has a UH scholarship, a bargaining chip in case MLB teams try to lowball him. There is always the Alex Fernandez option. He’s the former first-round pick of the White Sox in 1990, who pitched for the University of Miami for a year and then transferred to a junior college to be eligible for the draft.
Second-round assigned values run from $1,392,200 with the Astros’ 40th pick to $820,000 for the Nationals’ 68th selection. The amount drops off a cliff in the seventh round, from $202,300 to $160,100.
When Kolten Wong left UH, he was majoring in sociology and holding a 3.8 GPA. He’s been trying to take online classes during offseasons to get his degree. His younger brother could follow his lead or immediately join the work force. But first, Kean Wong needs to wait until his name is called.
“Tampa Bay, Oakland, Cleveland, but they want him to catch, and the Yankees have shown the most interest,” Kaha Wong said. “But there might be a sleeper team out there. We don’t know.
“All we know is it’s exciting.”
