ST. LOUIS — Shortly after his junior year at Mississippi State began, Adam Frazier phoned home. When his father, Tim, answered in Bishop, Ga., the typically reserved Frazier rushed to tell the story of how he had just met with a major league scout for the first time. And get this, he said, the scout was Pirates area supervisor Darren Mazeroski, son of the Hall of Fame “Maz.”
“Adam was excited,” Frazier’s father recalled this week. “Who wouldn’t be?”
For Frazier, professional attention was new. As a high-school shortstop, despite batting .524 in his senior season at Oconee County High School, he never piqued the interest of scouts. It was due in large part to his stature, Frazier presumes. He was 5-foot-9 and at most 155 pounds.
“I obviously had some room to grow,” Frazier said Wednesday. “Physically I wasn’t ready, mentally probably not ready either. Going to college, I never really thought twice about that.”
While Frazier spoke with his father that day in the fall of 2012, Mazeroski was scribbling notes for his scouting report. He sensed a quiet confidence from Frazier — “Almost an edge,” Mazeroski remarked recently, “but not off-putting” — and liked an underdog already raking against Southeastern Conference pitching. Frazier, he decided, was worth watching closely.
Scouts had another attraction in Starkville, Miss. Hunter Renfroe, Mississippi State’s right fielder, would be selected 13th overall in the 2013 draft, four picks after the Pirates took outfielder Austin Meadows and one before they selected catcher Reese McGuire. While pro personnel was there for Renfroe, Frazier said, “You show up and try to steal the show, I guess.”
The Frazier show set the Bulldogs’ single-season hits record, at 107, and piloted Mississippi State to its first appearance in the College World Series championship series, a loss to UCLA.
“There are things that can't be measured with a stopwatch or by looking at a stat sheet,” Mazeroski said. “Frazier’s got a special make-up and drive that separates him from guys who may have larger frames or more flashy tools. … In the end, there was just too much to overlook when the boss pulled the trigger on him in the sixth round. Fortunately, he was still available.”
Left on left
Less than four years later, after a clockwork rise through the Pirates’ farm system, Frazier is a bonafide big leaguer. Even before Starling Marte was suspended 80 games for violating Major League Baseball’s performance-enhancing drug policy, Hurdle was looking for ways to get Frazier into the lineup. He’s no longer the primary super-utility option; he’s an everyday player.
Frazier, 25, posted a .767 OPS as a rookie and carried into the week an .809 season OPS. What’s perplexed some is his ability as a lefty swinger to crush left-handed pitching at every level. So far in the majors, Frazier is 13 for 33 (.394) with an .811 OPS against left-handers.
To Frazier, there’s a simple explanation.
“My dad is left-handed, so facing that in batting practice all my life definitely has a little to do with it,” he said. “Actually, a lot to do with it. Standing there with him, my approach kind of plays to it.”
Tim Frazier laughed when he heard the reasoning. It certainly couldn’t have hurt, he agreed. He was a left-handed pitcher and outfielder in junior-college ball and at South Alabama for a season before he blew out his arm and traded his baseball dreams for a career in pharmaceutical sales.
Frazier’s parents, Tim and Danielle, both are totally left-handed. He and his younger brother Brandon, listed at 6-foot-3 and 215 pounds on the Georgia Gwinnett College baseball roster, bat left and throw right. (By the way, Frazier believes his brother is much closer to an even 6-foot.)
“When I was in high school, I saw one or two lefties per year,” Frazier’s father said. “I was a lefty, and I couldn’t hit them. It was like, ‘Wow, what is this? The ball was coming from first base.’ ”
Frazier’s all-fields, all-hands hitting approach and short swing are sure signs of a player prepared for the majors when he arrived. Frazier credits college ball. What else explains his steady climb from Class High-A to Class AA to the Arizona Fall League to Class AAA to the majors? What else explains things going according to plan for a kid nobody in baseball had plans for out of high school?
“There are guys that absolutely need to go play college ball,” Hurdle said. “For me, he’s one of those guys. … You need to go somewhere you’re going to play, too. That's the first lesson you can learn about ego. Where you really want to go and where you need to go can be two different things. He was smart in going where he needed to go to grow and develop.”
In retrospect, Frazier said, he “wouldn’t change a thing” about his journey.
“If I were giving advice to high school guys right now, I’d say, ‘Go to school.’ ” Frazier added. “Seeing first-hand now how guys sign out of high school, you're pretty much stuck at the bottom of the barrel. You’ve got to work your way up. A lot of times, guys who go to college at the same age as high-schoolers who signed end up in the same spot three years down the road.”
‘The poster boy’
The quiet confidence Mazeroski noticed when he first met Frazier four years ago is still there in his Southern drawl. When asked whether a year or two ago he would have been able to imagine being an everyday major leaguer, Frazier reflected briefly before settling on a single surprise.
“Not as an outfielder, no,” he said.
Until Frazier broke his finger during spring training in 2015, he was a shortstop, only moonlighting at second base as a secondary position. While rehabbing at extending spring training in Bradenton, Fla., Frazier was approached by Kimera Bartee, a former major league outfielder serving as the organization’s minor league outfield and base-running coordinator.
“KB said, ‘Hey, let's do some work in the outfield today.’ ” Frazier recalled. “I thought he was kidding. I’d never played outfield before.”
Bartee didn’t detail the reasons why at the time, but when Frazier joined Class AA Altoona, the Curve was in first place and Gift Ngoepe, a premium defender, was the shortstop. Frazier started to put the puzzle together, that defensive versatility could be the key to his major-league aspirations. Since 2015, Frazier has played six positions, all but catcher, pitcher and first base.
“If there’s something he's missing as far as speed or range, he makes up for it with knowledge, instincts and anticipation,” said Bartee, now the Pirates’ first-base coach in charge of outfielders.
While many outside the organization had barely heard of Frazier when he debuted June 24, 2016, Bartee wasn’t surprised Frazier stuck in the majors and hasn’t played in the minors since.
“He’s the poster boy for our culture, in the minor leagues and the big leagues,” Bartee said. “Everything he may give up in size, he gains in effort and attitude."
Stephen J. Nesbitt: snesbitt@post-gazette.com and Twitter @stephenjnesbitt.
First Published: April 23, 2017, 4:00 a.m.
