Slowly but perceptibly, the line is moving.
Last week the Angels traded Peter Bourjos and Randal Grichuk to St. Louis. Both are outfielders.
That means Zach Borenstein takes a couple of steps forward, still holding the tag with the number on it. An attendant will be with him … well, maybe not shortly, but sometime.
Borenstein was the 705th player selected in the 2011 draft, taken in the 23rd round, for reasons he neither understands nor accepts.
At Inland Empire, Borenstein was the California League’s Most Valuable Player, ahead of all the guys with the million-dollar checks and the draft-day interviews on the MLB Network.
He slugged .631, hit .337, had an on-base percentage of .403, and hit 28 home runs with 95 RBI.
He ranked first in homers, slugging and batting average and third in RBI. Granted, most prospects were shuffled up and down, while Borenstein stayed in San Bernardino the whole season. But after a while the numbers tend to outshine the asterisks.
“I started out 3 for 28,” said Borenstein, before a recent Arizona Fall League game in Mesa.
“And I’d have five or six-game skids along the way. But our batting coach, Brent Del Chiaro, would always get me back on track when things went sour.”
“I think he probably had the most professional at-bats of anybody on our team,” said Bill Richardson, who managed Mesa and also manages in the Angels system. This particular Solar Sox team had Angels power prospect C.J. Cron and Cubs sluggers Kris Bryant and Jorge Soler.
Next year, in Double-A, will reveal more about Borenstein and the other kids who aspire to make up the Angels’ secondary wave.
Shortstop Eric Stamets is supposedly major league grade defensively, and second baseman Alex Yarborough might have the purest bat in the Angels’ system. They are part of the reason the Angels can entertain thoughts of trading Howie Kendrick for a starting pitcher.
First baseman Michael Snyder hit 25 home runs at Inland Empire. He’s another 23rd rounder, from Florida Southern, picked in 2012.
Borenstein is from Buffalo Grove, Ill., and Eastern Illinois got him because of his back problems in high school. Soon he was healthy enough to carry a team.
“He went back home during one offseason and improved his time to first base by two-tenths of a second, which is unheard of,” said Jim Schmitz, the Eastern Illinois coach. “He recognized that’s what he had to do. There are all kinds of ‘Borno’ stories around here. He could do 32 pull-ups with a 50-pound weight on his back. I know I couldn’t do one. He’s incredibly strong.
“He used to be pretty fidgety at the plate, and we got him to quiet down, to have as little movement as possible. He has carried that through. He came back and talked to our guys and told them it didn’t matter where you were drafted, that the opportunity is there. At times we had to slow him down, make him realize that not everyone had the instincts he did, but he became a team leader for us.”
But Borenstein, the son of a state’s attorney, feels quite litigious about those who dismissed him.
“Draft day was one of the worst days ever,” he said. “It was embarrassing, really.
“I thought I would go much higher. It was a huge letdown. But I always have been looked over or passed over. It drives you a little bit, and it irritates you. I’m not a scout, I don’t know exactly what they look for. I don’t throw 95 mph, I’m 6 feet tall. But when you get into pro ball you see guys who are similar to you, and they were drafted pretty high.”
Borenstein began as a shortstop, “like everybody else,” he said. He played outfield and third base at Eastern Illinois and has been a left fielder since.
Mike Trout and Josh Hamilton are long-term residents in center and left, and then there’s J.B. Shuck and Kole Calhoun. If Borenstein survives Arkansas, he can hold his place.
A combination of winning, trading and free-agent misadventure has stripped the Angels’ shelves.
They have not had a top-15 draft pick since Jered Weaver in 2004. They have not had a first-round pick since Cron in 2011. They have not been involved in the “sandwich” round, the supplemental picks between Rounds 1 and 2, since 2010.
The second round gave the Angels Jarrod Washburn, John Lackey, Kevin Jepsen, Patrick Corbin and Tyler Chatwood, but they had no second-round pick in 2011 or 2012.
You can’t live off 23rd-round picks, but that label flew off Borenstein and into the wind, the more he circled the bases.
Contact the writer: mwhicker@ocregister.com
