MLB envoy optimistic of RP baseball talent
Major League Baseball envoy Rick Dell believes in Filipinos' chances
Major League Baseball envoy Rick Dell recently paid a visit to the Philippines to evaluate 15 players aged 16-18 years old in hopes of possibly recruiting someone who is capable of eventually playing in the United States.
Dell, a former US NCAA Division III coach, believes that Filipinos have a chance of eventually making the MLB ranks because of their potential.
"My streetwise observation is that I kind of always like the act of the Filipinos," Dell said. "I’ve always thought there’s potential here and I always think Filipinos are very, very good in baseball."
"But, because we’ve never really quantify them I can’t really speak for them factually," he added.
It was the first time that Dell performed an evaluation of a group of players that are competing in Baseball Philippines and the UAAP although he has made a visit to the country on numerous occasions.
"Obviously, it's something we haven't done before, maybe we have not been able to locate what we think are young quality players," Dell said.
During the workouts, Dell asked the players in attendance to do drills that are done in professional standards such as a 60-yard dash, some fielding situations and batting practices.
"You start to get impressed when you look at people who are running under seven seconds (in a 60-yard dash)," he said. "If you talk to about 15 or 16 year old boys, they’re not ready for that and so, if you have young boys who are in the low sevens, you can start to project probably he would be able to do that."
Aside from his optimistic belief of the Filipino's chances, Dell also believes that size doesn't even matter for a typical small and lanky Filipino ballplayer, having cited American League Most Valuable Player Dustin Pedroia of the Boston Red Sox as an example.
"I think that's the beauty of baseball. He's only 5’6 (Pedroia), but he was the best player of his team," he said. "It's great to stand at 6’2 and weigh 205 pounds, but if you’re not and you don’t look like Derek Jeter or Alex Rodriguez, you can still be the best player in the league, let alone get out there and compete."
If any player or two passes Dell's evaluation, they will be invited to an MLB training camp in either Australia or China. And Dell hopes to come back to the country and do more evaluations.
"I'd like to do this on a regular basis. It's not a hard thing to do you just fly over from Beijing and spend a couple of hours with my stopwatch and radar gun so yeah its something I would very much like to do that," said Dell.
"I think that after we get done, we’ll have a chance to look at these people scientifically, run some time and test their arm strength. I would calculate those things, put them on our data base," he added.
Dell spent 27 years as the coach of The College of New Jersey where he complied 708 victories during his tenure.
In 2007, he resigned as the school's head coach to accept the MLB envoy role in China. Dell has been visiting around the Southeast Asia reigion with trips to Indonesia and Cambodia.