Yankees Don Mattingly: A Not So Typical 19th Round Draft Pick

In 1979, the Yankees were coming off two consecutive World Series wins. Unbeknownst at the time, it would be another seventeen years before the team won another championship. This is the story of an All-Star first baseman who played with the Yankees during all of those in-between years, just missing a title on both ends of his career.

In 1979, the Yankees drafted 29 players in the June amateur draft. Of those, six made it to the major leagues. Their first pick in the draft, Todd Demeter, is not one of those six.

Freddie Toliver, Stefan Wever, Pete Filson, and Keith Smith all had brief and very anonymous careers in the big leagues. Greg Gagne, a name you probably will recall, was a fifth round pick and he played extensively as a shortstop, mostly for the Minnesota Twins.

The one thing all of these players have in common, though, is that each was selected by the Yankees before the team took the 493rd player in the draft in the nineteenth round. That player was Don Mattingly. In fact, the team selected eighteen players before they drafted Mattingly. Who knew?

These intangibles are traits that you either feel or you don’t about a player when you see them for the first time

Mattingly, then 18, was sent to Class-A Oneonta where he caught the attention of his manager, Art Mazmanian, who volunteered an initial scouting report he sent to the Yankees. In that report, provided Jon Heyman, who was then writing for Newsday,  Mattingly was a described as follows:

“Has great self-confidence.``“Good team man.““Outstanding hitter for 18, knows the strike zone.““Tough to strike out.“

Could Mazmanian have been any more accurate?

We know that scouting ballplayers and predicting their futures are more of an art than it is a science. And there is a litany of names in the annals of baseball who were first round picks, including Demeter in this draft, and never even had a cup of coffee in “The Show.”

But rarely, do we have a player like Mattingly who was drafted so late and came up big.  Notables on that list include Mike Piazza who was selected by the Dodgers in the 62nd round, 1390 overall, Keith Hernandez who was taken in the 42nd round 785 overall, and Mark Buehrle who was selected in the 38th round 1,139 overall.

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Like Mattingly, these were guys who were not attending high profile colleges making regular appearances in the College World Series. Mattingly, for instance, was tucked away in an out of the way high school in Evansville, Indiana.

And much like Supreme Court, Justice Stewart said, “I know it when I see it,” referring to a case the Court was deciding on pornography, almost anyone, and especially scouts, can tell you when they see a ballplayer with unique skills.

But there was something in the assessment of Mattingly by Mazmanian that is even more telling about the kind of player Mattingly would become. “A good team man” and “has great self-confidence” shows foresight in predicting “Donnie Baseball” as a man with an unparalleled work ethic who was destined to be the Captain of the New York Yankees.

These intangibles are traits that you either feel or you don’t about a player when you see them for the first time.  Dick Groch, the scout who signed Derek Jeter, summed up his report to the Yankees this way: (nesn.com)

“A Yankee! A five-tool player. Will be a ML star!”

“A Yankee,” through and through. He sensed it. He knew it. And, of course, he was right.

Some would say it’s pure luck when a team like the Yankees finds a Don Mattingly that far down the totem pole. And I guess from the standpoint of geography, that might be correct. But when it comes to sensing baseball skills and aptitude for the game, it’s not as complicated as it might seem.

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Mattingly, of course, would go on to have a stellar career with the Yankees, averaging .307 over a 14-year career that was cut short due to issues with his back. In 1984, he won the batting title with a  .343 mark and won the MVP award in 1985. He was also an All-Star six times and won nine Gold Gloves.