SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Madison Bumgarner is a pretty good hitter. But if you’re looking for a pitcher in Giants camp who can rake, Jake Smith is your guy.
He can rake. And mow. And drag the infield. And chalk the lines.
Or he did, at least.
You never know when or where you might find a legitimate big league prospect.
The Giants found one working on their grounds crew at Low-A Augusta.
Four years after a summer job dragging the infield on sweltering afternoons at Lake Olmstead Stadium, and one year after striking out 118 in 84 minor league innings, Smith finds himself on the Giants’ 40-man roster, with a spring locker in the big league clubhouse at Scottsdale Stadium — and a legitimate track that might lead to the bullpen at AT&T Park someday soon.
“You know the scene from ‘Caddyshack,’ right?” Giants pitching coordinator Bert Bradley said. “Former groundskeeper, now leading the Masters … well, we actually have that.”
Not only did Smith literally work his way from the ground up, but he didn’t draw a paycheck when he served on the Lake Olmstead field maintenance crew in 2009 and parts of the ‘10 and ‘11 seasons.
He grew up in North Augusta, South Carolina, just across the Savannah River from the GreenJackets’ ballpark, and pitched for a local team made up of home-schooled kids from across the region. With the help of his coach, Augie Rodriguez, he latched onto the baseball team at Darton State College, 200 miles south in Albany, Ga.
Rodriguez pulled double-duty as the assistant groundskeeper at Lake Olmstead. He knew that Smith, after his freshman year at Darton State, was looking for something to do over the summer. An extra set of hands wouldn’t hurt, either. The only compensation Rodriguez could offer was the chance to watch games for free and be a baseball sponge. He didn’t have to offer the job twice.
“I love the game,” Smith said, “and I wanted to see how it was run from the professional side, see how professional players conducted themselves.”
Duties for night games began at 2 p.m., and Smith did a little of everything. He would weave around Ehire Adrianza, now the Giants’ current backup shortstop, while dragging the infield in the middle of the fifth inning. After the game, he’d pound and groom a mound that right-hander Chris Heston had just littered with spike marks.
Smith didn’t dare mention to Augusta pitching coach Steve Kline that he competed for a college team, or ask for pointers. Rodriguez was a little bolder, though. He suggested to Kline that Smith was worth a look.
“You know how people say stuff,” Kline said. “But we got him off a mound and he threw a pretty good breaking ball. He looked like he had an idea.”
Bradley’s roving schedule brought him to Augusta four days later. Giants special assistant Felipe Alou happened to be in town, too. Smith threw again for a small audience, and did just as well.
“He had a long, lanky body and he was loose and had good feel, pretty good command,” Bradley said. “He was probably in the high 80s then. We worked on some stuff, gave him a couple things he could do.”
Recalled Smith: “I was tall and skinny and weighed 150 pounds and didn’t know what my body was going to do, but they did. Kline and Bert saw I had something more than what I was getting.”
Alou even persuaded the Giants to offer Smith a modest bonus to sign, but he decided to take his newfound knowledge and transfer to pitch at Campbell University in North Carolina, instead.
Smith returned to grounds crew duty for part of Augusta’s 2010 season. The following year, Rodriguez got a job coaching in the Northwoods League, a wooden-bat circuit for college players. Smith was invited to replace him as the GreenJackets’ assistant groundskeeper. He’d even get paid this time.
He ended up staying just two weeks. Rodriguez found him a roster spot on a team up north. So Smith hustled to St. Cloud, Minn., and didn’t even bother to pick up his only paycheck.
By that June, Smith was eligible for the draft, and the Giants took him in the 48th round. It didn’t matter that major league clubs had picked 1,466 players ahead of him and just 63 afterward. When Smith got the news, in the middle of batting practice in St. Cloud, the grass never looked so green.
Smith’s $5,000 bonus check didn’t even cover his student loans. He made sure to cash it, though.
High-round picks enter the Giants minor league system with six-figure nest eggs and a lifetime of elite-level coaching. Smith came to them with an eagerness to learn, and not much else.
Whenever he’d encounter a player at higher levels in the system, he came to expect one of those funny stares.
“Wait,” Heston asked him one day. “Weren’t you doing grounds crew at Augusta?”
It was Smith’s turn to leave his mark on the mound. He made the most of the instruction given to him, and soon he was throwing dependably in the low 90s. Then the mid-90s. Then learning to take that fuel and fill up the strike zone.
“He was just middle of the pack when he got here but he grew a little bit, got better with his mechanics and all of the sudden he started throwing hard,” Bradley said. “Until last year, he wasn’t really on everybody’s radar. In a year and a half, he’s gone from being maybe an organizational guy to a viable major league prospect.”
Last season at Single-A San Jose, Smith was so dominant that he moved from middle relief to the closer role while pitching in a bullpen loaded with hard throwers. He proved durable while throwing 84.1 innings in 56 games, limited hitters to a .172 average and struck out 118 while issuing 21 walks.
Smith and fellow right-hander Ian Gardeck became the first San Jose relievers to strike out 100 in a season since Sergio Romo in 2007.
“I guess my out pitch was my curveball but over the season, I worked on a cutter,” said Smith, who recorded 46.6 percent of his outs via strikeout. “But mostly, I could locate my fastballs. So I threw a lot of fastballs up in the zone.”
Smith and Gardeck were among nine pitchers added to the Giants’ 40-man roster in December, protecting them from being poached in the Rule 5 draft. That meant an automatic locker in big league camp, too.
“Last spring, the other (coaches) asked who my sleeper guy was, and I said Jake Smith,” Bradley said. “This year, when they ask who my sleeper guy is, I’ll say Jake Smith. I think I’ll be saying that till he gets to the big leagues.
“But every once in awhile I’ll see him longingly looking at the rakes. And I’ll say, ‘Jake, you’re done with that.’”
Smith is likely to begin at Double-A Richmond, where Kline would be his pitching coach.
“He’s a great kid, very quiet,” Kline said. “He worked hard on the grounds crew, too. He drove me nuts sometimes trying to pound the mound too much. But nah, he’s OK.”
The Giants might employ dozens of scouts to span the globe in search of prospects, but they didn’t have to turn over a rock to find Smith. He did it for them. It was his job, after all.
“I guess it’s pretty cool,” Smith said of his sod story. “But they’re the ones who took time out of their day to watch me pitch. I don’t think it would’ve been possible without that.”
