The Future Helena and Arizona Brewers -- 30th round 3B/OF Dedrick Signs

[TheCrew07]

That actually gave me some peace, he better sign soon so he can actually get some playing time in this summer.

[battlekow]

Lawire hit two three-run homers yesterday:

In the first game, Post 7 lost 9-5 to the Langley Blaze as Blaze catcher Brett Lawrie, the 2008 No. 16 overall selection by the Milwaukee Brewers, had two three-run home runs in the game.

link

[jwill535]

Lawire hit two three-run homers yesterday:

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/sports/story/460053.html

This is the exact reason why I think LaPorta is expendable.

 

[BrewCrewWS2008]

does any know or can predict when ororizzi will debut?

[battlekow]

I just got confirmation from Adam McCalvy that Seth Lintz is finally signed.

[battlekow]

Here's an update on Wayne Dedrick (30th-round OF):

Lipscomb wants just one-sport star

By STEVE SILVER • Staff Writer • July 9, 2008

Wayne Dedrick could not have had a better high school senior year.

He signed a basketball scholarship offer from Lipscomb in November. Then, in February, he scored 30 points in the Alabama Class 6A state championship game to lead Hillcrest High School to its first basketball title. Dedrick was named tournament MVP.

Lipscomb basketball Coach Scott Sanderson was justifiably elated when Dedrick arrived in Nashville, enrolled in summer school and began working out, preparing for his career with the Bisons.

But that all changed when Dedrick was unexpectedly selected by the Milwaukee Brewers in the 30th round of the baseball draft in June. He pulled out of school recently and returned to Alabama, where he is deciding whether to skip college to play professional baseball.

"I really don't know what I'm going to do," said Dedrick, who continues to work out, practicing both basketball and baseball with former Hillcrest teammates.

"I miss my teammates at Lipscomb like crazy right now. Nashville was truly a home away from home. This is a big step and I don't know what I'm going to do."

His departure has left a void in Lipscomb's men's basketball program. The 6-foot-2 guard from Tuscaloosa added speed and ball handling skills to a solid recruiting class that includes 6-8 Justin Glenn, 6-7 Matt Shaw and 6-4 Jacob Arnett.

"He is a very explosive offensive player," Sanderson said. "He is very athletic. He really knows how to score."

Sanderson said he had no idea any Major League Baseball teams were interested in Dedrick, though the third baseman did hit .402 with 22 RBIs in his senior year at Hillcrest. He also won a state title in baseball as a junior, alongside the Brewers' 19th round pick, pitcher Blake Billings.

"I never thought baseball was in the equation," Sanderson said. "His parents didn't know. He didn't know. Nobody knew. It sprung on all of us about a month ago."

Lured by pro league

In an article that appeared on the day after he was drafted, Dedrick told his hometown newspaper, The Tuscaloosa News, that he didn't even enjoy playing baseball until his senior year of high school.

But the lure of pro baseball was too strong to ignore completely.

Dedrick headed home on June 11 to prepare for negotiations with the Brewers, alongside his father, Thomas, who has been acting as his agent.

The first meeting dates with Milwaukee representatives were repeatedly pushed back, he said.

In response, Dedrick withdrew from his classes at Lipscomb, fearing his absence from classes would cause him to fail summer school and hurt his academic eligibility.

Dedrick still hasn't received a firm contract offer from the Brewers. When he does, he said, he'll consider whether the dollar figure is high enough to redirect his life.

As with all baseball draftees, professional baseball teams will pay for his remaining education should he elect to return to school later.

"It's really just a potentially amazing opportunity," Dedrick said.

"(The Brewers) can always pay for my school when I finish playing. There aren't many opportunities like this. Four years of college wherever I want to go. That's definitely a factor."

Dedrick's decision, though, will ultimately have ramifications beyond his own life.

Lipscomb would regain a scholarship spot if Dedrick pursues baseball, but it would also lose one of the top basketball prospects from Alabama.

"There's not a whole lot I can do besides wait and let him make his decision," said Sanderson, the Bisons' coach. "Let's just say I've learned more about baseball in the last month then I'll ever need to know."

http://cmsimg.tennessean.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=DN&Date=20080709&Category=SPORTS060403&ArtNo=807090389&Ref=AR&Profile=1002&MaxW=318&Border=0

 

Former Hillcrest (Ala.) baseball player Wayne Dedrick, who signed a basketball scholarship with Lipscomb in 2007, was unexpectedly picked by the Milwaukee Brewers in June.

[battlekow]

Lintz link

[Chio151]

I'm as excited by Lawrie as I have been for any first rounder since Weeks. He just seems to have the 'it' factor.

 

But really, this has to be the coolest anecdote so far: "Lasker, who is named Maverick after Tom Cruise's character in Top Gun"

 

A.) His parents are cool.

B.) He's young enough to be born after Top Gun, which for some reason is surprising to me. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

[battlekow]

Lawrie made Canada's Olympic team, as expected, so he almost certainly will not be signing until near the deadline.

[Postseason2006]

Is this better for him to play in this kind of competition or rookie ball?

[battlekow]

Is this better for him to play in this kind of competition or rookie ball?

I think it's probably pretty similar, but with one downside: he won't be catching, which is the area of his game that needs the most work. It will be interesting to see if the Brewers keep him in EST next year until Helena starts, or assign him to a full-season league right away.

 

[battlekow]

The Dodgers signed Ethan Martin, the prep hitter taken the pick before Lawrie, for $1.7M; Lawrie will probably get a similar bonus when he gets around to signing.

[twobrewers]

I think it's probably pretty similar, but with one downside: he won't be catching

battlekow, you have a way better grasp of what is always going on down there ...

 

But are we sure he is going to be a catcher? With Rottino, Salome, Cap'n Lou, Lucroy and Fryer (sometimes) - we certainly could use Lawrie as a 2B or 3B.

[battlekow]

Well, he was drafted as a catcher, so presumably that's what the Brewers plan to do for now. It's certainly possible they'll change their minds between now and next spring, though I don't really see a reason for it; he could always be moved off catcher later if it wasn't taking.

[LouisEly]

You can always be moved from catcher to 3B (see: Surhoff, BJ) or 2B (see: Biggio, Craig).

 

If Lawrie can have a career similar to either of those two, whether at C or infield, it will be a great pick.

[battlekow]

Langley's Brett Lawrie a hit with Olympic team

Lyndon Little, Vancouver Sun

Published: Friday, July 11, 2008

Brett Lawrie's summer just got even better.

After setting a record for being the highest drafted position player in the history of Canadian baseball (No. 16 overall by the Milwaukee Brewers), the young Langley slugger Thursday was named to the Canadian Olympic team heading to Beijing.

At 18 Lawrie will be the youngest player on the squad and one of a total of seven B.C. players on the 24-man roster.

The others B.C. products are pitchers Brooks McNiven, R.J. Swindle and Scott Richmond, infielder Matt Rogelstad, plus outfielders Mike Saunders and Jimmy VanOstrand.

McNiven is an ex-UBC hurler playing in the minors for San Francisco, Richmond is from Langley and plays in the Toronto Blue Jays' system, Rogelstad is from New Westminster and plays in the minors for Washington, Saunders is from Victoria and is with the Seattle Mariners' Triple-A club in Tacoma while VanOstrand is from Richmond and plays in the Houston Astros' chain. Swindle is a left-handed pitcher who was born in Vancouver but raised in South Carolina.

"I'm pretty excited. It's going to be a lot of fun," said Lawrie. "I always felt like I had a chance to be on the team. I guess they [baseball Canada] decided to believe in me."

Canada finished just off the podium in fourth place at the last Games in Athens.

"This is a tremendous time for Baseball Canada and we are very excited about our Olympic team," said Baseball Canada president Ray Carter in a statement.

"Selecting this team has been a challenging process, but we're anxious to get going and have high hopes for our team in Beijing," added Greg Hamilton, Baseball Canada's director of national teams.

Lawrie has not yet come to an agreement with the Brewers, but the Langley teen says that did not factor into his being named to the squad.

"I'm not upset I haven't signed yet," he said.

"We're getting pretty close. I'm going to the Olympics regardless."

Major league teams have until Aug. 1 to recall any of their players from the Canadian Olympic squad. That will likely only happen if the big league club felt it necessary to add any of them to its 25-man major league roster.

The Olympic team plans to gather in Toronto on July 28 and has four exhibition games scheduled against Team U.S.A. before leaving for Beijing.

[battlekow]

Lawrie joins sis in Beijing

Terry Bell, The Province

Published: Friday, July 11, 2008

The Beijing Games will be a family affair for Langley phenom Brett Lawrie, 18, who was named to Canada's Olympic baseball team Thursday.

Lawrie, picked 16th overall in the June draft by Milwaukee, joins his sister Danielle, a star on the Canadian softball team going to the Games.

He also joins a mix of youth and veterans on the baseball squad which will be managed by former major leaguer Terry Puhl. "This is a significant jump for him, but this is a unique player that we feel can make the jump," Puhl said.

Other B.C. natives named: pitchers Brooks McNiven, Vancouver; Scott Richmond of Langley, and R.J. Swindle, Vancouver, and infielders Matt Rogelstad, New Westminster, and Jimmy Van Ostrand, Richmond. The team includes former major leaguers Rheal Cormier, Chris Reitsma, David Davidson, Adam Stern, Pete Orr and Scott Thurman.

[EbbaStClaire]

Is there one site that lists the entire Canadian olympic baseball roster?

[Mass Haas]

Is there one site that lists the entire Canadian olympic baseball roster?

http://www.baseballamerica.com/blog/prospects/?p=1311

[EbbaStClaire]

Thank You.

[TuesdaysWithRillo]

So should we be worried about Lawrie not signing? We only have one more month to get the deal done.

[TheCrew07]

He'll sign before the deadline, but he's going to play for Canada until Sept, so unfortunately he's going to miss the majority if not all of short season ball. When he was drafted I would have thought he'd sign right away and get some work in AZ or Helena then take of his Canada business. You'd think by now I'd be used to being wrong....

[battlekow]

UW pitcher Danielle Lawrie, brother Brett both poised for Beijing Olympics

By JON NAITO

P-I REPORTER

LANGLEY, B.C. -- The lawn needed mowing. It had grown shaggy, the sun had finally smiled, and there was a teenage boy with no other commitment, and so the job was his.

Though he was no fan of such a chore, Brett Lawrie did not argue as he plugged white buds into his ears, cranked his iPod and headed out into the crisp afternoon.

"We love him, but he can drive you crazy," said Brett's dad, Russ, a stout man and former rugby player with hands as big as oven mitts.

Cheryl, Russ' wife of 30 years and Brett's mother, was on her way to an appointment. She chided Brett about doing a proper job, but Brett just kept his head down and feet moving, the music and roar of the mower shouting down his mother's instructions.

It did not matter to his parents that sometime in August Brett will most likely be a millionaire, and if he so chooses, pay someone to trim the lawn.

In this household, there are no free passes.

Brett is 6 feet and 200 pounds of lean muscle. He has a 46-inch vertical leap. He has the discerning eye of a modeling agency and quick wrists and an aggressive approach, the tools that seduce baseball men.

The Milwaukee Brewers took him with the 16th pick in this year's June draft -- the highest a Canadian position player has ever been drafted -- and they will pay him handsomely to catch or play left field or third base, but really just to hit the seams off a baseball.

But Brett Lawrie will not begin his pro career until the fall. In the interim, he will join his parents and sister an ocean away, where Danielle Lawrie, three years Brett's senior and an All-American at Washington, will try to pitch Canada to a softball medal at the Olympic Games in Beijing, and Brett, one of the youngest baseball players in Canada's national team history, will try to win a medal of his own.

When asked to explain how a family from a rural suburb of Vancouver can produce two elite athletes, so young and accomplished, the response is not one of feigned surprise, but phrased in the confident, matter-of-fact manner that colors this family's approach to everything.

"They were always the best at what they did," Russ said. "That's not me blowing smoke. They were those people. In baseball, Brett was the best player on every team we've been on. No question. He is the best player in Canada; the proof is there itself -- he was a first-round draft pick. Growing up, Danielle was always the one. She started pitching at 12, and within three months people said she was going to be something big.

"I think with athletes, it's something you can pick up on right away. You just know. You can see it's different than anyone else. Both of them were different all the way through."

Bobe owns the circle

No one in her family calls Danielle Lawrie by her given name. She is Bobe (pronounced Bowb), a name bestowed by a young Brett, who could not pronounce his sister's name and called her Bobo, which got shortened along the way to Bobe.

Bobe and Brettski were competitive in the most extreme sense.

Nothing was exempt from a contest -- from leaping to touch the ceiling in the basement to shooting baskets with table scraps and napkins and answering trivia to avoid washing dishes. The siblings left no competitive opportunity unturned.

"We wanted to beat each other so bad at everything," Danielle said recently by phone from Chicago, where she was touring with the Canadian national team. "I mean, nothing was off limits. But it was just always how it was with us. We were raised to compete."

It is a measure of pride for Russ that both his children embraced an unyielding desire to win at everything they tried.

That comes from Russ, who acknowledged that he pushed his children hard. Brett and Danielle, however, soaked it up, their drive and ambition apparent from an early age.

Danielle took up softball only after she was cut from a local baseball team as a child for having the temerity of being a girl. She was furious that she had been cut, though she was better than many of the boys who made the team, and so poured all her energy into other sports.

As an undersized, 5-foot-7 power forward, she led Brookswood Secondary to a pair of provincial basketball championships as a tenacious post scorer and rebounding machine who backed down from nobody.

"She has the tendency to intimidate," Cheryl said.

In softball, she rose quickly through the junior ranks and made the senior national team at 18. The summer before her freshman season at the UW, Lawrie started against the powerhouse U.S. national team, defeating them 2-1, ending a three-year winning streak for the Americans and giving Canada its first victory over its neighbor.

"She is fearless," said UW coach Heather Tarr, who made Danielle her first recruit when she was named coach in 2005. "She has all the physical tools, can make all the pitches, but it's her presence on the mound, her confidence and cool that separates her."

Or, as her father puts it: "Make no doubt about it, the circle is hers."

At the UW, she quickly ascended to the role of staff ace, and after two seasons is second on the school's all-time strikeout list (844).

During her sophomore season in 2007, Danielle won 31 games, broke her own UW season record with 457 strikeouts, tossed 11 shutouts, had 25 double-figure strikeout games, and threw a no-hitter against DePaul in the Women's College World Series.

She took a redshirt year in 2008 to tour with Team Canada as it prepared for the Olympics, and will return to the Huskies for her junior season in the fall.

Heady stuff for a 21-year-old, but Danielle has little time for reflection. She has only one goal in mind this summer -- to win gold, never mind that the American juggernaut stands in her way.

"I always want to win," she said. "I expect to. There is no point being out there if you're going to doubt yourself. It doesn't matter who's at the plate, they still have to beat you. I'm not going to concede anything to anyone."

Russ and Cheryl

The Lawrie children were shaped, athletically at least, by their father.

Russ, 53, was a talented athlete himself, playing rugby, baseball and basketball while growing up in nearby Burnaby.

He once tore an Achilles tendon playing H-O-R-S-E against Brett, yet recalls not the immense pain of the injury but that he finished the game.

A bear of a man at 5 feet 10 with a broad face and slight mustache, he loves to talk.

Russ is a storyteller, and is either in sales or construction or both, though it becomes clear that what he loves to do most is talk about his kids.

He can tick off their accomplishments with ease and precision and is not shy about touting their achievements. He does so in a tone that straddles the line between pride and bluster, one he avoids crossing because of the obvious joy on his face and in his voice each time he recounts them.

He and Cheryl met in high school. She was the manager of the track team, and took a shine to him, pursued him, and that was that. They've been together since.

Cheryl, also 53, was not an athlete, but takes no less joy and played no less a part in her children's success than Russ.

While Russ was the one who took them to the park for workouts after work and coached Brett's Little League team, Cheryl was always in the picture, making sure that no matter what avenue her children followed, they would not do it halfway.

"If our kids did a great job we told them they did a great job," Cheryl said. "If they struggled with something, we talked with them on the way home. It's not a big deal, but you have to understand that now you have to work hard this week so you won't do that again. They had no problem talking about what they'd done."

The basement in their four-bedroom, split-level home is dedicated entirely to their children. Memorabilia and pictures blanket the walls, and the living room has a strange duality -- it feels homey and lived-in, and yet has museum-like detachment with all its nostalgia.

"We look at each other sometimes and wonder what are we going to do when they're not here?" Cheryl said.

Brettski on deck

Soon the house will be empty. Brett will rejoin Canada's junior national team for the world junior championships in Edmonton, and then join his sister in Beijing as a member of the Olympic team.

Like his sister, he has precocity, a confidence that is unerring. He is more self-assured than many men twice his age.

"We noticed that about him when we started scouting him," said Jack Zduriencik, the Brewers' vice president in charge of player personnel. "He is certainly very physically mature for someone his age, and we think he has the ability to become a successful player, but it's his makeup that we liked the most. He really believes in his ability, and that translates at the plate."

Brett has played for the junior national team for three years, and it was in that capacity this spring that his stock began to soar among major league scouts.

In games in Florida in extended spring training, he was 21-for-30 and had 14 extra-base hits. In a tour of the Dominican Republic, he hit .486 with eight home runs and 24 runs batted in. He went from a probable third-round selection before the spring to one of the most buzzed about players in the draft.

Scouts noticed his build, his athleticism, his power potential and his aggressiveness at the plate. They loved that he had grown up using wood bats. They did not worry about what position he would play; he has played second base, third base, left field and catcher. He wants to catch full-time, believing that is his quickest route to the majors, and has spent time with Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Russell Martin, a fellow Canadian.

"A year-and-half," he said of his expected stay in the minors. "I trust myself. I know what I can do. I think people have seen what I can do."

His longtime coach on the junior national team, Greg Hamilton, is also the man who selected the Canadian Olympic team. Hamilton has seen Brett's progression through the junior ranks, and raves about his future.

"He just has natural ability at the plate," Hamilton said. "But what he loves most is to compete, and he knows how to win. I think that certainly comes across, and I think that's something teams took into account when they were looking at drafting him."

Brett has committed to attend Arizona State, but said he would sign with Milwaukee in August. The family would not comment on a desired signing bonus, but last year's 16th pick, Kevin Ahrens, received a $1.44 million bonus from Toronto.

Until he leaves for his national team commitments, he continues to train and plays the occasional game for his longtime select team, the Langley Blaze.

In one recent game, Brett slugged a home run to tie the game and hit another in extra innings to win it. One of the homers hit a new sport-utility vehicle in the parking lot.

"(The owner) said, 'Well, I should at least get your autograph,' " Cheryl recalled.

Minutes later, after the family watched Tiger Woods win the U.S. Open, Brett excused himself to change clothes.

The lawn still needed mowing.

 

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/20080715/450canadians_picture.jpgAndy Rogers / P-I

Russ Lawrie of Langley, B.C., snaps a photo of son Brett, a touted major league draft pick, and daughter Danielle, a record-setting UW softball pitcher.

[battlekow]

Here's a picture of Lawrie taking BP with the Canadian Juniors team that I found on Flickr:

 

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3131/2669580663_952906df8e.jpg?v=0

 

© Fnawzm

[DHonks]

wow, Brett's sister is very attractive, especially for a blonde (sorry, I tend to not go for blondes), and she probably has a cool accent, too