When pitcher Zack Greinke signed a 6-year, $147 million contract with
the Los Angeles Dodgers, it was hard not to think about players like
Matt Antonelli.
As TV revenues increase and more and more guys like Greinke sign
wildly lucrative contracts, you can't blame baseball fans for feeling
farther and farther separated from the athletes they support. It's
easy to lose sight of the fact that most professional baseball
players aren't like Greinke or Alex Rodriguez, C.C. Sabathia, Cole
Hamels, Josh Hamilton etc. It's easy to forget that those players are
still the exception, not the rule.
Most professional baseball players are like Matt Antonelli.
Antonelli
isn't a multi-millionaire. In fact, at the moment he's unemployed.
The former 17th
overall pick in 2007 has played 21 major league games – all in 2008
– and 513 minor league games since being selected by the Padres. He
was released by San Diego in 2010 after three years of battling
injuries. Since, he's played minor league games for the Washington
Nationals, Baltimore Orioles and New York Yankees' organizations.
But he hasn't made it back to the majors. Even after hitting
.297/.393/.460 in 86 games for the Syracuse Chiefs in 2011, Antonelli
wasn't so much as given a September call-up.
Entering last off-season, the Peabody, Mass. native was as healthy as
he'd been since 2007 and confident he'd be back in The Show in 2012.
His aspiration seemed even more obtainable when the Orioles signed
him to a major league contract. Even general manager Dan Duquette's
quotes in the team's press release intimated he'd be with the big
club.
After 34 at-bats with the O's in spring training, though, he was
assigned to Triple-A Norfolk where he expected to be the starting
third baseman.
“One
of the reasons I came to Baltimore is that I thought I'd have an
opportunity hopefully at some point to play in the majors,”
Antonelli said over the phone last April after his minor league
assignment. “Whether it would be at the very beginning or whenever
to be contributing at that level. That's my goal.”
But when he wasn't in the lineup on opening day, Antonelli began to
wonder if things were going to work.
When he did get in the lineup, the plate discipline that intrigued
the Orioles was still there, but the line drives and home runs were
missing. And the thing about playing in the minor leagues is, with
one-year contracts and little patience for slumps, pressure mounts
quickly.
A few weeks later – while he'd been bouncing in and out of the
lineup and struggling at the plate - the second baseman tweeted a
picture of a snow-filled, Single-A ballpark. The stadium has wooden
advertisements as a wall and bleachers that only fits about 2,000
without alerting the fire marshall. Norfolk was there to play the
Scranton Yankees, who were without a home while their new stadium was
being built. It was still a Triple-A game, but it felt like one of
those how-did-I-get-here moments.
“It
was my weirdest season by far to say the least,” Antonelli said
last week.
In the following weeks, the Orioles started shaking up their roster.
They signed several players who would play a key role in their run
toward the playoffs, including outfielders Nate McClouth and Lew
Ford. Antonelli, however, was the odd man out. On May 13 – only
about two months after a spot on the MLB roster seemed possible - he
was released. He finished with only 116 plate appearances for the
Tides.
“Obviously
I was disappointed at how it went,” he said. “But if I had shown
up to Baltimore and played well and played like I did in Syracuse,
things would have been different. So I can only blame myself.”
Four days later, he was picked up by the New York Yankees. They
assigned him to Triple-A Scranton. Things didn't work out much better
there than they had in Norfolk. The Yankees' lineup was pretty much
set by the time he walked in the door and when he did play, he didn't
hit. Then, he injured his hand.
“At
that point, I was thinking 'this is the season from hell,'” he
said.
The former first-round pick only played 15 games with the Yankees. He
was DFA'd, picked back up and DFA'd again along the way. His final
stat line for the season was 44 games, .201/.324/.286, two home runs
and 11 RBI – nothing close to what he'd hoped.
Antonelli doesn't want to call this upcoming season a crossroads, but
there's no other word. He's 27 and fully believes he can fulfill his
potential as an everyday major league infielder. However, the reality
is that mountain gets harder and harder to climb each year that it
doesn't happen. Every season, a whole new crop of rookies enter the
league who are pegged to be everyday players. It's like a game of
musical chairs with 1,000 players fighting for one seat.
That's the life of a professional baseball player. Not mansions and
Maseratis. It's time away from home, low pay and long bus rides. It's
being cut and traded, sometimes even misled. If you aren't a star,
there's a constant self dialogue about what's next and when you'll
call it quits.
But Antonelli isn't ready to have that conversation yet. Even when
things were down, he was inspired by his former Syracuse teammate
Gregor Blanco, who was the starting left fielder on the World
Series-winning San Francisco Giants. Blanco was mostly a minor league
player and fourth outfieder who took over in left field when Mekly
Cabrera was suspended for PEDs.
Blanco made several key plays during the World Series. Antonelli was
watching.
“Gregor
is a great player,” he said. “Sometimes a guy has a bad season
and people write him off, then the next thing you know he's
contributing in the majors. It happens with tons of players. So, I
know I'm not young anymore, but I'm only 27 and I still think that
can be me.”
Antonelli said he and his agent are still working on finding a spot
for next season.
READ MORE ABOUT MATT ANTONELLI'S ROAD TO THE SHOW AT BIZ OF BASEBALL.COM
