No. 1's priority: Improve
Larson hopes to live up to expectations
BY JOHN ERARDI
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Last July, when Marge Schott introduced Brandon Larson at a press conference, she said the Reds first-round draft choice should wear the number of his signing bonus - $1.33 million - on his uniform back.
Brandon Larson
Little did the Reds chief executive officer know.
No. 1s are marked men. That will be the case today and Saturday at RedsFest, where Larson is one of the headliners.
If you are a first-round draft choice, everybody knows who you are and how much you signed for. And so, of course, you want to live up to the billing. You want to justify your status as ''No. 1.''
With such a backdrop, Larson can understand why some of the Reds' other minor-leaguers might look at him skeptically after the sort of '97 season he had. In Double-A Chattanooga, he tore ligaments in his ankle rounding second base on the way to third after bashing a ball off the wall to the opposite field. His regular season was over after only 41 at-bats.
That's barely a week-and-a-half worth of ABs. In his 11 games, he batted .268 with five doubles, one triple and six RBI.
As soon as Larson got up from his spill at second base and realized he couldn't put any weight on his right foot, the thought hit him: Now I gotta sit. I gotta sit when I need to be playing. I need at-bats, and I'm not gonna be able to get 'em.
''I didn't show any of these guys what No. 1 was all about,'' Larson said earlier this week from his home in San Antonio, Texas. ''I didn't do nothing. Then I went to the Arizona Fall League (to which each organization's highest prospects are invited) and I'm sure a lot of guys were saying, ''What the heck is he doing here?' ''
Larson can rest easy this weekend. Reds fans will not be making any such inquiries.
They'll simply be glad he's here.
Larson will be among the Reds, past, present and future who will be interacting with Reds fans tonight (season ticket holders only) and Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., at RedsFest '98 at the Convention Center in downtown Cincinnati.
''It's a great honor and privilege to be asked to participate,'' Larson said. ''I was really surprised to be asked (by the Reds front office). I said, 'Heck, yeah, I'll come up.' It'll give me a chance to rub elbows with some of the guys, see the fans, have some fun.''
Larson played shortstop in college. He's being converted to third base, which he played in the Arizona Fall League, hitting .233, with one home run and eight RBI in 28 games. He also played some left field.
Fans already know his name from last summer's holdout and the College World Series which preceded it. His Louisiana State University team won the World Series and Larson was named Most Valuable Player. He had a spectacular year, becoming only the fourth player in NCAA history to hit 40 home runs.
He is the first of the Reds' picks in the new era of ''developing from within,'' instead of acquiring players from the largely expensive world of other major league team's rosters.
For an organization which dearly needs to begin producing stars out of its farm system, a lot is riding on Larson.
''He's the best bat we've drafted in the last 10 years,'' Reds General Manager Jim Bowden said. ''He has tremendous power (and) a short path to the ball. He's the first drafted player in the history of the franchise to start off at Double-A. He has the chance to be special.''
Bowden was not deterred by Larson's numbers at Chattanooga (''he was just starting to come on when he got hurt'' ) or the Arizona Fall League (''youngest player there and competing against major league and Triple-A players'').
''We could have put him at A-ball and had him hit 30 homers, or we could have put him where we did (Double-A) and had him struggle but get him to the big leagues quicker,'' Bowden said.
Just because a player is a No. 1 draft choice doesn't mean he doesn't have to adjust to using a wood bat or to hitting pro pitching or to coping psychologically with 0-for-4s.
And there are no guarantees the player ever will adjust.
In his 41 at-bats in Double A, Larson never even got to crank a ball out of the park. This from a guy who hit 20 home runs in his last 26 games at LSU, and twice hit three home runs in one game.
Part of Larson's adjustment is from aluminum to wood; part of it is to the better pitching.
''When I first got to Chattanooga, I noticed they (the pitchers) were coming at me from the middle in (of the strike zone),'' Larson said. ''In college, those were the pitches I'd kill for. My eyes'd light up. I'd hit those pitches 400 feet. But when I hit that pitch in Chattanooga, it didn't really go anywhere. Maybe it'd squib through between short and third.''
Why's that?
''The sweet spot is just a lot smaller on a wood bat,'' he said. ''On the inside pitch, you've got to throw the head of the bat out there and react.''
Although LSU plays a high-quality schedule and Larson played on college all-star teams in the summer including one that toured Japan, he regrets he never played in a wood-bat league for college players such as the Cape Cod League.
''Lance Berkman, the first-round pick for the Astros, told me that playing in the Cape Cod League helped him a lot,'' Larson said. ''He went down to Kissimmee (low-A minor league) and really tore it up. He signed kind of late, too. But he hit 13 home runs . . . In the long run, I don't think it (the lack of experience with wood) is going to hinder me, but it's going to take some at-bats.''
Larson learned in batting practice at LSU that he can hit the ball just as far with wood as he can with aluminum. But there's a big difference between BP and game situations against pitchers who know what they're doing. And it just isn't the material in the bat. It's the gray matter between the ears.
Larson said his dad goes to a lot of San Antonio Missions' games and cautioned him there would be an adjustment period. Many Double-A pitchers are adept at changing speeds.
''You just don't see that in college,'' Larson said.
With so few at-bats under his belt in '97, how anxious is Larson for spring training to begin? He's been invited to big-league camp. ''I've already started to pack some things away a little bit,'' he said.