One thing we really enjoy doing for our young Minor League clients is to get them attention from the media. Unless you are a top prospect first-round signee, chances are that Jonathan Mayo at Baseball America and Keith Law at ESPN are not calling you daily for an interview. Fortunately, at Dynasty, we are able to leverage some of our great connections acquired through running this blog and having a strong presence on sites like Facebook and Twitter, to open up doors for our clients who may have been later round picks or completely overlooked in the draft.
Every year, each MLB organization makes roughly 50 picks in the Rule 4 Draft, adds foreign players as free agents, and signs college players who were not drafted, but are good enough to be given a chance. Lee Roberts falls into the last category of players. He had a very impressive senior season at baseball powerhouse, Loyola Marymount University, but went undrafted. However, he knew that teams were interested in him, including the Kansas City Royals, which is the team that signed him only a couple of days after the draft.
Wally Fish at Kings of Kauffman recently interviewed Roberts. It’s not your simple 5-10 short question/answer interview. Fish went in depth with Roberts to find out everything he could from Lee’s family life, to his style of pitching, and even a little bit about his facial hair. About that ‘stache..
Do you have any rituals or superstitions you follow before, during, or after you pitch in a game?
During the game, I groom the mound the same way every time before I throw my first warm-up pitch. However, I would say that my biggest superstition would be my facial hair. Even in college I would have a certain style going and as long as I was throwing well, it would stay. My senior year in college I was rocking the full handle bars. As for right now, I have a solo mustache that may or may not be waxed up like Clay Zavada’s!