2. Wilson Betemit – 11 Seasons (2.8 rWAR)
Wilson Betemit was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on November 2, 1981. The Atlanta Braves signed him as an international free agent on July 28, 1996. That isn’t a typo. The Braves signed him when he was 14 years - 210 days old, but the team wouldn’t find that out for three years.
This post is about busts, and in the end, that’s the way most describe his career based on play in the minors. But think about how hard it was for a player of fifteen to compete with much older players every day and outperform many of them. In 1997, the other 17 members of his team, including one player who was just 16, had an average age of 18.75.
He batted only .212/.271/.283/.554 that year, which isn’t bad when you’re facing pitchers with an average age of 19. Two years later, he was 17, playing for Danville, and batting.321/.383/.463.846 against pitchers between who were 19 and 20.
In 1999, the league fined the Braves $100K for signing an underage player but allowed them to keep Betemit. Baseball America was so impressed with his performance that it made him baseball’s 99th-ranked prospect going into 2000. He climbed to number 29 in 2001, number 8 in 2002, and was still number 49 at the beginning of 2003.
After a cup of coffee in 2004, he appeared in 115 games for Atlanta in 2005 and batted .305/.359/.435/.794. He followed that by batting .281/.344/.497/.842 with nine homers in the first 88 games of 2006 before the cost-cutting Braves traded him to the Dodgers. He never reached those heights at the plate again. he went on to play for a half-dozen teams but came close to the promise he'd shown as a prospect.
1. Brad Komminsk – 8 Seasons (2.2 rWAR)
Brad Komminsk lettered in three sports for Shawnee High School in Lima, Ohio, and earned scholarship offers from Ohio State, Nebraska, and Clemson in 1979. He signed with Atlanta when they selected him with the fourth overall pick of the draft and offered him a $70K signing bonus.
In 1980, Komminsk batted .261/.376/.466/.842, stole 27 bases and hit 30 homers for Anderson in the SALLY League at 19. The following year, he batted .322/.458/.606/1.064 with 35 steals and 33 homers at Durham and followed that by batting.276/.378/.524/.903 with 14 steals and 26 homers while splitting time between Double-A and Triple-A.
Komminsk found himself in a three-player race for the IL batting title in 1983. He destroyed Triple-A pitching, batting .334/.433/.596/1.029, stealing two dozen bases, and smacking 24 homers, but finished second to Don Mattingly’s .340/.437/.598/1.034.
Unfortunately, Komminsk never adjusted to Major League pitching. He spent two seasons with Atlanta, batting 215/.295/.321 with 18 stolen bases,12 homers, 67 walks, and 148 strikeouts in 677 PA. He went on to play for four more teams before retiring.
Of all the players listed, I find Betemit and Komminsk the hardest to understand. I always wondered whether Betemit would have figured it out if he’d stayed with Atlanta. He was with the team from the time he was fourteen; they virtually raised him and then rejected him. I know it wasn’t personal, but it had to be an emotional departure for the young man.
The Braves made all kinds of excuses for Komminsk’s failures – Joe Torre once blamed it on asthma – and perhaps it was so many people trying to fix him that they became a roadblock instead. Komminsk must have wondered what happened to make his mojo vanish. But it did because it's baseball, and baseball is hard.