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Giants, Mussina: A Sad Story
San Francisco Chronicle, February 24, 2009
by Bruce Jenkins
Spring training always reminds me of Doug McMillan, one of the smartest baseball people I ever knew. Doug was a scout in the Giants' organization for many years, and if they'd taken his advice in 1990, instead of making a really stupid decision, they might have a world-championship trophy or two in their case.
I first met Doug at Santa Monica High School in the mid-60s. He was a lanky, imposing athlete, the quarterback of the football team and a hard-throwing righthander who went on to pitch several years in the minor leagues. My best friend at the time was Jim Murray's middle son, Tony, one of the great cynics of our time, and Doug was a kindred spirit. I used to hang around those guys, talk ball, compare Otis Redding to Marvin Gaye, and verbally shred every mediocrity in sight. I think the most common word in our vocabulary was "awful," unless we happened to be at Dodger Stadium, watching Koufax pitch. Those two had an eye for class, and a knack for separating the frauds from the authentic.
I lost track of Doug after he graduated from "Samohi," as we called it. But he contacted me many years later, having read one of my baseball pieces in the Chronicle, and it turned out he was scouting for the Giants. This was a couple of years after the 1990 draft, and he was still incensed over how his advice had been ignored. Mike Mussina was a star of the Stanford pitching staff at the time, looking pretty much as he did throughout his career: a slight man, darn near bereft of shoulders, but durable and fluid and exceptionally clever. McMillan saw a lot of Mussina and recommended that the Giants, holding the 15th overall pick in the '90 June draft, go with the local boy.
This was the Bob Lurie-Corey Busch-Al Rosen regime, a time when Bob Fontaine headed up the scouting department and the likes of Bob Kennedy, Carlos Alfonso, Larry Harper and Jack Hiatt filled out the staff. I was never certain who made the call in that year's draft, but these guys ruled out Mussina -- who was right in their back yard, for cryin' out loud -- and took Adam Hyzdu, a high-school outfielder from Cincinnati, Ohio.
Selected by Baltimore with the 20th pick, Mussina was in the big leagues by the following September, and the rest is history -- a career that might find him in the Hall of Fame someday. Hyzdu was a flat-out bust. Ten years passed before he saw a big-league diamond, and the Giants had given up on him by the winter of 1993. Over 221 big-league games, he hit .229 and 11 of his 18 career homers came in one season (2002, with the Pirates). "Awful," as Doug or Tony Murray would have said. Just dreadful. To say nothing of the fact that you don't draft anyone named Hyzdu, just out of principle.
I always wondered how the Giants would have fared with Mussina in 1993, the year they had to pitch Salomon Torres in that do-or-die game at Dodger Stadium, or 2000, when they lost that first-round series to the Mets, or either of the disasters against Florida (1997 and 2003). And I can't help but picture Mussina, not Livan Hernandez, pitching Game 7 of the '02 World Series after the most heartbreaking defeat in the Giants' San Francisco history (hell, if he'd been part of that rotation, the Giants could have won it in 5).
I kept up on Doug through Tim Keown, the esteemed sportswriter (and former college catcher) we had at the Sporting Green for a few precious years before he moved on to ESPN Magazine. The two of them lived in the same area, up near Suisin Valley, and became good friends. Then came an e-mail from Keown in the summer of 2007. It read, in part:
"Doug passed away this May. He'd had heart problems over the past few years, and his son said he died in his sleep. He left the Giants around 2001, and he was working for the Washington Nationals till the day he died.
"I always learned something when we spoke," Tim went on. "I think of him every time I watch Lincecum pitch. The Northwest was part of Doug's territory with the Nationals, and he called me last spring and said, 'I just finished watching the best pitching prospect I've ever seen.' When he told me how small he was, I said something about scouts being afraid of short right-handers. 'I don't give a **** if he's 2-foot-3,' Doug said. 'He throws 98 and gets everybody out.' Then he started laughing through that (ex-) smoker's rasp. He ended up giving Lincecum the highest score he'd ever given a pitcher.
"The first time I saw Lincecum pitch, I called Doug and said, 'With all that jerking, he looks like an arm injury waiting to happen.' He politely told me to watch him again and see how he uses his legs. Then he said to find clips of Mark Prior -- a guy he always said wasn't going to last, because of the strain his motion put on his shoulder. I did, and he was right, again.
"If I had $200 million," Keown concluded. "I would have bought a team and put him in charge of evaluating every player."
Things have improved in the Giants' scouting department. They've developed a good eye for pitchers, including Lincecum, Matt Cain, and a couple of guys drawing wall-to-wall raves in the minors, Madison Bumgarner and Tim Alderson. I just wish Doug McMillan still worked for the team. I miss his perspective, his good taste and his hilarious cynicism. If more people in the Giants' organization had paid attention to Doug in 1990, a lot of them might be wearing rings right now.
Here is the link to the story:
Story on Doug McMillan (bbscout)
