Seth Conner – The Power to Emerge

It was the 40th ball Seth Conner hit that established his new baseball profile.

The sun was setting at Rogersville High School’s baseball field and Conner’s spring tryout for Toronto Blue Jays scout Brandon Mozley was finishing just as colorfully. With a batting practice ball headed his way, Conner unloaded that finetuned, compact righthanded swing and crushed it. But it wasn’t a normal crush and not even a swing that elicits thousand-year baseball cliches.

He disintegrated the baseball — with a wood bat.

Not only did it clear the fence, it ended up in the softball field that backs up to the baseball field, some 500 feet from where he launched it.

“I just smiled, he hit it so far,” Conner’s father, Terry said. “It was the culmination of so many things for him. It was a perfect night.”

The kicker about Conner’s current situation isn’t that he hit 20 of those 40 BP balls for home runs, or the fact he helped his Rogersville team advance to state for the first time in school history last weekend. It’s the fact that people like Mozley, Missouri State baseball coach Keith Guttin or the other dozen Major League Baseball scouts aren’t just talking to him, they all want a piece of him.

How fast have things changed for Conner, the recent Rogersville graduate? Let’s just say it’s the new 20-plus pounds of muscle, the fact “a recent slump” depressed his batting average below .500 and heading into the state tournament, he had as many home runs (11) as he did singles (11) and doubles (11). It’s that his above-average defense is smoother than it was when he was optimized as a late-inning replacement 10 months ago by the Midwest Nationals. It’s also his underdog mentality, the fact he wears T-shirts of nutritional supplement brands, how his mother, Corinne, had to buy him a whole new wardrobe because his clothes didn’t fit any more and how more than one person has referred to him as “Tim Tebow-like” when referencing his personality.

Like his father said, everything came together at the same time. It’s almost too good to be true. Almost.

Before the after

Conner was always a good baseball player, but even he admits he was never the best.

When he was young, he was the kid they stuck out in right field.

“To pick daisies,” he says.

In elementary school, he was the kid who was good, but never the best on his team. Up until this year at Rogersville, you could say the same thing. Sure, he was the Central Ozark Conference Small School Division Player of the Year, but if you put him in the COC Big School Division, would he have stood out? Instead, he was steady. Steady with the glove. A pretty good hitter. A nice kid. A hard worker.

Still, steady doesn’t get you Division I scholarships or MLB Draft buzz. Steady gets you these types of offensive numbers:

• Freshman: .305 batting average, 1 home run
• Sophomore: .365, 1 HR
• Junior: .444, 2 HR

And they were good enough to land him on the Midwest Nationals teams throughout the years. He played as the everyday shortstop on the 16-year-old team at age 16, but at 17 — last summer — he found his way onto the 18-and-under team. He had a marketable skill, but it wasn’t one to get him in the everyday lineup. It was his defense.

The lack of playing time didn’t bother Conner. He’d never been the guy, so he didn’t feel slighted. But naturally, he wanted more. He played his role as the late-inning defensive replacement, who got occasional starting nods. It made sense for a player who had signed to play at Jefferson College, a well-respected junior college in Hillsboro. But during a tournament last summer at Mizzou, Conner was scuffling. MSU’s Guttin was there. Naturally Mizzou was there, and seeing as how his father Terry was a Tiger alum, that was always Conner’s dream school. Handfuls of other D-I schools were also on hand. He started to press while playing third base, feeling like he was never going to get another base hit.

He called his family and had second thoughts about his baseball future.

“I called my dad and said, ‘I don’t know if I want to do this any more,’” Seth Conner said. “I was struggling at the plate and it made me question if I wanted to play baseball, for the first time in my life. (I told him) ‘I’m a decent player, a good high school player’ but I doubted myself. … Do I want to put the time in when I might not even be playing, or get a chance?”

But at the end of that Nationals season, he caught a break. Because of some players had other summer commitments, Conner found himself as the starting third baseman for the final Nationals series. After starting 0-for-8 at the plate, he finished the series 8-for-17. It gave him some hope and a new inspiration.

The next big-picture conversation with his family sounded totally different.

“We had always told Seth that baseball is a grind,” said Corinne Conner, Seth’s mother. “If every few days are a grind, that’s OK, but if every day is not enjoyable, then you need to re-evaluate what you want to do. Then he told us that not everyone gets to do this and how he gets to play on these great teams and these great fields. It was a privilege to do this. That’s when everything changed.”

Seth Conner had made up his mind: “I wanted to be a Division-I baseball player and I was going to do whatever it took to get there.”

The transformation

Conner was a solid three-sport athlete at Rogersville. Already steeped in basketball tradition, Conner was a part of Rogersville’s football resurgence, too. But he decided if he was going to be that D-I baseball player, something was going to have to change.

After Nationals season, he weighed 183 pounds, and while he was slick defensively, he wasn’t projected to play shortstop at the next level, like he does at Rogersville. He was headed for third base and corner infielders need to hit for more power than four career high school home runs. After consulting Midwest Nationals coach Randy Merryman, Conner was going to have to improve everything: Swing, strength, flexibility, nutrition and more. He was Bruce Banner. He needed to channel the Incredible Hulk.

While he enjoyed playing football and basketball, baseball was the ultimate goal. He became a one-sport athlete to give himself more time. There are fewer high school athletes that spent their time better.

For the swing, it was four to five days a week in the cage with Merryman, working on the swing path that would generate more power. For strength it was working out four times a week at St. John’s HealthTracks, where Strength and Conditioning Specialist Brandon Ezzell helped him discover there is more than just the ordinary bench press, military press, etc. To enhance his speed and cardiovascular capacity, he worked with Missouri State women’s track and field coach Ron Boyce on his running style twice a week. He sought the nutrition advice of a family friend who was a personal trainer. He cut out the soda and the sugary stuff, inserting water, chicken and raw vegetables, instead. Even Gatorade was too toxic for mass consumption, he discovered. He stopped short of doing yoga to improve his mind, body and soul, although he thought about it. He was that committed.

Once Nationals season ended in August, all of the work instantly took to his body like he was touched with some type of hard-work magic wand. By October, he had put on more than 20 pounds. At his heaviest, he bulked up to 206 pounds, 23 pounds heavier than at the end of Nationals season.

The transformation was under way. Conner no longer felt like he was a good player or a defensive replacement. He was feeling like a Division I specimen. Now he had to make it work with baseball.

“I learned how to produce and recycle energy,” Conner said. “I couldn’t stop there. I had to get better.”

Baseball

Merryman saw how much Conner was changing. That’s why he pushed his new protege.

“You put in the work, no go do it.” Merryman told Conner.

After about the 200th hitting lesson between the two, Merryman said he saw it all coming together.

“He was becoming a man,” Merryman said. “He was getting man strength and maintaining speed. After 200 lessons with me, the swing finally clicked.”

Using some of his contacts, Merryman got Conner into the World Wood Bat Championship Tournament, an MLB-caliber amateur event in Jupiter, Fla., the Spring Training campus of the St. Louis Cardinals and the Florida Marlins. Armed with this new baseball arsenal, Conner was still nervous. It was the first set of live at-bats since Nationals season. He went 3-for-10, showing off his new bat speed to the droves of MLB scouts on golf carts.

Conner was modest. Merryman was forceful.

“He dominated,” Merryman said.

However it was perceived, it was the official launch of all Seth Conner buzz. Then came the showcases. Owasso, Okla. Balls and Strikes in Springfield. Mizzou. People were starting to figure out that all of a sudden, Seth Conner was a four, maybe even five-tool player, who already had the slick glove and good arm, but now had power that allowed the domino effect of batting to take place — Outs became base hits, singles became doubles and warning-track shots left the yard, etc.

During the Mizzou showcase, Terry Conner said he heard someone talking about his son that remembered him from the Nationals tournament, months earlier.

Didn’t we see this kid earlier?

Yes, but you haven’t seen this kid.

When high school season rolled around, Conner had gone from a somewhat normal guy to local baseball superhero. He turned Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk. He put fear in opposing high school coaches. While he and his teammates finished fourth at state, it was still the farthest a Rogersville baseball team had advanced. And after a handful of kids had helped Rogersville’s resurgence — including former Missouri State and current Kansas City Royals farmhand Buddy Baumann — Conner would be the one forever identified as state qualifier.

Now when put with his career high school stats, you can see what all the senior season fuss is about.

• Freshman: .305 batting average, 1 home run
• Sophomore: .365, 1 HR
• Junior: .444, 2 HR
• Senior: .473, 11 HR, 40 RBIs

Patience and aggression

Conner came on so late in the college recruiting game, and since position players rarely get lucrative college scholarships, few schools had money to entice him with scholarship offers right before his senior season. That’s part of the reason he signed with Missouri State. But by the time he signed with Guttin, the buzz was hot that MLB draft talk was surpassing college.

That’s another way that Conner is different than most local MLB draft picks. Not since the Chicago White Sox drafted Lucas Harrell in the fourth round of the 2004 draft has a hyper-local high schooler forsaken college to head to the pro game. Conner could be the next.

Yes, he has a spot on MSU’s team, but Conner wants to take his shot professionally. Some families give the political answer, talking about how they’ll mull the decision of the draft and weigh the opportunities between starting a pro career and heading to college. Not the Conners. Terry, Corinne and Seth confirmed if he’s drafted between rounds 10 and 20 and the money is close to the number recommended by Major League Baseball, he’ll go pro. For a high school kid that has some upside and would be willing to take the money, that number could be between $150,000-200,000, according to Baseball America.

Why take the chance? Conner doesn’t see it as a chance at all. He said he felt if he gets into a system in the right situation, he’ll have a chance to progress normally, instead as a college player who might not get an extended look.

“It’s all about development (in the minor leagues),” Conner said. “It’s all about becoming a better baseball player and that’s what I want to do.”

It’s also not that Conner isn’t a smart kid and is trying to avoid a college education. He says he wants one, even if it comes after he “retires.” That could mean he never made it, or it could be when he’s 40 after a lucrative pro career. He said he aims to negotiate the price of college education into his deal, if the cards fall right.

With his retooled physique and skill set, it brings up a comparison. Current Kansas City Royals farmhand and Double-A Northwest Arkansas Natural Mike Moustakas was a 5-foot-11, 195-pound high school senior shorstop. Now, he’s a 6-foot, 230-pound uber-prospect hitting near .400 over two months at Double-A at age 21. Of course, he was the No. 2 pick overall and Conner is ranked by Baseball America as the No. 17 prospect in Missouri, but as much muscle and bulk as Conner has put on his frame, there is room for more.

Merryman thinks he’s a can’t miss prospect.

“I don’t think he’ll end up on campus,” Merryman said. “He’ll probably get drafted in the mid teens and they’ll pay him over slot. … He’s a no risk. He’s the Tim Tebow with the unbelievable work ethic. He’s easy as a draft pick. You’re never going to have to work about him. He shakes hands firm and all of that goes a long way with scouts.”

Not bad for a defensive replacement, right?

Words from a scouts

From Toronto Blue Jays scout Brandon Mozley:

He has power in the bat and showed power to the opposite field. He has above average arm strength. Defensively I see him as a third baseman, but he has arm strength to move around the diamond a little.