Posts tagged Andrew Brackman at FanHouse

This is the best and the worst time of year for Dugouts. The trade deadline looms and we'll get a chance to cover a lot of teams we don't normally cover. At the same time, the newsmakers of baseball start making news, and most of the time that involves a steady stream of unbelievable stories from the Yankees and the Red Sox. I want to do more Pirates Dugouts, but nobody in Pittsburgh just had their marriage broken up by a random assemblance of pop musicians. Nobody from the Pirates ran up a wall and high-fived a guy.

We've been sitting on this for a few days, waiting for the logical "oh THIS is what really happened" to come along. It just... isn't coming along. So today we attempt to handle this from an educated, even-handed perspective.

Today's Dugout, which should've just been about the Royals again, is after the jump.

There's nothing quite like a little newcomer hazing to put the rookies in their place. (Unless you're in a frat and they make you do an elephant walk. Or maybe have you chug so much alcohol that you end up in the hospital. That's not so cool.)

But the idea behind it is pretty simple: the rookies get hazed and that is that. Retaliation is frowned upon. Retaliate and well, you're going to get it way worse the next time around.

Just ask Yankee newbie Andrew Brackman.

He walked to his locker yesterday morning to find that all of his sliders, his baseball underwear, had been slit down the middle.

Brackman's Yankees cap suffered a similar fate. Brackman tossed it in the garbage and then saw the worst of the damage. Six pairs of workout shoes, including brand new spikes, had their shoelaces cut by a Pinstriped Jack the Ripper. The laces were sliced tongue to toe right down the middle, so Brackman, who signed a $4.5 million deal, spent a good part of the day re-lacing his shoes.

You know how some people have so much money they don't know what to do with it? The Yankees officially fall into that category. Despite knowing that their first-round pick Andrew Brackman had an injured arm, they still signed him to a four-year deal that includes a $3.3 million signing bonus. But, lo and behold, there's now news that Brackman might not even pick up a ball for a year and a half. From the New York Post:

Andrew Brackman, the Yankees' first-round pick in the June draft, has decided his right elbow will be better served by undergoing Tommy John surgery, according to agent Scott Boras.

Brackman, who signed a four-year deal worth $4.5 million that includes a $3.3 million signing bonus and could escalate to $13.8 million if incentives are met, has chosen Dr. James Andrews to do the procedure, which normally takes 12 to 18 months to come back from.

The Yankees knew of the 6-foot-10 Brackman's elbow problems long before taking him with the final pick in the first round. A recent visit to Andrews' office confirmed a problem and Brackman decided to have the surgery, which, according to Boras, has a 97-percent success rate.

Confused by the picture? Don't be: that is in fact Brackman, who played college hoops in addition to baseball at NC State before being drafted. The fact he was a two-sport star limited his innings his college, which means that he was probably going to require a bit more time in the minors to polish his skills in the first place. And now? Push that timetable back another 12-18 months. There's a chance this surgery will be a small footnote on Brackman's career, but first-round picks have a hard enough time living up to their pre-draft hype, let alone guys who were damaged goods before they sign their first contract.