Part of his duties there, he told MLB.com years later, was recruiting, a job he quickly took to and a job with obvious parallels to his future profession as a scout and scouting director.
"We couldn't get the same player that a Cal or a Stanford or a Santa Clara could get," Johnson told MLB.com. "We would have to get the guy that we could project on and where you'd think, 'This guy might be good in two years.' I liked that part of it more than hitting infield [practice] to guys or throwing batting practice and all of that. I loved being away from the field, and recruiting was my niche."
Soon, scouting was Johnson's niche.
Signing on with the Twins, Johnson worked his way through the Twins scouting ranks to become the team's director of scouting in 2007, a job he continues in for 2013.
Johnson became a scout after a brief professional playing career, one where he was signed by the Pirates as an undrafted free agent in 1988, out of St. Mary's College of California.
With the Pirates, Johnson played his first season between rookie Princeton and short-season Watertown. He played at short-season Welland in 1989, then single-A Augusta in 1990. After 30 games with Augusta, Johnson's playing career was done, with a career batting average of .225.
His playing career over, Johnson then found his way into scouting, by way of the University of San Francisco.
Johnson started out covering Northern California, then moved to West Coast scouting supervisor by 1999. By 2007, he was team scouting director.After his promotion to scouting director, Johnson told his hometown Vallejo Times-Herald about how his job changed.
"It changed a lot - it's more dealing with people," Johnson told The Times-Herald. "You're managing people and battling the budget," Johnson said. "There's a lot more administrative work. Going out to games and scouting is only 30 percent of the job. But the great thing is I don't have to move out to Minnesota. I'm able to stay in Sacramento, so my wife likes that a lot."
With the new job, though, came new expectations. In 2012, Johnson told a group of Twins scouts his expectations for that year's draft, according to The Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
"We're not trying to hit a single," Johnson told the group, according to The Star-Tribune. "We aren't trying to move a runner over. We have to make the right selection. We have to hit a home run with this pick."
- Vallejo Times-Herald, Oct. 28, 2007: Deron Johnson doing big things with Twins
- MLB.com, Feb. 8, 2011: Johnson passionate about game, his work
- Minneapolis Star-Tribune, May 29, 2012: Twins scouting director Johnson swinging for the fences
Players/Coaches Featured:1,081
Made the Majors: 658 - 60.9%
Never Made Majors: 423-39.1%-X
5+ Seasons in the Majors: 287
10+ Seasons in the Minors: 169
No comments:
Post a Comment