The Frontiersman : Poitevint Blazes Trail for Angels as Global Scout

Nelson Simmons, 30 years old and six years removed from his last major league at-bat, spent August swinging away for the Angels’ Class-A affiliate in Palm Springs, rescued from the Mexican League. Although no longer a major league prospect, he is a valuable commodity.

Simmons was being showcased to Japanese teams. If one signs him, a fee from the transaction goes to the Angels’ international scouting department, helping fund the search for genuine prospects from the Dominican Republic to Australia.

The arrangement is possible because of Ray Poitevint, the Angels’ international scouting director and perhaps the most trusted American baseball figure among the Japanese.

To the budget-conscious Angels, Poitevint, 59, is a godsend. He has quickly and inexpensively given the team a foothold in the talent-rich international market.

To Poitevint, the Angels are a blessing. Without a major league affiliation, he would be unable to sell American players to Japanese teams.

It’s a win-win situation the Angels hope some day will result in victories on the field.

“Ray is a workaholic, he gets you ballplayers and it doesn’t cost you anything,” said Whitey Herzog, the Angels’ senior vice president for player personnel.

The entire budget of the Angels’ international scouting department’s is paid through fees Poitevint charges Japanese teams that sign U.S. players based on his recommendations.

Poitevint, a lifelong resident of Sun Valley, needs the Angels for two reasons: They give him access to detailed scouting reports on players who might bring interest from Japanese teams, and they allow him to park players such as Simmons on farm teams.

“If Ray wants to put a player on one of our farm teams and we don’t have a prospect at that position, no problem,” Herzog said.

Occasionally, the player never even appears in a game. Larry Sheets was signed to an Angel triple-A contract in November, 1991. He was sold to a Japanese team within three weeks, never playing in a game for Vancouver.

“The Angels got a check and some front-office people didn’t even know we had Sheets under contract,” Poitevint said.

Not only does Poitevint provide the cash, he furnishes the scouts. When he was hired after the 1991 season, an entire ready-made international scouting department was dropped in the Angels’ lap.

Poitevint has 12 scouts spread across five continents, a seasoned group of modern-day headhunters who relentlessly scour the globe for ballplayers.

The group essentially has remained intact for years. The scouts were nicknamed “The Dalton Gang” when Poitevint was a scouting director for the Baltimore Orioles and Milwaukee Brewers under General Manager Harry Dalton. Herzog calls them “The Dirty Dozen.” Poitevint prefers “The Samurai Warriors.”

By any name, the group is highly respected, loyal to Poitevint, and might offer a glimpse into the future of major league baseball.

“We establish a foundation in countries all over the world,” said Lee Sigman, the Angels’ scouting supervisor for Latin America. “Our job is to fill the organization with athletes.”

Sigman, who lives in Obregon, Mexico, is typical of Poitevint’s scouts. He was signed as a player in 1975 by Poitevint, who hired him three years later as a minor league manager. “Ray has been my only boss,” Sigman said.

The international department’s most significant accomplishment has been the construction of a year-round baseball academy in the Dominican Republic. The academy is run by former major league pitcher Joaquin Andujar and is populated with “the best group of arms and legs I’ve seen since the ‘60s,” Herzog said.

In addition, Poitevint’s scouts have signed a diverse collection of prospects, including a right-handed pitcher from Colombia, a shortstop from Australia, an outfielder from a fast-pitch softball team in New Zealand, a shortstop from Guam and a power-hitting Dominican outfielder who is a cousin of Pedro Guerrero.

“I am so impressed with Ray’s scouts and with the quality of players we are signing,” Herzog said.

So, apparently, are the Japanese teams that sign U.S. players Poitevint recommends. His ties to Japanese baseball go back 40 years and he maintains good will by staging frequent clinics for Japanese scouts and front-office executives.

The work has paid off. He has sold numerous players to Japan, including Ben Oglivie, R.J. Reynolds, Glenn Braggs, Jim Traber and Mel Hall. Since he joined the Angels, Alvin Davis, Bobby Rose, Max Venable and Sheets have been added to the list.

“Gaining the trust of the Japanese takes at least 10 years,” Poitevint said. “A lot of agents want to sell a player and make a bundle, so they go to Japan and shake some hands. But when they get back, everything they think they accomplished dries up.

“I create the sale through education and the relationships I’ve built over decades.”

After serving in the Korean War, Poitevint played semipro baseball in Japan and married the daughter of a prominent Japanese judge whose friends included several Japanese baseball owners.

After returning in 1955 to his hometown of Sun Valley, he earned a degree in business administration from San Fernando Valley State (now Cal State Northridge) and took a job as a sales manager for an industrial coffee company.

“I was making $75,000 a year and I quit to make $18,000 as a Baltimore Orioles baseball scout in 1961,” he said. “I had to sell my house and buy a smaller house. Looking back, I can’t believe some of the things I did just to be in baseball.”

Poitevint became an Orioles scouting supervisor in 1971 and Milwaukee’s director of scouting and development in 1977 when Dalton moved to the Brewers. Poitevint has signed 89 players who eventually played in the major leagues, including Doug DeCinces, Eddie Murray, Enos Cabell, Dan Plesac, Ted Higuera and Chris Bosio.

Foreign players outside Canada and Puerto Rico are ineligible for the June amateur draft and may sign with the highest bidder. Poitevint’s first taste of the unbridled nature of international scouting came in 1971 when he signed a 16-year-old, 135-pound Nicaraguan pitcher named Dennis Martinez, now in his 17th major league season.

Poitevint was in Leon, Nicaragua, evaluating another pitcher at an international tournament when the manager of the Nicaraguan national team told him to watch Martinez throw in the bullpen. Impressed by his curveball and the movement on his fastball, Poitevint signed Martinez that evening for $3,000. However, he neglected to inform Martinez he no longer was eligible to play for the amateur team.

The next day, in a relief role, Martinez struck out U.S. player Danny Goodwin twice with runners on base. “After the game every scout rushed to their dugout to get an appointment to sign him,” Poitevint said. “I sneaked through the visitor’s dugout and by the time they were told he’d already signed, I was on my way to the airport.”

Not much has changed. An effective international scout must scramble to sign a prospect and sometimes whisk him halfway around the globe to the academy in the Dominican until he is ready for the jump to the farm system in the United States.

However, the Angels have only 21 visas for players to enter the United States, meaning that for every international prospect who arrives, one must depart. Three Russian players signed by the Angels before Poitevint was hired are holding visas.

“The Russian players were brought over as a good-will gesture, they are not prospects,” Herzog said. “When they go back to Russia, they’ll be coaches.”

Poitevint, of course, can appreciate the long-range investment of teaching Russians baseball fundamentals. But he believes those visas might be put to better use. A logjam can be costly because foreign players must be released if they are not brought to the United States within three years of being signed.

“We have 32 players signed in Latin America, and about seven are great prospects,” he said. “That’s why we must maintain a flow in our farm system.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Pacific Rim supervisor Wally Komatsubara and international cross-checker Harry Smith are hard at work. They believe the next baseball frontier is Australia and the islands of the South Pacific, and have the prospects to prove it.

This year the Angels have signed infielder Trent Durrington, 17, of Australia; outfielder Gus Leger, 18, of New Zealand, and infielder Keith Happig, 20, of Guam.

“There are a lot of athletes with good baseball bodies in Guam, Taipan, Micronesia, all those islands,” said Komatsubara, who lives in Oahu, Hawaii. “They’ve played baseball since the islands were under Japanese rule. They are strong, very strong, they have the tools but not the finer mechanics.”

Last month, the Angels made Happig the first Guamanian to sign with a major league team. He will be sent to the Dominican academy in October and report to the rookie camp in Mesa, Ariz., in March.

Smith has been concentrating on Australia, where he said folks are going bonkers over baseball. Australians Craig Shipley and Mark Ettles played for the San Diego Padres this season, and kids all over the country are diamond hungry.

“You have to go there to believe it, but they are very enthused,” Smith said. “They are tired of watching a cricket game that lasts five days.”

Poitevint’s market for selling U.S. players is expanding as well. He is developing contacts in the burgeoning professional leagues in Taiwan and Korea, and he believes a limited number of Americans soon could make big money playing in those countries.

The exorbitant sums being paid to a handful of international prospects has Poitevint shaking his head, however. The Atlanta Braves last month signed 16-year-old Australian shortstop Glenn Williams for a reported $700,000 bonus, eclipsing the $500,000 bonus Toronto handed 16-year-old Brazilian pitcher Jose Pett.

The Angels made offers of about $50,000 to each player, Poitevint said. “(Major league baseball) is out of control in the U.S. market. Now, it appears we are getting out of control in the international market,” he said. “What are we supposed to give the next guy?”

Regulating the international market through an amateur draft is a possibility. Until then, however, teams willing to do international legwork but unwilling to pay outrageous bonuses will experience frustration.

Searching the international backwaters for prospects is becoming a necessity nonetheless. One of every six major league players is a foreigner and the number is climbing.

“What we’ve gotten into, not just the Angels but the whole baseball family, is that if you don’t have a surplus of players, you are in trouble,” Herzog said. “And if you aren’t active in the free-agent market, signing foreign players is the only way to do it.

“Let’s face it, with 28 clubs in the draft, the good players are too spread out. There are not enough players in the U.S. alone to help you become a bona fide contender.”

Only a few teams--most notably the Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays--have taken an organized approach to finding and developing talent outside the United States.

Diving into international scouting was made easy for the Angels because of their unique arrangement with Poitevint. Whether they are making a long-range commitment remains to be seen.

“Some people don’t look beyond their nose too much, and I don’t mean just in our organization,” Herzog said. “I hope our people appreciate what Ray’s done.”