Flores Has 1,000 Reasons to Succeed

To see how much Eric Flores has worked on his game, you don’t have to watch him field hundreds of ground balls or take extra batting practice.

You just have to look at the year-old black blister on his left palm.

Flores, Rio Mesa High’s senior shortstop and leadoff hitter, lost a bet with Coach Richard Duran last year. Flores popped up on a hit-and-run attempt in practice, so he had to take a thousand practice swings.

No baseballs, just swings. A thousand of them.

“It wasn’t a lot of fun,” Flores said, “but I made the bet and lost.”

He might have considered himself a loser that day, when his hand was throbbing, but he hit a grand slam against Buena the next day.

“And from that point on,” Duran said, “I think he was a .500 hitter.”

Because of Flores’ work ethic, which goes well beyond one afternoon and a lost bet, he has made himself into one of Ventura County’s best hitters. Combine his stats with his natural attributes--he’s 6 feet 3, 190 pounds, with speed and a strong arm--and you’ve got one of the county’s top high school prospects for the major league draft in June.

“He can play,” said one local scout. “The biggest improvement I’ve noticed in him is at the plate. He has a lot more confidence. The last couple of times I’ve seen him he’s swung the bat really well.”

Flores is hitting .444 with four home runs and 19 runs batted in, leading the Spartans (15-5, 8-3 in league play) in their quest for a second consecutive Channel League title.

The league race--Rio Mesa is one game behind Ventura with three games to play--is Flores’ immediate concern as he’s taking extra batting practice or grinding his hand through a bucket of rice to strengthen his wrists.

But the long-term goal remains professional baseball.

“It’s been my goal since I was a little kid,” he said, “to get drafted and play pro ball.”

Flores admits he was groomed for his sport from the time he could walk. But not in a negative, Todd Marinovich sort of way, though. It’s just that baseball was always around him.

“Our whole family is baseball,” he said. “My dad played. My cousins played. Everybody plays. I was brought up with a ball and a bat.”

Flores grew up with major league dreams in Santa Paula. But he noticed the road to pro baseball seemed to go through his father’s alma mater, Rio Mesa, not Santa Paula.

By the time Flores finished his freshman season at Santa Paula, Rio Mesa had produced several pro baseball players, most notably 1991 first-round pick Dmitri Young and Seattle Mariner closer Bobby Ayala.

“I used to read about those guys all the time,” Flores said, “and I just thought, ‘Gosh, I’d like to be one of them.’ ”

So Flores and his family packed up and moved to Oxnard. The move was criticized by some in Santa Paula, particularly after Rio Mesa finished last in the Channel League in 1993, Flores’ sophomore year.

“I got a lot of heat from people in Santa Paula because of that,” Flores said. “They said, ‘You left us to play for a last-place team and blah blah blah.’ But we knew we had a lot of talent. It was just a matter of putting it together.”

As a team, the Spartans put it together last spring, going 21-7 and making it to the Southern Section Division II semifinals. But one of the most-talented players, Flores, still had some pieces missing. He hit .337 with two home runs and 15 RBIs, and had fielding problems at third base.

That’s when The Program began.

Flores began taking speed-development lessons from personal trainer Larry Young, Dmitri’s father. The two spent hours from August through November working on the mundane task of running, a skill many baseball players take for granted.

“He had some flaws in his speed,” Young said. “At top acceleration he was good, but when he got to maximum speed, he really decelerated at a rate you wouldn’t expect. His mechanics broke down and we really worked on that.”

Flores was timed at 6.95 seconds for the 60-yard dash last August at the Area Code Games, a baseball combine in which the West’s top prospects perform for scouts. Flores now runs about a 6.7, which is quicker than major league average.

Last summer Flores also was confronted with the possibility that he would have to move from third base to shortstop for his senior year, so he had his father hit him thousands of extra ground balls in preparation.

Flores also continued on a weightlifting program that has improved his power and arm strength. Complementing pumping iron, though, is pumping rice. Three or four times a week, Flores plunges his hands, one at a time, into a bucket of rice, strengthening his wrists by twisting and churning the rice between his fingers as he talks on the phone or watches TV.

The result of all the extra work is evident to scouts, to Duran and to Flores himself.

“It’s something I take pride in,” Flores said. “I like to come out every year and improve. I don’t like to be the same player. Pretty much every aspect of my game has improved. With the weights, I’m able to dig out pitches that I couldn’t before. I’m hitting the ball for more distance. I can tell I’m a lot stronger.”

Said Duran: “He showed great progress a year ago from his sophomore year and this year he’s taken at least two steps forward. And I attribute that to his dedication in the weight room and to playing ball all year-round.”

The next step for Flores is likely to be pro ball, rather than college. He failed to meet the NCAA minimum on his first try at the Scholastic Assessment Test and he’s not scheduled to take the test again until June, after the draft.

Scouts figure he’ll go somewhere between the 10th and 20th rounds, and that he’ll wind up back at third base in pro baseball. They say he’s still not quick enough to play shortstop at that level.

Give him time. He’s working on it.