Angels Really Mission Out on Wright

This is one measure of how far Jaret Wright has come this year:

“I tell him he started the year in a Volkswagen at double A,” Clyde Wright, his dad, says.

“Now he’s in a Town Car. What’s next? A stretch limo?”

From Akron, Ohio, to Buffalo, N.Y., to the Show. The 21-year-old rookie from Anaheim is riding high now.

The youngest pitcher to start an American League division series game, he beat the New York Yankees twice as the Cleveland Indians advanced to the AL’s championship series.

He goes against the Baltimore Orioles in Game 4 tonight with a 9-3 record since his emergency recall in mid-June to help alleviate Cleveland’s injury woes.

He is one of the hot stories of the postseason, but the Indians’ gain has to be a constant pain for the Angels, whose first-round selection of McKay Christensen over Wright in the 1994 draft ranks as one of the most bizarre and biggest gaffes ever.

Imagine: The Angels selected a high school outfielder from Fresno who was committed to a two-year Mormon mission before he would play professionally over a touted neighborhood pitcher who was lighting up speed guns in the high 90s at Katella High, only a ground-rule double from Anaheim Stadium, and who was the son of a former no-hit pitcher with the Angels, a man who still does community service work on behalf of the club.

“We put out the word that it would be nice to play at home, but it didn’t work out,” Wright said. “The Angels had a different agenda. No hard feelings. I was happy to be drafted by Cleveland and happy to be drafted on the first round.”

Said Clyde Wright: “Sure, we hoped the Angels would take him, but no one from the organization ever talked to us. I couldn’t help feeling that if the kid ever made it, it would be a lot of publicity for the hometown team, but I’m not complaining. If they felt McKay Christensen was the best player available, so be it.

“I have a lot of friends who work for the Angels and I don’t want to make anyone mad. And I really feel that getting away from home has helped Jaret grow up. He’s with a terrific team and terrific organization. It’s the right place at the right time.”

Of course, you can take the boy out of California but you can’t take California out of the boy. Wright will be back as soon as the season is over, renting a Newport Beach pad so he can surf as often as possible.

In the meantime, Christensen, back from his mission, spent the 1997 season at the class-A level in the Chicago White Sox system, traded by the Angels as part of a package for Jim Abbott in July 1995. Abbott went 7-22 in his Angel reincarnation and was released last spring.

In other words, the Angels have nothing to show for the first round of the ’94 draft while Wright is a work in progress at the major league level.

The draft, of course, is an inexact science and more so when high school players are involved.

It is a history littered with what delighted second-guessers can point out as major mistakes.

Christensen was drafted sixth, Wright 10th. Nine teams passed on the pitcher.

In the Angels’ case, however, it seemed to come down strictly to money. Gene and Jackie Autry, about to sell to the Walt Disney Co., were claiming major annual losses. Wright was represented then by the aggressive Scott Boras. Many clubs shy away from Boras clients. Wright has since switched to Tom Reich. A friend of the family said: “Jaret came to feel that Boras is only interested in hammering baseball. That wasn’t what he wanted.”

Then, too, the Wrights refused to make any pre-draft commitments as to money, or as Clyde Wright said in reflection: “Some clubs apparently thought I was only a Tennessee hillbilly smoking a corn cob pipe.”

Wright also had the leverage of a UCLA scholarship. On one recruiting trip to Westwood, the former Katella quarterback and linebacker was spotted by then football coach Terry Donahue, who looked at the 6-foot-2, 225-pounder and said, “Oh, man, look at this linebacker.” To which Clyde Wright said: “No sir, we’ve already let the air out of the football.”

Wright ultimately signed with the Indians for a $1.2-million bonus. Christensen, selected four spots ahead, received $700,000 from the Angels.

General Manager Bill Bavasi, referring to scouting director Bob Fontaine Jr., said, “Bob was concerned that it would look like we went in the cheaper direction, but that wasn’t the case. It was simply an issue of liking one guy over another. Nobody seems to believe that, but we felt Christensen was the best guy. Our projections, even given his mission, were that he would become an outstanding player, and it may still be too early to judge. Now that he’s back playing he could move pretty quickly.”

Of course, only the White Sox would benefit from that now, the Angels having been so high on Christensen that they traded him a year later.

Bavasi was asked if Wright’s family and neighborhood connections to the Angels shouldn’t have weighed in his favor.

“Ever since I’ve been with the team we’ve never drafted a kid simply because he’s from the hometown. I think you can get hurt doing that.

“Cleveland didn’t draft a hometown kid [in Wright] and it looks like they got a pretty good one.”

Which is not to say that Fontaine and staff haven’t done a good job for the Angels.

Ten farm products, an impressive number, played key roles for the club this year: Darin Erstad, Gary DiSarcina, Todd Greene, Garret Anderson, Jim Edmonds, Tim Salmon, Chuck Finley, Jason Dickson, Troy Percival and Mike Holtz.

Some get away. It’s the nature of the draft. It’s simply that as Wright prepares to face the Orioles, the Angels are in a pressing winter hunt for pitching--hopefully, Bavasi said, able to sign Ken Hill to an extension and trade for more.

Disney’s budget? A club source said Bavasi would have about the same $40 million he operated with in 1997.

Meanwhile, talk about gaffes: Wright has ironic companionship on the Cleveland pitching staff in left-hander Brian Anderson, the Angels’ No. 1 selection in 1993. The Angels were forced to trade Anderson in 1996 when their front office made a paperwork blunder in his contract offer that would have resulted in his becoming a free agent.

Anderson could be a member of the rebuilt Cleveland rotation next year, but he was thinking of Wright and what might have been when he said:

“He’s just a pup, and the Angels could have had him too. I don’t know if it came down to money or not, but this kid is worth every penny.”