Former top Cubs prospect barely hanging on in western Iowa

Tommy Birch | The Des Moines Register

Show Caption Hide Caption Former Cubs prospect Josh Vitters holding onto baseball dreams Josh Vitters was picked third overall in the 2007 draft by the Cubs. Vitters is 27 now. He’s playing third base for the Sioux City in the Independent League, the last outpost for baseball grinders holding onto a dream.

SIOUX CITY, Ia. — The No. 9 hitter for the Sioux City Explorers saunters to the batter's box as cars whiz by on the highway beyond the outfield wall.

The No. 9 hitter takes off his helmet and uses his arm to wipe sweat from his forehead. He adjusts his batting gloves, steps up to the plate and digs in with his right foot. He adjusts his helmet, taps his bat on the plate and sets himself for his first at-bat of the night.

The No. 9 hitter looks toward the pitcher and waits.

The first pitch comes in belly-button high. It's the type of pitch that baseball’s mavens, just a few years ago, imagined this No. 9 hitter sending into the bleachers of Wrigley Field or onto Waveland Avenue.

His swing remains a thing of beauty, really. The No. 9 hitter’s stance is relaxed, with a slight left leg kick upon the delivery of the pitch. The swing itself is compact. Top and bottom, it’s all in sync. It’s the kind of swing that a Perfect Game showcase report once boasted “you can't help but dream of him hitting 35 HRs in pro ball someday.”

That pitch comes in like a watermelon. The No. 9 hitter whips his bat around, connecting hard with the ball to send it ripping into a spotless June sky. A fan belts out a “Yeaahhhh!” before the baseball bounces in the outfield, smacks against the outfield wall and rolls around the warning track.

The No. 9 hitter is Josh Vitters. Ten years ago this month, the Cubs made him the No. 3 overall pick in the Major League Baseball Draft. He was taken seven spots ahead of future World Series MVP Madison Bumgarner.

Vitters is 27 now. He’s playing third base for Sioux City in the Independent League. It's one of the last outposts for baseball grinders holding on to a dream that is probably dead.

“That’s a really tough go,” said Jim Hendry, the former Chicago Cubs general manager.

He still looks the part, and that right-handed swing … it’s a beaut. But like so much of Vitters' story, appearances are deceiving. Adverse side effects from his attention-deficit disorder medication, vision issues, immaturity and lingering injuries derailed his career within the Cubs organization.

Playing Independent ball, the on-field struggles remain pronounced.

He’s batting .188 with a .197 on-base percentage, despite all the lovely swing aesthetics. He appears last in the batting order.

“I thought I’d be in the big leagues hitting 30 homers a year, but this is where I’m at now, and I know I still have that potential,” Vitters said.

His career has long been buoyed by his potential.

But time is running out.

‘He’s a freak’

The outfield alley at the Cypress High School baseball field is 335 feet. About 50 yards beyond the fence is a 20-foot-high fence. Just past that is a group of two-story houses.

When Vitters played at the high school in the Los Angeles suburbs, he crushed balls on top of the roofs of those houses.

That type of power made Vitters one of the best prospects in the baseball hotbed of Southern California. John Weber, baseball coach at Cypress, first saw it when Vitters was a sophomore. Weber was walking to the field and watched Vitters bash baseballs during batting practice.

Weber called Dan Ontiveros, who is now the assistant director of scouting for the Kansas City Royals. The other was Matt Hattabaugh, a current scout for the Colorado Rockies.

"Man, you need to see this guy! He’s a freak," Weber recalled telling them.

Eventually, Vitters became a must-see attraction. His senior-season games were packed. MLB general managers came to his practices.

“When you’re a big, physical guy who has light-tower home run strength — and you swing and don’t miss very often — you really have something special,” Weber said. “And honestly, he was that guy. He had some of the best hand-eye coordination of any player that I’ve ever coached.”

As the 2007 draft loomed, the Cubs zeroed in on Vitters. Chicago scouting director Tim Wilken was the architect of the Cubs’ draft plans.

“I wasn’t the scouting director. I was the general manager. I always let the scouting director make those picks,” Hendry explained.

The Cubs, who had the third overall pick in the draft, wanted to see Vitters in person. Baseball America Editor-in-Chief John Manuel said during a private workout at Los Angeles Pierce College that Wilken threw batting practice to Vitters and was enamored.

Vitters’ bat played as well at it looked. He was an All-American in high school, was named Gatorade Player of the Year in California in 2007 and committed to play baseball at Arizona State. Vitters was considered perhaps the gem of the high school class.

“(He) and (Mike) Moustakas were probably the purest high school hitters in the country,” Hendry said.

The Cubs loved the upside Vitters had. But they weren’t alone. Manuel said the Cubs wanted Vitters but were worried Kansas City might take him with the second pick. Manuel said the Cubs even had a deal set up with right-handed pitcher Jarrod Parker if that did happen.

Tampa Bay took left-handed pitcher David Price with the first pick.

The Royals took the other high school masher, Moustakas, with the second selection.

When the Cubs were up at No. 3, Vitters was their guy.

“If he didn’t go with the third pick, he was going (with) the fourth pick,” Hendry said. “So it wasn’t like everybody didn’t love him.”

Chicago lured Vitters away from attending Arizona State by giving the 17-year-old a $3.2 million signing bonus. His deal was announced a minute before the MLB deadline for draft signings. Immediately, Vitters was pegged the future third basemen of the Cubs and a key piece of the team’s future.

“I definitely wasn’t as mature as I am today," Vitters says now. "And it was definitely tough for a couple of years, but after that I kind of got used to it and I kind of found my niche with the Cubs.”

Price quickly became one of baseball's dominant aces and won the American League Cy Young Award in 2012.

Moustakas became a solid everyday starter in Kansas City and is a beloved part of the Royals' 2015 World Series squad.

Vitters' career year would arguably come in Peoria, Ill. — in Class A ball.

Missed opportunities

Vitters became a cornerstone prospect for an organization longing for its first World Series title since 1908.

The hope was he would eventually develop into a middle-of-the-lineup hitter while playing a key infield spot on defense. Vitters had an up-and-down time in the minor leagues — he hit .322 and .284 in 2008 and 2009 before slumping to .247 in his third season — but scouts remained firm in their belief in him. He rated among baseball's top 50 prospects early on.

“We weren’t predicting (that he'd become a) superstar,” Hendry said. “But we thought we had a solid major-league player and a good hitter.”

At that time, though, public expectations were higher.

In 2009, Vitters hit .316 with 15 home runs in 70 games for the Class A Peoria (Ill.) Chiefs. That June, Chicago Tribune veteran baseball scribe Paul Sullivan wrote: “The Cubs have gone down this road before, of course, as evidenced by the comet-like plunges of Corey Patterson and Felix Pie after excelling at the minor-league level. But Vitters, the third pick of the 2007 draft, appears to be the real deal.”

Vitters advanced through Chicago's system and played for the Iowa Cubs in 2012, 2013 and 2014 with fellow top prospect Brett Jackson. Vitters batted .304 in 2011 with the Iowa Cubs.

But his star was about to fade — and fast.

In August 2011, Hendry was fired by the Cubs. Two months later, the Cubs, then one of the worst teams in baseball, made a historic splash hire by convincing baseball wunderkind Theo Epstein and his whiz-kid lieutenants to take over the franchise's front office. Wilken, who did not respond to multiple interview requests, was reassigned by the Cubs and eventually left to join the Arizona Diamondbacks' front office in 2015.

It was make-or-break for Vitters and other Hendry-era prospects.

On Aug. 5, 2012, Vitters was called up to the Chicago Cubs. He was 22. Epstein and his assistants were mining the previous regime’s minor-league system for usable talent. The move to bring up Vitters and Jackson drew major attention in Chicago during the dog days of a 61-101 season.

But Vitters was a disaster with the Cubs. In his 36-game MLB stint, Vitters batted .121 (12 for 99) with two home runs and 33 strikeouts. He made $490,000 from that stint, according to baseball-reference.com.

To start 2013, Vitters was down in triple-A with the Iowa Cubs. Vitters struggled to stay healthy and landed on the disabled list three times. He appeared in just 28 games with Iowa and five as part of a rehab assignment in Arizona. Injuries were a recurring theme of his career. Vitters suffered a broken left hand in 2010, a broken big toe in 2014, and he dealt with back spasms and quad issues throughout his career.

In June 2013, Epstein's Cubs held the No. 2 pick in the MLB Draft. They selected Kris Bryant, a slugger out of San Diego.

Vitters was no longer the franchise’s third basemen of the future. The man Epstein just drafted was.

Bryant and Javier Baez, the last first-round pick from the Hendry era in 2011, became two centerpieces of Chicago's youth movement. Vitters and Jackson were their teammates in Iowa.

They saw Bryant and Baez become everything Hendry's front office had hoped they would become.

“It is tough, but at the same time, those two are superstars,” Vitters said. “There’s no doubt about it that they’re both going to be remembered for a long time as being great baseball players. I think we (Jackson and him) had a great opportunity. … We got called up and didn’t take advantage of it.”

One reason he never blossomed, Vitters believes, was the side effects he experienced from his ADHD medication. He said he started taking Vyvanse in 2012 or 2013. Eventually, it made him feel like he was slugging back "15 cups of coffee every day."

“It was really messing with me,” Vitters said. “I was losing tons of weight, and I was kind of getting depressed and I was having a lot of problems with it."

The Cubs cut ties with Vitters following the 2014 season. The Colorado Rockies signed him to a minor-league contract in February 2015 but released him in March. It looked like his career was over.

"When I ended up getting released from the Rockies, I knew that the best thing for me was to go home, get off all this stuff, get healthy again, and that’s what I did,” Vitters said.

The Cubs eventually won that World Series last November. Bryant, the National League MVP, corralled a slow-roller hit by Cleveland’s Michael Martinez and threw a dart to first basemen Anthony Rizzo for the final out.

Two months earlier, Vitters finished up his 2016 season with an 0-for-4 night playing for the Bridgeport (Conn.) Bluefish.

'The bat speed's still there'

Vitters returned home to California and didn’t play baseball in 2015. He stopped taking the medication. He signed with the Bridgeport Bluefish of the Atlantic League — another Independent League team. He hit .226 with five home runs in 80 games for them in 2016.

In early March, he went to tryout with the Detroit Tigers in Lakeland, Fla. Vitters bumped into Nate Samson there. Samson, who had played with Vitters in the Cubs’ organization, was impressed by Vitters during the tryouts.

“He hit the ball really well, and he looked like he never missed a beat from the last time I played with him to now,” Samson said. “It looked like he only improved, and that comes with maturity and knowledge.”

Neither player landed a spot within the Tigers organization. Samson, who was coming off his second season with the Explorers, put Vitters in touch with Sioux City skipper Steve Montgomery. Montgomery checked in with the Tigers, who confirmed Vitters still had eye-catching physical skills. Sioux City signed him in March.

Sioux City has two other former MLB players on the roster, but Vitters is the main attraction for the Explorers. He’s a former prized prospect whose name remains well-known by Cubs fans along the western edge of Iowa.

“Once Josh came here, it was an uptick for our fans and a big PR hit for us,” Sioux City general manager/vice president Shane Tritz said.

The team has already had a Josh Vitters T-shirt giveaway. But his time with the Explorers is much like his last moments with the Cubs.

There are few highlights.

“The bat speed’s still there,” Montgomery said. “Tremendous bat speed. It’s big-league bat speed. … It’s just that right now, where he’s struggling is depth perception of pitches right now. He’s out in front of a lot of stuff. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a fastball or off-speed.”

Vitters recently had his eyes checked in Sioux City. As a young player, Vitters was lauded for his hand-eye coordination, but the eye doctor in Sioux City determined that his vision was off. Vitters was prescribed glasses that he wears during games now.

Montgomery has his fingers crossed that the glasses reverse the course of his season.

If it doesn’t, Vitters could be out of a job. His name will only get him so far.

“At the end of the day, it’s my job to win games,” Montgomery said. “I’m going to be patient with him. I’m going to give him some time, especially to adjust to those glasses and stuff. Hopefully that helps him out and he starts recognizing some pitches and everything.”

Holding on to a dream

Independent League baseball is a different world than affiliated baseball.

Before games, fans watch team batting practice off to the side of Sioux City's Mercy Field. For road trips, the Explorers take the bus. Players clean their cleats, handle their own bags and aren’t playing in parks with thousands upon thousands in attendance. Starting pay on the Explorers is $800 a month, though Vitters makes more. Montgomery would not say how much.

Vitters lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Sioux City with teammates Tony Campana, a former MLB player with the Cubs and others, and LeVon Washington.

His baseball dream remains subsidized by the millions the Cubs gave him to sign in 2007.

“I’ve been happy about the way I’ve been living out here and preserving money as well as I can,” Vitters said.

The Explorers pride themselves on getting players into affiliated baseball. Montgomery calls it one of the most important aspects of his job.

"I know I'm going to get another opportunity. It's just a matter of time," Vitters said.

It won’t be easy. At age 27, he’s ancient for a prospect. Players his age are expected to be in the prime of their MLB careers, not struggling to get past the Mendoza Line in indie ball.

The uphill battle he faces in resurrecting his career? “I think it’d be huge now,” Hendry said of the challenge.

When his name comes up, it’s often included with Corey Patterson, Felix Pie, Jackson and other Chicago prospects who fizzled out under Hendry's watch. But none of that bothers Vitters. He even rooted for the Cubs in the World Series.

“I made it to the big leagues,” Vitters said. “I don’t think that’s considered a failure really. I’m happy with where I’ve been and what I’ve done, but I’m not content with where I am.”

Why didn't Vitters work out? Not even baseball’s best minds can pinpoint that.

“Sometimes this game is hard to explain,” said Hendry, who now works in the New York Yankees' front office under general manager Brian Cashman. “Some guys go in the 37th round and end up in Cooperstown (in the Hall of Fame). And other guys that go in the first round never quite get over the hump.

"I always thought he was a good kid and worked at it. It wasn’t like he was a problem in any way. It just didn’t, for whatever reason work out, the way everybody would have hoped.”

When he retires from baseball, Vitters said he would like to go into woodworking. But getting back to the big leagues remains his focus.

This has been his life since he was 17.

“Honestly, standing at third base is the most comfortable I ever feel in my life, really,” Vitters said. “I’m more comfortable there than I am when I’m at home in bed.”

On this windy Friday evening, less than half of the red-and-blue seats inside Sioux City's Lewis and Clark Park are filled. The Explorers are leading the Gary SouthShore RailCats 3-1.

The No. 9 hitter's teammates are leaned hard against the dugout railing to watch him drill that second-inning laser in between the left fielder and center fielder. The No. 9 hitter sprints around first base before jogging to second base for a stand-up double.

The crowd cheers for five seconds, and then the applause for Josh Vitters dies down.