least two teams had told him he’d be picked before the end
of the supplemental round—the compensation picks after
the first round but before the second. The Padres, who had
been scouting him hard, held three supplemental picks.
Buehler was fairly certain he would sign if San Diego took
him with one of them, which could mean a bonus of as
much as $2 million.
On the night of the draft, June 4, 2012, his mom, Karen—
she and Tony divorced when Walker was three—invited about
75 people to her house. “I just wanted to have buddies over,”
Buehler said. “My mom invited what felt like the whole town.”
With their first supplemental pick the Padres picked Zach
Eflin, a high school pitcher from Florida who stood 6' 6",
the kind of big body the pro teams prefer in pitchers. With
their second pick they took Travis Jankowski, an outfielder
from Stony Brook University. The Padres had one more
supplemental pick, the 24th of the round.
Everybody in Karen’s house thought, This is it. Here it
comes. The crowd around the television quieted down as the
announcement was about to be made.
“The San Diego Padres select righthanded pitcher
Walker.. .”
The house erupted with shouts and cheers. It was hard
to hear a thing, but those who could barely heard the man
finish the name.
“... Weickel.”
The Padres had taken another 6' 6" Florida high schooler.
“The whole house went nuts at first and then got really
angry in about two seconds,” Buehler says.
The Padres had swooned over Weickel the previous sum-
mer when he pitched in a game and touched 95 mph in their
ballpark, Petco Park. They gave him $2 million to sign.
Only five more picks remained in the supplemental round,
the last picks of the night. Two of those were used on high
school pitchers. Neither was Buehler. “Walker was devas-
tated,” Tony says. “When you’re projected to be a first-round
supplemental pick and you don’t get drafted [then], you have
to deal with that.
“I would say he was embarrassed in front of 75 people in
my ex-wife’s house. I’ll never forget trying to console him.
It was painful.”
Suddenly Walker grabbed his phone and walked outside.
He dialed Tim Corbin, the baseball coach at Vanderbilt.
“Coach?” he told him. “I’m coming.”
“That,” Tony says, “is Walker. He reaffirmed his commit-
ment to Vandy. At his lowest moment he made the commit-
ment to turn the page.”
The next day, Buehler slid into the 14th round due to
signability concerns before the Pirates finally picked him.
Pittsburgh had used the eighth overall pick on Stanford
pitcher Mark Appel, and Buehler became a contingen-
cy plan in case Appel turned down its offer. As the Pi-
rates began to realize that Appel would not sign, they
offered Buehler $1 million. Buehler wanted no part of it.
“It ended up being for the best,” Buehler says. “Vanderbilt
was a great place, and a great place for me to develop and
grow and learn more about pitching and my body. I don’t
think I’d be here if I hadn’t gone to college.
“I just don’t think I would be the guy who lifts the way I
do now, and I don’t think I ever would have thrown with the
velocity I do now if I had not learned how to be pushed and
lift and really work. I wasn’t a big worker in high school. But
[at Vanderbilt] there’s not too many people who don’t work.”
Major league teams drafted 15 high school pitchers in
the first and supplemental rounds of the 2012 draft. Eight
of them have never pitched in the big leagues, including
Weickel. Last season, at age 24, while Buehler was pitching
the Dodgers to the National League pennant, Weickel spent
most of the year pitching for the Down East Wood Ducks, a
Class A affiliate of the Texas Rangers.
A
LL THE energy that builds in the accumulator of a
catapult needs to be dispersed, and for the pitcher
the first place it disperses is into the ground. The
uncoiling of the energy in Buehler’s delivery begins
when he sticks his left foot in the dirt. It must land not in
line with his back foot, but a smidge to the third base side,
in what pitchers call the one o’clock foot position.
The only way a pitcher can land like this and still maintain
stability while the hips and torso spin violently enough to
chuck a baseball 100 mph is if he has superior strength in
the legs and buttocks. Buehler is a weight-room fanatic who
loves training with heavy weights. Last year, while training
in season, he set a personal best by squatting 450 pounds.
36
SPORT S ILLUS TR ATED
• AUGUS T 12, 2019
JEFF CU
RRY/GETTY IM
AGES
WALKER BUEHLER
