Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Logan White was torn.
The 1980 Portales High graduate was watching last October’s World Series like a father watching his children compete against each other in a Little League game. White is currently the San Diego Padres’ Senior Advisor and Director of Player Personnel who has scouted for the Baltimore Orioles and more recently, the Los Angeles Dodgers. White scouted and signed Nathan Eovaldi, Cody Bellinger and Yasiel Puig, and on a late-October Friday sat riveted to an extra-inning World Series Game 3 that wore on deep into the night and had Eovaldi pitching for the Boston Red Sox, facing Bellinger and Puig.
For a scout who plucks players from across the world, transforms their status from up-and-coming to arrived-and-crushing it, watching them do the latter in the majors — specifically, in the World Series — is like a father watching his kids compete against each other. So White was very torn indeed during that game and throughout the Series, eventually won by the Red Sox in five. But he was also proud, knowing that he had helped all those players achieve their goal of reaching and excelling in the majors. And knowing that his own scout’s instincts were right.
Yes, such matchups have White feeling like quite the proud papa.
“You just get that same satisfaction,” he said Friday by telephone. “I think scouting is very similar to that.”
Others who know baseball like White does have taken notice. Saturday night he was inducted into the Legends of Scouting Hall of Fame.
“I’m excited,” White said. “It caught me off guard. I certainly didn’t expect it. Actually, (USA Today MLB columnist) Bob Nightengale called me to tell me I got the award. I wasn’t (previously) thinking about it. I said to Bob, ‘Am I really getting that old now because I’m starting to get these awards?’ He kinda laughed. But it’s fun to be honored by your peers.”
One of those honoring White over the weekend was Milwaukee Brewers outfielder and reigning National League Most Valuable Player Christian Yelich, who made the presentations. Aside from having an MVP involved in one of the biggest nights of White’s life, he was again in proud-papa mode. Sort of.
“I scouted him in high school,” White recalled of Yelich. “He was a tall, gangly, skinny kid. Now eight years later he’s doing some good things.”
MVP good. But that’s not new for White, who scouted and signed Clayton Kershaw — a three-time National League Cy Young Award winner who captured his most recent Cy Young along with his first N.L. MVP in the same year, 2014.
White, in fact, has been among the first to spot the major-league talents of players who have won all three of the big awards. Bellinger was N.L. Rookie of the Year in 2017. Corey Seager — another player scouted and signed by White — won that award a year earlier.
The list of White’s ‘children’ also includes Matt Kemp, Russell Martin, Hiroki Kuroda, James Loney, Chad Billingsley and Joc Pederson.
“The thing I don’t want to do is leave out my staff,” White said. “I had a great staff that worked for me. We worked our tails off.”
That we-first attitude isn’t surprising for people who have known White for decades. Tim Bravo, a former third baseman and teammate of White’s at Western New Mexico University, has been one of White’s biggest fans.
“He’s a good man, good father, good husband,” Bravo said by telephone Saturday afternoon. “I’ve been fortunate to talk to a lot of guys that he’s drafted, and they all love the man more than anything else.”
White has been impressing people his whole life as he’s worked hard to improve himself. He says he grew up poor in Portales and learned early how athletics and education could change his circumstances. He starred as a pitcher for Portales High and was a standout for the Clovis Indians, a Mickey Mantle-league squad. From the latter, he was selected as a pick-up player for a Las Cruces team, enabling him to go on to compete in the regional Little League tournament while wearing a Clovis Indians uniform.
“It was fun,” White recalled. “I always enjoyed being able to represent that part of the country in baseball.”
He says his fondest memory of playing for Portales was helping the Rams make a prolonged postseason run as a junior.
“We had a really good team,” White said. “We won district and state playoffs. The thing is, I hit well too. That didn’t last. I enjoyed the pitching and hitting.”
White chose college over being part of the 1980 MLB draft, which saw Darryl Strawberry chosen first. Signing bonuses were not seven figures like they are today, even for first-rounders, let alone lower-round picks. “And my mom felt that education was more important,” White said. “Better for me to go to school and get drafted later.”
His baseball journey brought him next to Ranger (Texas) Junior College as a freshman and Murray State (Oklahoma) College as a sophomore. Then it was back to his home state to play for Western New Mexico University in Silver City. There, White set Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference single-season records for wins (16) and strikeouts (128). It’s notable that the strikeout record still stands, because even future San Francisco Giants reliever Sergio Romo fell short of it while pitching for Mesa State College.
Well before Romo’s days at Mesa, White was integral in WNMU beating that program for the RMAC title. During the conference championship series he threw seven innings, and after a day’s rest tossed 2 2/3 innings, then seven more later that day, adding the RMAC Tournament MVP award to his credits.
“That was an awesome experience,” White said. “But it was more about my teammates and us winning as a team then me winning awards.”
Still, it was well-deserved, according to Bravo.
“He was the greatest competitor I’ve ever been around in my life,” Bravo said. “His will to win was greater than anything I’ve ever seen. Ever. He was a fantastic teammate, he really was. It was a pleasure for me to play with him.”
White, with an education and college-baseball experience behind him, became a 23rd-round draft pick of the Seattle Mariners in 1984. At one level he played for a Butte, Montana team with shortstop Omar Vizquel. “He was 17 and I was coming out of college,” White remembered. “And the plays he would make as a 17-year old were mind-blowing to me.”
White’s best minor-league recollection, at least as he looks back with the benefit of hindsight, is pitching in a game against Greg Maddux. Playing for a Wausau, Wisconsin team, White entered a 1-all game in the seventh inning and wound up getting the victory when his team prevailed 2-1.
“He was a 19-year-old phenom,” White said of Maddux, now a Hall-of-Famer. “That was my claim to fame — I’m 1-0 against Greg Maddux. ... Back then the term we used in baseball was, I vultured the win. You came in like a vulture and picked up the leftovers.”
As White’s life progressed, he found time to marry his high school sweetheart Deena and become an actual father himself. When nagging injuries made it clear to White that he wasn’t going to have a lengthy playing career, he followed the advice of one his minor-league managers, Manny Estrada, who informed him of a scouting job with the Orioles. White applied and was hired in the fall of 1989.
Through the 1990s and into the early 2000s, White earned his way up and then out — as in, out west — to join the Dodgers organization in 2002. At the time their farm system was ranked near the bottom, but they became No. 1 while White was scouting future MLB award-winners. As his own reward, White went from Director of Amateur Scouting to Assistant General Manager of Amateur and International Scouting to Vice President of Amateur Scouting.
White joined the Padres organization in October 2014, working for general manager A.J. Preller who was hired for that position just two months earlier. Since the two have been with the Padres, their farm system has risen to No. 1.
“That’s something I’m proud of,” White said. “Here in San Diego our staff is putting really good prospects in the system. ... I’m a part of that; it’s really been a great group effort. Now you go to the next part, starting to transition from having the top farm system in baseball to having major league players to help us win major league baseball games, with the ultimate goal being us bringing a championship to San Diego.”
Sounds like White, as usual, has a plan.