PEORIA, Ariz. – Before he steps into the batting cage each day and makes the Seattle Mariners drool at his potential, Matt Tuiasosopo is still a regular kid.
“At this time last year, I was sitting in my math class hanging out with my friends,” he said one morning last week, leaning against a wall in the Mariners’ spring training clubhouse. “This is amazing.”
Tuiasosopo expects some of his buddies from Woodinville High School to visit him in Arizona in the next few weeks. Until then, he will keep hanging out with guys named Boonie and Ichiro and Raul and Bucky, continuing to pinch himself at being invited to the major league spring training camp with the Mariners.
A year ago, Tuiasosopo was one of the nation’s most highly sought high school athletes, a football, basketball and baseball star at Woodinville with the talent to choose his own direction.
Like his older brother Marques, who played football at the University of Washington and now is a backup quarterback with the Oakland Raiders, Matt Tuiasosopo endured the living-room sales pitches of college football recruiters. And when they were finished talking, baseball scouts arrived to sell him on their sport.
Tuiasosopo sorted through the messages that muddled his mind and chose baseball. Being the Mariners’ third-round draft pick in June and the recipient of a healthy signing bonus helped with that decision, and a stellar minor league beginning last summer validated it.
Tuiasosopo batted .412 in 29 games at rookie-level Peoria, then .248 for the Class A Everett AquaSox. His education is continuing at spring training with the Mariners.
It’s not Woodinville High School anymore.
“Now, I come to work every day and I’m with guys like Ichiro and Boone,” Tuiasosopo said. “Not too many 18-year-olds have that opportunity. This is definitely a dream come true.”
The Mariners are in dreamland, too.
The team considers Tuiasosopo a big-time prospect who already has kindled memories of Alex Rodriguez when he arrived out of high school.
Like Rodriguez, Tuiasosopo is a shortstop, although that could change as the Mariners evaluate him. Like Rodriguez, he casts a good-sized shadow, standing 6 feet 2 inches and weighing 210 pounds (Rodriguez was 6-3, 190 in his first big-league camp at age 18).
“Matt is a big middle infielder who’s athletic like Alex,” said Benny Looper, the Mariners’ vice president for scouting and player development. “Matt has got a chance to be a real good player. He’s got great (mental) makeup and he’s going to have power.”
Tuiasosopo showed that power immediately, hitting a home run in his first professional at-bat on July 10 with Peoria.
“I came down here and while I waited for my contract to be approved, all I could do for about five days was work out and watch the games,” he said.
During those workouts, Peoria manager Scott Steinman helped Tuiasosopo alter a few elements of his swing, and the changes were evident the moment he joined the lineup. He homered in his first professional at-bat, then hit three more homers, drove in 12 runs and had a .528 on-base percentage through 20 games
“Everything just clicked,” he said.
The Mariners promoted Tuiasosopo to Everett on Aug. 5, and he kept hitting. He went 7-for-10 with a home run and five RBI in his first three games.
Just when it looked like nobody at the Class A level could get this kid out, they did. Pitchers began pounding fastballs on his fists, sending Tuiasosopo into an 0-for-14 slump that left him with a .248 average by season’s end.
“I don’t want to make excuses for him, but he ended up with a bone bruise on his hand,” Looper said. “They were jamming him pretty good, and that’s a pitch he needs to learn how to get to. He also had a lot of work to do on his footwork; he had to get out of the football throwing mechanics. But we’re really happy with the way he’s come on.”
The Mariners, deep on middle infielders in their minor league system, aren’t sure where Tuiasosopo will play this season, Looper said. It doesn’t matter to Tuiasosopo, as long as he continues to learn the game.
He learned plenty from both the success in Peoria and struggle in Everett, the most important element being patience at the pro level.
“Playing every day, mentally, is different,” he said. “I learned that when you go 1-for-2 or 2-for-4, that’s a good day. In high school if I did that, I would be so mad for a couple of days. But down here, there’s another game tomorrow and I can’t dwell on the good or the bad. It’s the same defensively, too. If I make an error, so what?”
Looper said Tuiasosopo’s ability to hit the curveball helped smooth his transition to the pro level.
“It comes from instincts, from seeing the ball and from those who worked with him in high school and amateur baseball,” Looper said. “You always hope with a high draft pick who you give some money that they go right out and succeed. It usually doesn’t happen.”
Last winter, nobody – even Tuiasosopo – was sure what he’d be doing now. College football recruiters and baseball scouts were telling him he had the talent to play their game.
“There were football coaches in the winter, and come springtime, baseball scouts started coming in,” he said. “My head was spinning trying to listen to everything.”
Tuiasosopo committed to the University of Washington for football, but last spring as he finished his final season of high school baseball, he said it became clear which game he really wanted to play.
“Deep down, I knew it was baseball,” he said. “The closer it got to the draft, about the second half of my baseball season, that’s when I knew this is what I wanted to do.”
Forty-nine games in Peoria and Everett last summer, plus a month in the Arizona Instructional League last October, convinced Tuiasosopo he made the right choice.
“It’s been awesome to concentrate on one thing and focus just on baseball,” he said. “I don’t have to worry about going from football to basketball to baseball. I can worry about baseball and getting better.”
And the Mariners can drool about what that means for them in the future.
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