Blackmon could have been a Marlin
Charlie Blackmon, the Colorado Rockies’ All-Star center fielder and a legitimate MVP candidate in a crowded National League field, could have been a Marlin. And he wanted to be a Marlin.
In 2004, though, the Florida Marlins weren’t too interested in Charlie Blackmon, a lanky teenage left-handed pitcher.
Blackmon’s unusual career track — from washedup pitcher to converted outfielder to a Rockies star playing in Wednesday night’s NL wild-card game — began in the 2004 draft, when the Marlins picked him in the 28th round, 848th overall.
“I thought there was a point where we might have talks about signing,” Blackmon said last week when the Marlins were in Denver. “But it never really got to that point.”
The desire was there on Blackmon’s side. He was a high school standout outside Atlanta, and even though he grew up a fan of the Braves — winners of the NL East nine years straight at that point — he thought it was pretty cool that the defending World Series champion Marlins called his name.
Back then, MLB had a draft-and-follow system. That allowed a team to retain the rights to certain draftees as they tracked the players’ growth while they played in college. The Marlins had about a year to sign Blackmon, through the end of his strong freshman season at Young Harris College, minutes from the Georgia-North Carolina state line.
That spring, Blackmon struck out 49 batters in 44
junior college innings. The Marlins didn’t express much interest. Blackmon had spoken with Brian Bridges, then the Marlins’ area scout and now the Braves’ director of scouting, but had little to no communication otherwise.
“I had a really good first year of college there, junior college, so I thought there was going to be a push from their side going into the draft [in 2005],” Blackmon said. “But there wasn’t really.”
Blackmon was in a similar spot with the next draft. The Red Sox picked him — again as a pitcher — in 2005, but he didn’t sign. He eventually transferred to Georgia Tech, turned into an outfielder, blossomed as an outfielder, and became the Rockies’ secondrounder in 2008.
(All three of the teams that drafted Blackmon had gone to the World Series the year before: the Marlins in 2003, the Red Sox in 2004 and the Rockies in 2007.)
By 2011, Blackmon made it to the majors. By 2014, he was a full-timer and an AllStar.
This year, at age 31, Blackmon gets his first taste of postseason baseball. And it comes at the end of an MVP-caliber season, one of the greatest ever by a leadoff hitter. He won the NL batting title with a .331 average, had a .399 OBP and slugged .601, totaling 37 homers and 104 RBI. He also led the majors in runs (137), hits (213) and triples (14), plus doubled 35 times.
Blackmon is, alongside the Marlins’ Giancarlo Stanton and a half-dozen or so others, in the middle of a thick crop of NL MVP candidates.
And none of it would have happened, he is sure, had he signed with the Marlins when he so badly wanted to.
“I would have never made it,” Blackmon said of the hypothetical. “I’d probably be working behind a desk.”