Unheralded Yanks prospect chases majors
Wagaman grinds from community college to Double-A
BRIDGEWATER >> Eric Wagaman strolls out of the tunnel adjacent to the home team’s dugout at TD Bank Ballpark with a grin on his face and a Yankees iPad in hand.
For the better part of six Minor League Baseball seasons, Wagaman has operated in obscurity. He’s never been a ranked prospect. He’s often not even been an everyday player. And he’s surely been counted out by some outsiders as little more than an extra body to round out a roster.
Wagaman is perfectly fine with that. The California native will keep grinding.
“I just tell myself every day that I have to stay focused if this is what I want to do,” Wagaman said recently before a Somerset Patriots game. “I’m just really trying to challenge myself every single day, whether I’m in the lineup or not, to stay focused and just make something each day. And then especially when I am in the lineup, make something for the team.”
Wagaman, set to turn 26 years old in August, may finally be turning a corner in his pro career.
The first baseman has posted an impressive .297/.343/.516 hitting line so far this season, helping the Patriots win the Eastern League’s Northeast Division first-half title with five home runs, five doubles, 16 RBI and 10 stolen bases in only 26 games.
“I just feel like I’m very confident in myself and my abilities,” Wagaman said. “Having success here at the Double-A level shows me that like, wow, OK, I’m capable of doing this day in and day out, I believe. Just staying positive each at-bat, being on the next at-bat, next pitch I think is just so important.”
That mindset was neither innate nor easy to adopt for Wagaman. He had to work hard and learn from failure, especially since pro ball was an even bigger culture shock for him than some players. He hailed from community college where he never saw a pitcher throw more than 93 miles per hour, and the six-month marathon of the minors was a huge adjustment.
Wagaman played tee-ball when he was young but had little family background in the sport. By the time he got to high school, he had no Division I offers and ended up boosting his stock at Orange Coast CC.
“I was always pretty big and pretty strong, but I was just a late bloomer,” Wagaman said.
After being the Yankees’ 13th-round draft pick in 2017, Wagaman had a solid debut season in Rookie Ball. But then in 2018 he batted just .194 in 222 at-bats with Staten Island, formerly the organization’s Short-Season A affiliate.
Moving in 2019 to Charleston, the Yankees’ Low-A affiliate at the time, Wagaman faced more struggles at the plate and missed nearly two months with a sprained ankle from lunging toward second base on a double where the outfielder got the ball back into the infield quicker than he expected.
Missing a year of development in 2020 because of COVID-19 did him no favors, and in 2021, Wagaman played Low-A ball again at Tampa and then shifted to High-A Hudson Valley in late August. He had only a .679 OPS in 78 games that year while also being on the injured list for 12 days in Tampa because he sprained his collarbone swinging through a changeup.
“I was trying to make adjustments and stuff to my swing, and it just wasn’t translating to the games,” Wagaman said. “That was a frustrating year, but I think all of that helped me be better with failure. I would get so tied up in like, oh my god, I need to get a hit right here. I can’t go 0-for-3 today. And it’s like, no it’s not like that. If you get out one time, the next at-bat is the most important at-bat. So it just helped me get on the next at-bat quicker the past couple years.”
The one thing that Wagaman never did was use his lack of consistent playing time, particularly in the 2021 season, as an excuse. He has been in a similar platoon role for the past two seasons, but he finds other ways to stay in rhythm.
“The way that we do everything in the cages and in batting practice and all that kind of stuff, they just keep us so ready by challenging us in all these different ways, whether it’s fastball machine with high velo, them throwing these balls that move all around the place, kind of replicating that pitcher for tonight,” Wagaman said. “I feel like I do my best to stay in the same routine every single day and I make sure to challenge myself every single day. So that way when I do get my opportunities, I hopefully can capitalize.”
Away from the field while using his iPad, Wagaman accesses reports for upcoming pitchers — specifically their tendencies and how their pitches move.
“That’s another thing that I really try and focus on is the game-planning aspect of it,” Wagaman said. “That way I’m not surprised when I get to the plate. I have a plan, I’m watching the game to make sure if I see a trend that’s different than what I was gonna go up there with, then I can change it. But I think the game-planning is like 80 percent of it.”
Wagaman credits hitting coach Jake Hirst for helping with his mental approach as well as refining his mechanics. After finally getting a chance to play in Double-A last August, the 6-foot-4, 210-pound righthander turned a corner as he dominated at the dish in Somerset with a 1.020 OPS in 17 games to end the year.
Wagaman changed his swing in 2021 to stay on plane longer. He also needed better pitch recognition because admittedly he swung at too many balls in his early years. Once those components slowly came around, so did the frequency of his line drives and fly balls.
“I really bought in to all the stuff they were teaching, and it took me a while to kind of get through it. Other guys, they kind of tried it and it worked for them a little quicker,” Wagaman said. “All the stuff that the Yankees teach us is just, there’s no other organization you’d want to be in to develop.”
When asked about his career-high six RBI performance on June 16 when he belted a two-run homer in the seventh and then a grand slam in the eighth to lead Somerset to a 6-3 comeback win over Altoona, Wagaman laughed and said he had a feeling that he was due for a big game.
“I was super glad that that happened. It just gave me so much more confidence going into the next day that I played,” Wagaman said. “I feel good about where I’m at.”
Wagaman is still not an everyday player, and that is unlikely to change soon while T.J. Rumfield is Somerset’s primary first baseman. Wagaman has played left field twice this season because of team injuries, but even though he is open to playing other positions — he takes reps in the outfield during batting practice — to this point there have been no talks of moving him off of first base more frequently.
Yet that doesn’t faze him. Wagaman points to Blake Perkins, a former Somerset outfielder who wasn’t in the lineup every day last year and is now in the majors with the Brewers, as one example. He knows that someone is always watching, whether it’s the Yankees or one of the other 29 clubs, and that his time in the big leagues will come if he keeps performing well.
“I just try and keep that in my head and not let not playing every day affect me because I love being around this team, so it’s great,” Wagaman said. “There’s definitely something to be said about guys that are able to stay ready off the bench and stuff like that. Whether that’s my role in the big leagues or not, I would love that. And yeah, I think it would be a really cool story if I do make it to the big leagues one day.”