All-or-nothing approach defines Bregman
Bregman took it to heart.
“He wore uniform No. 30 in his freshman year, because it was a constant reminder to him of the 30 teams that passed on him in the first round,” Mainieri said. “It was like a motivational thing for him.”
Afterward, Bregman’s uniform changed to No. 8, an LSU tradition in which the best player on the team dons that number. He hit .312 with a .406 on-base percentage and .534 slugging percentage this past season, his junior year, with nine home runs. He walked 36 times — 15 more times than he struck out — while swiping 37 bags in 47 tries.
To Mainieri, it was no surprise the Astros took Bregman.
“I had a sense they were interested when I saw the general manager and the scouting director here several times,” he said. “I don’t pay too much attention to which guys are here, but for some reason, I just noticed that the Astros were here a lot. They were on him.
“We played this year in Minute Maid Park in a college tournament, and Alex Bregman was clearly the best player in that tournament, offensively and defensively. It was like the big stage, and it was the Alex Bregman show.” Staying at SS … for now
Coming out of high school, there was thought Bregman could be a catcher, and he probably could have excelled at that position, too. The Astros have their shortstop of the future in Correa, but team officials say that Bregman will be a shortstop for now. If he has to move down the road, the club will cross that bridge when needed. Those who have seen Bregman play say he can handle whatever’s thrown at him.
After the 2012 season, Mainieri was trying to replace Marlins prospect Austin Nola, whom Maineiri calls the best shortstop he ever coached. And there were two other top players Mainieri brought in besides Bregman, a Team USA standout, to potentially win the shortstop job.
“I lined the three of those guys up, every day for a month in fall practice, and at the end of that month, I decided Alex Bregman was going to be our shortstop, just because I just thought he had the superior leadership skills, and he was the most vocal and just brought all the intangibles that I wanted,” Mainieri said. “So I moved (JaCoby) Jones over to second and moved (Christian) Ibarra over to third, gave us a great infield. Our team winded up going to Omaha.
“I was very afraid that (Alex) was going to be very mechanical out there in the field, not have natural ath- letic movement. And the opposite was true. He was very fluid, he had a very loose glove hand, he had great range. His arm was strong and accurate, and more than anything, he had this aura about him, of fearlessness and attacking attitude.”
There was a home run derby as part of a Dallas event one year, The Battle of the Borders, and Bregman couldn’t get there in time because his flight was delayed. He runs up to the field with his bat, in his boots and his jeans, to try to jump in.
“It was too late,” Brewer said. “But I promise you he would have … won it.
“I know some SEC coaches, and I’ll get some coaches (who) go, ‘I (expletive) hate Bregman.’ But five minutes later go, ‘I love watching that (expletive) play.’ ” Knows only one speed
Frank Anderson, father of big league pitcher Brett Anderson and a University of Houston assistant coach, has put on clinics at the Albuquerque Baseball Academy and also has seen Bregman since he was about 10 years old. He never worked as closely with Bregman as Brewer did, but even from afar, the same qualities were apparent. The Astros have a dirty-uniform, non-stop, get-it-done player — with talent to boot.
“The motor that he has that other people don’t have, and the drive and the day-to-day things that he did, even at a young age when I was out there, I mean, it’s the same things that you see today,” Anderson said. “It’s just a motor that never stops. It’s something that not a lot of people have, and you watch it from afar and you go, it’s something special.”
Anderson recalled Bregman playing for multiple teams as a teenager. On a 110-degree day, the kid was racing around town, trying to play just the final four innings of his third game of the day.
That kind of endurance likely would lend itself to bull riding just as well as it did creating one of the best amateur shortstop’s in the nation. evan.drellich@chron.com twitter.com/evandrellich