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BASEBALL New P-nats key to big club's renaissance Rise of new Fab Four

July 3, 2007 12:35 am

BY TODD JACOBSON

It's not often that the principal owners of the Washington Nationals, Ted and Mark Lerner, make the 90-minute trip from D.C. to Hagerstown.

So when outfielder Justin Maxwell saw the Lerners--and a contingent of front-office types, from general manager Jim Bowden to farm director Bobby Williams--milling around the Suns' aging Single-A stadium before a game last month, he knew something was up.

It wasn't until Maxwell and teammates Chris Marrero, Mike Daniel and Brett McMillan gathered behind a batting cage that he found out exactly what was going on.

The quartet was being promoted from Hagerstown to Single-A Potomac. Together. Now.

The Lerners were there to deliver the news. They bought the Nationals from Major League Baseball for $450 million last summer and pledged to emphasize player development and the minor leagues as they rebuilt the floundering franchise.

"I thought it was pretty much unheard of," Maxwell said. "For all of us to get the news from the Lerner family and Jim Bowden and everybody, it was kind of an honor."

Clearly, the symbolism wasn't lost on the 24-year-old University of Maryland graduate, nor on anyone in the organization.

In promoting Hagerstown's entire outfield--Maxwell, Daniel and Marrero --the Nationals sent ripples through their minor league system. It was once among the jewels of all of baseball but was long neglected during Major League Baseball's 31/2-year stewardship of the franchise.

Finally, there was something to get excited about.

"We definitely feel like it's coming up and we're a part of it," said Daniel, a seventh-round pick in 2005 out of the University of North Carolina. "We want to get there and turn the organization around. We want to work hard and just make an impact at the big league level. It's a lot of fun just trying to do that."

So on that June day, Marrero, Maxwell and Daniel played their final games with the Hagerstown Suns. With McMillan, a first baseman drafted out of UCLA, joining them, they piled into two cars, taking turns driving to Winston-Salem, N.C. They were to catch up with the Potomac Nationals the next day, another step up the Nationals' minor league ladder.

"They were all having great years," said Williams, who took over as Washington's farm director earlier this season. "We can't wait to see them progress the rest of this year."

'The Kid'

There are five hours until the Potomac Nationals are to play the Frederick Keys and the aluminum bleachers at G. Richard Pftizner Stadium in Woodbridge are empty. Sheets of plywood cover the fronts of concession booths as Marrero carries three black wooden bats to a makeshift batting cage beneath the right field stands.

The Astroturf carpet is worn, the net enclosing the hitting space tattered in spots. There's no one watching as Marrero grabs a ball, places it on a plastic tee and uncoils the smooth wing that made him the 15th overall pick in the 2006 First-Year Player Draft.

Over and over again, Marrero stoops to pick up a ball, gently places it on the tee, and rips into it with the same right-handed cut that has landed him among the Nationals' top prospects--perhaps at the top.

At 6-feet-4 and 230 pounds, he is an imposing presence in the batter's box, even though he's the youngest player in the high Class-A Carolina League. He turned 19 yesterday. Daniel and his teammates refer to him as "the kid," and he is two years away from being able to join his teammates for a drink after a game.

He is just a year removed from high school, an adjustment in itself. (He had his own apartment in Hagerstown, where he said he was comfortable cooking on his own, but not with doing the dishes afterward.)

"It's really not so bad," Marrero said.

He became an instant millionaire last June, when the Nationals drafted him and gave him a $1.625 million signing bonus. But he approached his first full season of professional baseball like a ninth-grader trying to make varsity.

"You don't want to be one of those guys that doesn't do anything, that just comes and just plays," Marrero said. "You want to do the extra early work and do all the stuff. I guess when I do my early work and my extra work I feel good about myself and ready to play."

It is a work ethic gleaned from his father, Bladimir, a Cuban immigrant who still owns an auto body shop near Miami. For years, Marrero said he honed his swing not only in Little League games but behind his family's home in a handmade batting cage, his father acting as a pitching machine for him and his older brother, Christian (a farmhand with the White Sox).

The results, at least this season, have been striking. After his debut with Washington's Gulf Coast League affiliate last summer ended prematurely thanks to viral meningitis, Marrero scorched the South Atlantic League, belting 14 homers and driving in 53 runs in 57 games.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the guy can hit," said Nationals manager Manny Acta, who watched Marrero during Washington's prospect-laden accelerated development camp in spring training.

Through Sunday, Marrero was hitting .259 with three doubles and seven RBIs with the Potomac Nationals. Though there's clearly an adjustment period at this level of the minors, Marrero's only glaring weakness is his glove.

He was a third baseman at Monsignor Pace High School in Coral Gables, Fla., and he's adapted slowly to the outfield. Still, it's not hard to imagine him rising through Washington's minor league ranks, playing in D.C. by 2009.

Bob Boone, the Nationals' vice president for player development, said one thing will get Marrero to the big leagues.

"He'll hit his way there, for sure," Boone said.

Said Marrero: "I guess I worked hard to get to where I'm at but I didn't expect everything to come just how it is. I guess just with working hard every day I raised my goals a little higher. I did this, let's see what I can do now."

Deterred, not denied

By now, the injuries--and how to deal with them--have become commonplace for Maxwell, even if his latest booboo is perhaps the most ridiculous of all.

After landing on the minor-league disabled list shortly after arriving in Potomac with a staph infection on his leg, he pulled an abdominal muscle.

Sneezing, he thinks.

"Sammy Sosa did it a couple years ago," Maxwell said, forcing a smile.

The smile is partly how he copes. He missed all of 2004 at the University of Maryland with a broken bone in his left wrist and played just seven games in 2005 when he broke a bone in his right hand.

In addition to the strained ab and staph infection this year, he hyper-extended his left elbow making a diving catch in Hagerstown.

"I don't get too frustrated with injuries," Maxwell said. "All the guys rag me and stuff but I'm used to it. I know once I'm on the field, my talent will take over."

The talent is what got him drafted in the fourth round in 2005. (He was the Nationals' second selection behind first-rounder Ryan Zimmerman.) And it's what has team officials so excited.

In his first full pro season, Maxwell matched Marrero's power with 14 homers in Hagerstown, stole 14 bases, drove in 40 runs and hit .301.

He's played only briefly at Single-A Potomac because of his strained abdominal (he said he expects to be back in the lineup today). In four games he's hit .412 with two RBIs.

"We always knew he had power, speed and athleticism," Boone said. "That was easy to judge. The hard thing is, 'OK kid, go out there and prove it to us and get real consistent.' The good ones take some time and when they figure it out you get reports saying, 'He's locked in.' That's what we're seeing more and more."

His time in Potomac could be limited. There is an eagerness in the organization to push Maxwell, who will turn 24 in November, and he could be promoted to Double-A Harrisburg--if not higher--by the end of the season.

That, Maxwell said, would make all the injuries, and all the waiting, worthwhile.

"My mom told me, 'When you're playing in the big leagues, all these injuries and stuff will just delay you, but it's not going to deny you the opportunity,'" Maxwell said. "It motivates me so that whenever I get out there I always play hard. I never try to take anything for granted on the field."

Adjusting on the fly

Like most players, Mike Daniel had a hard time adjusting to life in professional baseball. There were the long bus rides, lumpy hotel pillows, rocky fields and curve balls that broke at his ankles.

But there was also something else.

As Daniel began his Nationals career at short-season Vermont in the late summer of 2005, Hurricane Katrina bore down on New Orleans, his hometown, where dozens of family members remained.

"Sometimes, it was tough to think about baseball," Daniel said.

So though Daniel doesn't like to make excuses, there is at least a reason behind his early struggles: the up-and-down season in Vermont, during which he hit .260, and the wasted promotion to Single-A Savannah in 2006, a 52-game experiment that ended when Daniel hit .193 in 181 at-bats.

"I think I had a little time where I worried a little bit but at the same time I just tried to stay focused on what I needed to do and not worry about what other people thought," Daniel said. "My first spring training, I was able to go in and really make a name for myself. It helped a lot."

And only then did the seventh-rounder with a sweet swing often compared to that of David Justice begin to prove himself. After being sent back to short-season Vermont, Daniel shortened his swing and dominated the league in his second go-around, hitting .304 with 18 RBIs and 13 steals in 53 games.

This season, he hit .290 with seven homers and 37 RBIs with Hagerstown. Had Daniel not been promoted, he and Marrero were headed to the South Atlantic League All-Star Game.

Arriving in Woodbridge was a welcome diversion, just as it was for Marrero and Maxwell.

"Coming in I was known but I wasn't a top guy: I wasn't a first-round pick or anything like that," Daniel said. "I was a seventh-rounder and I knew I had to prove a little bit. I feel like I'm starting to do that."