Posted on: Thursday, May 29, 2003

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

If you want a quick barometer on the University of Hawai'i baseball team's recruiting class this year, keep an eye on Steven Wright the next couple of weeks.

What happens to the pitcher-third baseman from Valley View High in Moreno Valley, Calif., in June will likely say a lot about how the Rainbows fare in their efforts to hold on to one of their best recruiting classes.

Wright and his 93 mph fastball could be the exclamation point on this class, one of the marquee recruits who determine whether the group that eventually shows up in the fall is good — or great.

He is one of 14 players who have signed national letters of intent to attend UH, perhaps a third to half of whom could be selected in the two-day major league draft that begins Tuesday.

Early indications are the 6-foot-1, 195-pound Wright, who is 10-0 with a 1.05 ERA and 90 strikeouts in 60 innings and is batting .481, should be among the earliest taken. Prospects Plus, which ranks draft prospects, lists Wright among the top 200 high school players, the highest of UH's recruits.

"I'm hoping to go in the top five (rounds)," Wright said, "but it is such a crapshoot it is really hard to tell where I'll go."

If he gets his wish — and the $2.2 million (first round) to $223,000 (fifth round) average bonus that a Baseball America study says high school players received in 2002 — then chances are he won't be playing at Les Murakami Stadium.

But after the fifth round, the Rainbows' chances improve dramatically. According to the Baseball America study, there is a quick dropoff to an average of $164,000 for a sixth round pick out of high school to $73,000 for a 10th-round selection.

It is those kind of numbers that UH coach Mike Trapasso and his staff are armed with this week as they perform a ritual unique to baseball among college sports — re-recruiting players they have already signed.

The sales pitch is that it makes more sense for a high school player taken in the 10th round or lower to go on to college where, three years later, there is the potential to be well along on a degree and get 7 to 30 times as much if taken from the third to first round.

"It takes about as much time either way — 5 1/2 years out of high school to 3 years out of college — for those who make it to the major leagues," Trapasso said.ome this time next week, the Rainbows will begin to get an idea of how many of their recruits, like Wright, they'll actually be able to keep. And, what it means for their future.