According to a release by the American Association, Luke uses the Force well: "Hochevar had posted a record of 1-1 with an earned run average of 2.38 in 22 2/3 innings pitched. He had struck out 34 batters, which was good for third in the league, and opponents were only batting .244 against him."
In 2005 for the University of Tennessee Volunteers, Hochevar went a fab 15-3 with an earned run average of 2.26. He struck out a record 154 batters. Those numbers qualified him for Southeastern Conference Pitcher of the Year honors and the Roger Clemens Award which goes annually to the top pitcher in college baseball. In three years with the Tennessee, Hochevar accumulated a record of 25-10 with an earned run average of 3.05 and fanned 287 batters in 280 1/3 innings pitched.
The independents are supposed to be third-rate leagues of the dead and dying. Yet they just generated the no.1 pick in baseball. Are they part of a new era of player development, or, since they have been officially shunned as not of the baseball faith, will they develop into leagues that offer competitive product to MLB one day?
The Curious Case of the Castro-Fleeing Cuban
Round 18 of the 2006 draft produced another anomaly. Cuban defector Amaury Cazana Marti, 27 years old plus or minus, was in the Cardinals' Spring training camp.
Marti signed to come to camp like a Non Roster Invitee . Later in the Spring, he was ruled by MLB to be draft eligible, highly unusual in that he isn't a college or high school kid, and that there are thousands of guys who, by that logic, should be draft eligible as well.
The Cards picked him up without much fanfare on the 30th pick of the 18th round (556 OA). Most Latin American and Caribbean players sign as free agents, and don't appear in the draft. The ones that do are generally placed with community colleges or junior colleges to park them with a student visa until an H2B visa can be arranged for them.
Marti's draft would appear to be another instance of the Commissioner's Office bending the sacrosanct rules of baseball to meet a particular club's pet problem.
So Dark the Con of MLB
Major League Baseball has spent generations systematically shutting down their competitors. The Knights Spaulding, a less-than-secret order, concocted a series of lies at the turn of the twentieth century about the origins of baseball.
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