Victor Wembanyama is a generational talent… on the court.
On Thursday night the 7-foot-4 frenchman will be selected first overall in the 2023 NBA draft by the San Antonio Spurs. The 19-year-old is remarkably agile for someone so tall, sports an 8-foot wingspan and has a legitimately smooth jump shot. Basketball experts believe he’s the best NBA prospect since LeBron James in 2003.
But Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium, we, the sporting public, learned Mr. Wembanyama is very much not a generational talent on the mound.
Wemby’s lack of baseball coordination is understandable. The dude grew up near the Palace of Versailles, more than 3,000 miles away from the closest MLB team. Before Tuesday, he had likely never picked up a baseball; forget about throwing one.
But what if Wembanyama, swooned by his evening at Yankee Stadium, woke up tomorrow and decided to forgo his basketball career, Michael Jordan-style, and pick up baseball instead? An outlandish question, but bear with me.
Sure, his baseball experience consists of a single catastrophic toss, but Wembanyama is, after all, a 99th percentile freakazoid athlete. Is that, combined with his theoretical newfound love for the sport, enough for a big-league development apparatus to turn Wemby into a legitimate baseball player? How would it work? What position would he play? What would even be the first step?
Let’s ask some experts and break it down.
OPTION 1: Put him on the mound.
A majority of the MLB players and evaluators kind enough to humor this idiotic question agreed: You’d need to get Wemby on the bump. The tallest pitcher in big-league history is current 6-11 Giants lefty Sean Hjelle, and so Wembanyama would be “only” five inches taller.
A number of extremely skeptical MLB coaches claimed they would just “send him to Driveline,” preferring to let the Seattle-based pitching development lab figure Wemby out.
“Dude, he’s gotta pitch.” Yankees ace Gerrit Cole, who followed Wembanyama’s wayward hurl with a dominant one-run, 7 1/3 inning performance, said. “His strike zone is way too big. But he’s going to throw the ball from somewhere no one else has thrown the baseball.”
Cole is correct. The highest release point on a pitch this season is this super wonky 8-foot offering courtesy of future hall of famer Clayton Kershaw.
The highest legitimate release height, however, a tie between this Justin Verlander heater and this Ross Stripling curveball, both of which clock in around 7 feet, 5 inches. Wembanyama could conceivably, with a ton of training, release a ball from nearly 9 feet above the ground, an enticing proposition to any team. (It’s worth noting that height doesn’t necessarily lead to a towering release point — Hjelle averages around 6-4 on his pitches.)
“We’re going: throwing program to turn him into a 7-4 hurler with the greatest extension of all time.” One high level baseball executive joked. “He’ll throw 80 with a perceived velocity of 105.
If a team were to pair that skyscraper release with a bowling-ball slider … watch out.
[Mintz: Who is the best MLB pitcher on the planet?]
OPTION 2: Get him a bat
Former Oakland first baseman Nate Freiman and current MLBPA president Tony Clark, both 6-8, are tied for the tallest position player in baseball history.
Only a handful of hitters 6-6 or taller have put together impactful careers; Yankees outfielders Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton are two rare examples. That’s because taller players usually have longer arms and the longer a hitter’s arms, the more difficult it tends to be for them to hit the inside pitch.
So, when you consider that Wembanyama has an 8-foot wingspan, his chances of developing into a hitter are outrageously slim.
“First thing I would do is get him some food.” Yankees DH Willie Calhoun joked. “Try to get him to add, like, 30 pounds before we get in the cage.”
His apparent lack of strength and rotational power aside (baseball is a rotational sport, basketball is less reliant on that) Wemby’s biggest issue at the dish would be perceptive. The big man has likely never seen a single pitch in his life. Even for an athlete as skilled as Wembanyama, it would take years for his brain to adjust to anything resembling high-level pitching.
Along those lines, one big-league coach said that his first task for Wembanyama would be to put him in a batting cage with a pitching machine and have him track pitches for hours. Then and only then, would he begin to discuss swing mechanics.
OPTION 3: Tell him to go back to basketball
The chances of Wembanyama ever becoming a decent baseball player are essentially zero. If he was a career ballplayer who happened to sprout into a redwood tree as a teenager, then maybe, but most experts understandably said that he’s too far along physically to make any meaningful progress on the diamond.
One team official said they would “trade Wembanyama to the Rockies for someone who knows how to play baseball.”
One AL general manager was more kind: “If he can’t hit, it’s gonna be hard at this stage to teach him to hit.”
Stick to hoops, Wemby!
Jake Mintz, the louder half of @CespedesBBQ is a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He played college baseball, poorly at first, then very well, very briefly. Jake lives in New York City where he coaches Little League and rides his bike, sometimes at the same time. Follow him on Twitter at @Jake_Mintz.
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