BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : Draft-Pick Contracts Draw Fire

A Sept. 12 meeting of major league owners in Baltimore is likely to become heated, with executives of the New York Yankees targeted for criticism from their colleagues.

The Yankees, who receive more than $40 million a year in television revenue and don’t care how they spend it, inflamed the big-market/small-market economic issue by paying a record $1.55 million to sign pitcher Brien Taylor, the 19-year-old high school product who was the first player chosen in the June draft.

Taylor was on the verge of beginning classes at a North Carolina junior college when the Yankees, urged by other clubs to stay with their initial offer of $650,000, ultimately went to $1.55 million, eclipsing the three-year, $1.25-million deal that Todd Van Poppel received from the Oakland Athletics last year and setting off a chain reaction among some of the other unsigned first-rounders.

“Another nail in the economic coffin,” President Bill Giles of the Philadelphia Phillies said.

Said Bud Selig, the Milwaukee Brewers’ owner: “The draft has always been the great hope for small-market teams trying to compete. We’ll just have to be more clever and work harder now.”

The Brewers weren’t clever enough to sign their top pick, Georgia high school pitcher Kenny Henderson, No. 5 in the draft.

He rejected Milwaukee’s $500,000 offer in the wake of Taylor’s signing, insisted on $1 million, and chose to enroll at the University of Miami when he didn’t get it.

The Brewers also lost their No. 1 choice, pitcher Alex Fernandez, now with the Chicago White Sox, to Miami in 1988 over a difference of $50,000.

Henderson and the Brewers were separated by 10 times that, even though the Milwaukee offer was the draft’s third-highest, exceeded only by Taylor’s $1.55 million and the $575,000 that outfielder Mike Kelly, the No. 2 pick, received from the Atlanta Braves.

“We felt we made a competitive offer,” Brewer General Manager Harry Dalton said, having now lost negotiating rights to Henderson.

“We just feel it doesn’t make good business sense to give that much money to an untested amateur.”

The Houston Astros and the San Diego Padres were confronted with similar financial differences and decisions involving University of Florida pitcher John Burke, the No. 6 pick, and Georgia Southern pitcher Joey Hamilton, the No. 8 selection.

Burke opted to return to Florida Friday. He had raised his bonus sights to $900,000 after Taylor signed, rejecting a Houston offer that General Manager Bill Wood said was close to $400,000

“I’m not against salaries and bonuses going up,” Wood said. “We can handle it if it’s by degrees, but these quantum leaps are insane. I’m concerned about the future. We’ll have the first and third picks next year, and I don’t know what we’re going to be able to do.

“What good is a philosophy if you cave in to the artificial pressures of agents, parents and players?”

Wood said he was as angry at the Yankees as he was at the A’s last year, accusing them of blowing the lid off a developmental system that had escaped this level of escalation.

He said he also was concerned about how immediate riches would affect the motivational level of young players who still have to learn how to play and to accept instruction.

“I’m disappointed not being able to sign John Burke, but I’m not mourning,” Wood said. “We survived what the media called the dismantling of our major league team when we decided to go with younger players, and we’ll survive the loss of John Burke.

“I’m more concerned about our ability to survive these quantum leaps.”

Taylor, Henderson, Burke and Hamilton are all advised by Pomona-based attorney Scott Boras, who has become the draft’s primary mover and shaker.

Boras contends that the escalation in signing bonuses is simply:

--An overdue response to their being held down so long.

--A recognition of the value of pitching in an era when (1) it is thin throughout the major leagues and (2) clubs have opted for economic force-feeding with young players.

“How many pitchers throw 200 innings and get you 12 to 18 wins any more?” Boras said. “The standings depend almost entirely on starting pitching, and most clubs want to develop their own because it’s almost impossible to trade for.”

Boras also maintains that there is virtually no risk to drafting and signing a college pitcher, calling those taken among the first eight picks “a sure thing.”

Said Boras: “From 1987 though 1990, the only pitcher (among those taken in the first eight picks) who didn’t make it to the majors in less than two years was Bill Bene (a converted outfielder selected by the Dodgers), and he was a strange pick, to say the least.

“In the ’88 draft, Andy Benes, Jim Abbott and Gregg Olson were in the big leagues in less than a year, and Ben McDonald (No. 1 in ‘89) made it almost overnight.”

The 1990 draft already has produced more than a half-dozen others, including Mike Mussina, Kirk Dressendorfer and Fernandez.

The 1991 quantum leap, as Wood called it, can be measured by the following: Taylor’s $1.55-million bonus more than triples the then-record $350,000 that McDonald received from the Baltimore Orioles only two years ago.

A year earlier, Benes got $235,000, and Abbott and Olson received $200,000 each.

The Yankees agreed to Taylor’s record demands when he agreed to a minor league contract. A major league contract would have meant he had to be protected on the 40-man roster, and the Yankees would have had to expose another player in next year’s expansion draft.

George Steinbrenner, the exiled Yankee owner watching from a distance, had said that club management “ought to be shot” if Taylor wasn’t signed. But Steinbrenner, the man who doled out millions to Pascual Perez, Andy Hawkins and Mike Witt, among other suspect pitchers, took an inexplicably different tack after the signing.

“The only thing I said was that I would love to see them sign their first-round draft choice,” he told Newsday. “I never said, ‘Go spend a million and a half.’ On a high school kid? No way.

“I’m getting damned tired of people spending my money like this.”

This is one time Steinbrenner would find support from the other owners.

Zimmer’s View

As the Chicago Cubs try to act out the role of spoiler in today’s series finale against the Dodgers, former manager Don Zimmer continues to relax at his home in St. Petersburg, Fla., playing golf when his back permits, watching at least two games a day on television and forming some opinions. Among them:

--Atlanta is very much for real in the National League West.

“I don’t look for the Braves to fall out of it,” Zimmer said. “They have outstanding pitching and a chance to win every day because of it.

“It’s easy to say the Dodgers have the experience, but I don’t put a lot of merit in that when the other club has just as much talent and maybe more.”

--At 60, having been fired from four major league managerial jobs, he wants to try it again--or at least return to uniform as a coach.

“I had some front office and scouting offers as soon as I was fired (with the Cubs 18-19 in May), but I’m not ready for that,” he said. “I still like being in uniform, hitting fungoes, doing whatever is required of a coach or manager. We won a division in ‘89, and I still feel I have a lot to offer. I hope to be back in uniform next year.”

--He now knows that what people told him in the wake of his firing is true: that broadcasters Harry Caray and Steve Stone can cut up a manager or a player with all the proficiency of a butcher.

“I never heard them when I was managing, but now I sit and listen and know what people mean,” he said. “It’s amazing. They’ve got all the answers after the fact. It must be easy from up there. I hear other announcers, but none of them are like those two. I mean, people told me they did a job on me, and now I can believe it.”

Zimmer was fired primarily because he attempted to force the hand of club President Don Grenesko, who was quoted as saying that the manager’s contract situation would be evaluated after the season. Zimmer, his pride stung, didn’t think he needed to be evaluated and told Grenesko he wanted a decision by July 1.

He got it about six weeks early in the form of his dismissal. The Cubs, plagued by pitching injuries, arrived in Los Angeles with a 47-43 record under Jim Essian, the new manager.

Zimmer said he was neither angry nor bitter, that he thought he had to do what he had to do in going to Grenesko.

“I think my record in Chicago spoke for itself,” he said. “I still don’t think I needed to be evaluated.”

Killer Bs

Bobby Bonilla of the Pittsburgh Pirates will become a free agent at the end of this season. His friend and teammate, Barry Bonds, will gain his freedom a year later. Bonds, who lives in Temecula, said he hopes that they can arrange a package deal with the San Diego Padres.

“That’s the place I want to go,” Bonds said. “Everyone wants to play at home. There’s nothing more I’d like to do than go there and hit home runs and bring a championship to San Diego.

“Me and Bobby have talked a lot about that.”

Bonilla has also talked a lot about returning to his New York neighborhood with either the Yankees or the Mets.

“If he goes there , he’ll go there without me,” Bonds said.

Dodger Windfall?

The Dodgers have mailed a playoff and World Series ticket application to season ticket-holders with the following note: “All tickets for games not played will be automatically credited to season accounts.”

What, no refund if all or some of the games aren’t played?

What, the Dodgers are going to sit and draw six months’ interest on some $20 million that will be applied to 1992 season tickets?

Walter Nash, the club’s vice president of ticket operations, insisted it isn’t what it seems, that if the Dodgers fail to make the playoffs or play only a partial number of postseason games, a follow-up letter will be sent giving the 27,000 season ticket-holders the option of a cash refund or credit on their 1992 season purchases.

He said it is part of a new system designed to improve bookkeeping and the refund process will protect season ticket holders in the event of lost tickets.

All of that is undoubtedly true, but cynics, suspecting a windfall, find it curious that the refund option wasn’t explained in the applications that must be returned by Sept. 6.