PITTSBURGH -- Investing heavily in prep talent in the MLB Draft is risky, but the adage is that it's the best way to access premium athleticism. While 11th-round pick Matthew Boughton was both the fourth high schooler and the fourth shortstop picked by the White Sox in this past week's draft, he might embody the concept as well as anyone.
"I just always ran faster, jumped higher than everyone else," Boughton said in a phone call. "Maybe it high school it started to click that I was more athletic, just doing track and winning all the events.
Boughton didn't join the track and field team at Covenant Christian Academy, a suburban school in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex, until his sophomore year. But that was simply a function of when the track coach first spotted Boughton, who still only is listed at 6-foot-2 now, dunking in the layup line before a basketball game he was playing in. The story is probably fairly evocative told from the coach's perspective, but Boughton's demure retelling has its own appeal.
"I just started to dunk, nothing to it really," Boughton said. "I just gave it a shot and I was up there."
It's at this juncture where its illustrative to point out that Boughton's primary focus has both always been baseball, and always been shortstop. Covenant Christian's head coach is his father Michael Boughton, a fellow shortstop who played four years of minor league baseball before spending another eight years as a coach in the Dodgers organization, and has long been preparing his son for the rigors of pro baseball. Matthew is also of Japanese descent through his mother's side of the family, has visited the baseball-crazed country multiple times and views that background as another element of his passion and commitment to the sport.
Rather than simply a physical freak whom the Sox are hoping will conquer the complexities of the game via the power of quick-twitch, springy athleticism, Boughton is the baseball player that other coaches kept trying to pry off the diamond for a moment of brilliance. So while he was up there dunking, CCA found both the anchor leg of their 4 x 100 and 4 x 200-meter dash relays, and an eventual three-time Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools (TAPPS) state champion in the high jump and long jump, but they did not find someone who would have time to show up to every practice.
"I actually did not practice at all," Boughton said. "I just showed up to the meets and just laid out my mark and just jumped. So there's zero practice in that. It's kinda funny. [Fellow jumpers] are kind of mad when you beat them and are like, 'I've never done this.'"
As fun as anecdotes of future professional athletes squaring off against high schoolers always are, Sox fans have been sold on toolsy players who excelled in other sports before. But Boughton views his game through the framework of his athleticism, talking of using the explosiveness in his legs to create ground pressure as he loads up for his swing, or to drive his quick first steps toward the ball on defense.
Acknowledging that his high school competition wasn't the strongest, the 19-year-old found facing pro-level velocity and similar level of athletes on the showcase circuit as a more enjoyable version of the game, which he ultimately decided to keep pursuing.
"He brought five tools to the table," said White Sox scouting director Mike Shirley. "When you look at the chronological age, it's a little bit older, so you have a tendency to get dinged in the industry. But the tools were real, like, all five of them are real. It's shortstop. It's athletic. It's a sweet stroke. It's actions that got everything, too."
Shirley's other quote about Boughton on draft night got more attention, where he bluntly expressed surprise that the Texas A&M commit was ready and willing to sign a deal in the 11th round, one round earlier than his father was drafted by the Diamondbacks 29 years ago. The Sox had previously considered taking Boughton in the fifth round, at a price that Shirley said would have been double from what he ultimately agreed. Since Boughton is flying out to the team complex in Arizona on Sunday, the comments didn't certainly didn't color what was already a done deal.
Moreover, Boughton started to feel he was ready for the next level as his senior year wore on. The eight homers he hit this season represented a power breakout that he both feels was largely fueled by added strength, and he thinks adding bulk to his still skinny frame through a professional program is a logical next step.
Going to a college baseball powerhouse in College Station would very likely have set up Boughton to land a higher bonus in the draft down the road. But he imagined he'll get the same number of reps next season in the White Sox organization as he might have seen in two seasons of college baseball.
"If I went to college, I could be a top-three-rounder, but I think I just wanted to kickstart my career as a professional and work my way up from there," Boughton said. "I really liked the idea of going to pro ball and getting my 400 at-bats there rather than college. It really was just the decision I had to talk with my parents about, and we chose pro ball."
