The Other Guy on the Card

2005 Topps David Wright/Craig Brazell

Most people who have seen at least 2 seconds of any baseball highlight has an idea who David Wright is. But who the guinea pigs is Craig Brazell? Lets take a look see...

Brazell was drafted out of High School by the Mets in the 5th round of the '98 draft, fresh off a .536 AVG in his Senior year. Obviously, he was relatively highly touted.

The Mets saw the potential for him to develop into a power threat as a 1B (hmm, this is sounding familar). Beginning play in '98, he didn't get promoted to Double A until '02 and then found himself in Triple A the following year.

He made his Mets debut on August 17th, 2004 at 1B, but was used mainly has a pinch hitter in 24 games. Brazell was pretty respectable, hitting .265 with 2 doubles, a home run and 3 RBI that year, but found himself back in the minors the following year only to then be released at the end of the season.

2006- Signed Minor League contract with the Dodgers, where he spent the season in Double-A

2007- Signed Minor League contract with the Royals.

He started to settle in and after 30 games was promoted to their Triple-A team. Making the PCL All Star team and hitting 32 homers in Triple-A alone that year wasn't what the Royals were looking for I guess however, and he was again released at the end of the year.

In 2008 Brazell was playing in Japan were I'm assuming he still is.

Looking at his Major League stats, he obviously never panned out to be the star the Mets were hoping for, but his Minor League career says that they weren't so far off...



1,240 hits, 266 doubles, 17 triples, 209 home runs, 777 RBI and a .281 AVG.

That's not so bad! 20+ home runs a year was his M.O, but he seemed to be one of those Quad-A players. Too good for the minors, but not quite above and beyond for the Majors.

Final Verdict:
All in all, if I could have been playing professional baseball when I was 18 and fresh out of high school, I'd be pretty happy. And to have 200 home runs at any level, I'd take that as well.

Again, I get sawed off at the batting cages.

The "Other Guy"- 2
Joe- 0

(...Joe)