Baseball receives great news

There's a reason they say it's hard for major league teams to pry recruits away from their Vanderbilt commitment.

Following in the footsteps of David Price and Pedro Alvarez, third baseman Jason Esposito turned down a contract offer to play for the Kansas City Royals and will enroll at Vanderbilt University this fall, according to the NH Register.

The Royals drafted Esposito in the seventh round of this year’s draft and offered the Gatorade Connecticut Baseball Player of the Year a whopping $1.5 million signing bonus over two seasons. Think about how much money that is -- just for playing baseball.

“I wanted to take it,” Esposito said. “But then emotions settled down and you put things into perspective. Do I want to go off and play professional baseball at 17 years old? This is the best possible situation. It will benefit me in long run.”

This is great news for the Commodores, who are looking to replace Alvarez and Ryan Flaherty on the left side of the infield. Esposito should start at shortstop from day one after fellow recruit Anthony Hewitt was drafted in the first round by the Philadelphia Phillies.

“I love the program and what they have to offer,” Esposito said. “I’m not going to get any worse going there, I’m only going to get better.”

Thanks to New York Dore for sharing the link. On another note, I was in Wareham yesterday covering the Cape Cod Baseball League season opener and met a scout for Perfect Game, who coincidentally lives in Connecticut. He could not say enough good things about Esposito and actually thought that he was going to sign (like we all did).

He added that coach Tim Corbin took a trip to Connecticut earlier in the week to visit (or persuade) Esposito. Looks like it paid off.

Make sure to take a look at my 2009 projections, which will be updated soon since I had wrongly assumed that Esposito would sign after he told Connecticut Post that "Looks like I'm not going to school" after receiving a "life-changing amount" of money.

Something tells me Corbin showed Esposito the same spiral-bound booklet he gave Alvarez back in 2005.

Photo [Perfect Game]