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Dick Groch, a longtime talent evaluator who served as a scout for the New York Yankees and later as a special assistant to the general manager for the Milwaukee Brewers, died on Wednesday night, according to MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy. He was 84 years old.
Groch enjoyed more notoriety than the average scout because he became synonymous with the Yankees’ decision to draft shortstop Derek Jeter with the sixth pick in the 1992 amateur draft. Indeed, it was Groch who swayed scouting director Bill Livesey to choose Jeter despite Jeter’s outstanding commitment to play for the University of Michigan.
“He’s not going to the University of Michigan,” Groch said as part of his pitch to the organization. “The only place Derek Jeter is going is Cooperstown.”
While that may sound like a post-hoc fabrication, Groch had the pre-draft scouting report to validate his longstanding belief in Jeter’s game. The full report can be viewed here, but Groch graded Jeter as a 64 on the 20-80 scouting scale. What that means, in short, is that he expected Jeter to develop into a star-level performer.
The Yankees would take Jeter, as Groch campaigned, and it’s fair to write that Jeter would go on to vindicate Groch’s report projection — and some. Jeter reached the majors in 1995 to begin a 20-year career. He would hit .310/.377/.440 (115 OPS+) with 3,465 hits and 260 home runs. His contributions were worth an estimated 71.3 Wins Above Replacement, per Baseball Reference.
Jeter would win five World Series and Gold Glove Awards and would earn 14 nods to the All-Star Game. And yes, he would also make it into Cooperstown, being elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the vote back in 2020, his first year on the ballot. Just as Groch predicted.