Early Career
He graduated from Del City High School in Del City, Oklahoma. He attended Seminole State College. The 6-4, 227 pound right-hander was originally drafted by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in the 34th round of the 2000 amateur entry draft. The Minnesota Twins then drafted him in the 29th round of the 2001 amateur entry draft. The Minnesota Twins signed him on May 21, 2002. From 2002 to 2007, he pitched 6 seasons for the Minnesota Twins minor league system. In 138 minor league appearances, he pitched 702 innings, posting 40-40 record with 434 strikeouts and a 3.68 ERA. His best season in the minors came in 2007, and after the season Baseball America ranked him as the Twins' No. 1 prospect.
Read more about this topic: Nick Blackburn
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or career:
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)