Jon Adkins

On his 1960s radio show, White Sox owner Bill Veeck once declared, “A ballclub is no better than its scouts.”1 One former White Sox player who found his true calling not on the field, but as a scout for one of the best teams in baseball, is pitcher Jon Adkins.

Born on August 30, 1977, in Huntington, West Virginia, to parents Doug and Peggy Adkins, Jonathan Scott Adkins grew up in the nearby town of Wayne with his older brother, Mark. Doug Adkins taught ornamental horticulture and turf grass management at Wayne High School and ran a community greenhouse where students, including those with special needs, could learn about working and interacting with people. (As of 2024 the greenhouse still operated.)

In high school Jon played basketball and baseball. As a freshman he pitched on the state championship team alongside his cousin, Tim Adkins. Tim later signed with the Toronto Blue Jays and spent 12 years in the minors as a left-handed pitcher. Though he never made it to the major leagues, Tim’s experience gave Jon his first glimpse of a possible major-league career.

The high-school baseball team won the state championship again his junior and senior years, and in the summers he played on the Lexington Dixie travel team, for which he faced better hitters and honed his game. Between travel ball and help from his high-school coach, George Brumfield, Jon, who pitched right-handed, was attracting interest from college programs and pro scouts. Upon graduation, he chose to attend Oklahoma State University and play for coach Gary Ward.

“I knew I would have an opportunity pitch early,” Adkins said about choosing Oklahoma State. “And coming from a small town in West Virginia, I felt comfortable in a smallish town [like Stillwater].”2

After Adkins’ freshman year, he pitched for the Orleans Cardinals of the Cape Cod League, alongside college teammate and roommate Josh Holliday. Starting with the 1997 season, Josh’s father, Tom Holliday, Oklahoma State’s pitching coach and recruiting coordinator, took over as coach of the OSU Cowboys. While Tom Holliday led Oklahoma State to the College World Series in 1999, Adkins wasn’t part of that team. In June 1998 he was selected by the Oakland Athletics in the ninth round of the amateur draft, though injury kept him out of the rookie leagues that year.

And so began Adkins’ journey through the A’s minor-league system as a starting pitcher in Modesto, Midland, and Sacramento. His first assignment was in 1999 to the Class-A Modesto A’s (California League), where he appeared in 26 games (15 starts) and worked 102 innings with a record of 9-5 and a 4.76 ERA. “They did a good job developing and nurturing players,” Adkins said, “and they have a lot of continuity. When I go back as a scout or to the instructional league, I see a lot of the same coaches.”

In 2000 Adkins spent some time with the Arizona League A’s, pitching 15 innings with a 3.00 ERA and a 1-1 record. He then went back to Modesto, where his 1.81 ERA and 5-2 record in nine games jumped him from high-A to Triple A at the end of the season. With the Sacramento River Cats, he pitched in only one game; the resulting 9.00 ERA prompted his start at the beginning of the 2001 season in the Double-A Texas League with the Midland Rockhounds.

Adkins started 24 games in Midland, pitching 137⅓ innings and finishing 8-8 with a 4.46 ERA. Again at the end of the season he was sent to Sacramento, where he fared a bit better. He appeared in three games and started two, his ERA was 4.26 at the end of the season.

Adkins began the 2002 season back in Sacramento, where he started 20 games with a 6.03 ERA. He was traded on July 25 to the White Sox for second baseman Ray Durham and cash. Durham was a fan favorite and an All-Star in 1998 and 2000, but he was also in the last year of his contract.

“The decision to trade Ray was not an easy one,” White Sox general manager Ken Williams told ESPN. “Ray has been part of our family since 1990, [however,] in Adkins, we are getting a young pitcher with a live, quick power arm.”3

After the trade, Adkins was assigned to the White Sox’ Triple-A affiliate, the Charlotte Knights, for the remainder of the 2002 season. He immediately contributed to the team, starting seven of the eight games in which he appeared and finishing with a 3.69 ERA.

He began the 2003 season with the Knights as well. Adkins started 19 of 26 games through mid-August, pitching 122⅔ innings with a 3.96 ERA. He was called up to the White Sox in August when right-handed reliever Billy Koch was injured.

Adkins had been a starting pitcher until the big leagues, but his major-league debut came in relief when he came out of the bullpen on the road against the Anaheim Angels on August 14, 2003. “That day was a whirlwind of emotions,” he said. “It was a lot of grind to get to that point, but it was a very fulfilling, special day, especially being able to share it with my family.”

Adkins entered the game for manager Jerry Manuel in the bottom of the seventh inning, in a game the Angels were winning 4-0. There were two outs and a runner on first base. Adkins walked designated hitter Tim Salmon, then yielded a ground-rule RBI double to third baseman Scott Spiezio. After Adkins walked Bengie Molina, Manuel took the ball from him and gave it to Scott Schoeneweis, who struck out Adam Kennedy.

It was an inauspicious debut, but Adkins was given another shot the next night, against the Rangers in Texas. He worked 2⅓ innings, charged with four runs in an 11-5 loss.

Adkins appeared in two late September games, the second one in Kansas City, where he worked the final four innings, allowing just one hit.

For the 2003-2005 seasons, Adkins bounced between Charlotte and Chicago, continuing to answer the call from the bullpen, appearing in four games for the White Sox in 2003. He spent the entire 2004 season in Chicago, pitching 62 innings in 50 games and amassing a 2-3 record with a 4.65 ERA.

“Whenever I think about [moving from starter to reliever], I kind of say, I’d like it in the bullpen,” Adkins told the Chicago Sun-Times. “It’s an adrenaline rush that you get going. … Whatever they need me to do, that’s what I’ll go out and do.”4

Adkins made the 40-man roster for what became the World Series season in 2005. But with an already loaded bullpen that would finish the year with a 3.23 ERA, he didn’t make the team out of spring training. He did come up for about a month, however, pitching 8⅓ innings in five games during the team’s drive to the AL Central Division title. He did not make the postseason roster, but did earn a World Series ring.

Released after the season, Adkins signed with the San Diego Padres, spending almost all season with the major-league club, where he appeared in 55 games and finished with a 3.98 ERA. It might be just a coincidence, but he joked in his interview that his year with the Padres was the last time they won the NL West.

At the end of the 2006 season, the Padres traded Adkins and outfielder Ben Johnson to the New York Mets for Heath Bell and Royce Ring. After his brief stint with the Mets and some time with Yaquis de Obregon of the Mexican Pacific Winter League, he signed with the Cincinnati Reds as a free agent in late 2007.

“That was a really cool couple of years,” Adkins said of his time with Cincinnati. “Growing up in West Virginia, which is Reds country, they were at their peak in 1990 when I was an impressionable eighth-grader.”5 He pitched in only four games for the Reds, though, in the 2008 season, spending most of his time with Triple-A Louisville. Released before the 2009 season, and after pitching in both the Mexican Pacific Winter League and the Venezuelan Winter League, signed with the Lotte Giants of the Korean Baseball Organization.

“That was a cool experience,” he said of his time in the beachfront city of Busan, where the Giants played. The team “has a really good fan base and are a good organization to play for. The manager was Jerry Royster and the pitching coach was Fernando Arroyo, who I knew from the A’s minor-league system.” Though some of the coaching staff were familiar, playing in Korea was an eye-opening experience, starting with spring training in Sai-Pan. “My grandfather told me how Sai-Pan was a strategic island during World War II, and that’s something I would normally never get to see, being from a small town.” Another new aspect of the KBO was the length of the season – 10 months vs. the six-month US major-league season. Adkins thrived there, leading the league with 26 saves.

His performance garnered another call from the Reds. They signed Adkins again for the 2010 season and sent him to Triple-A Louisville, where he pitched in 34 games before being released right before the All-Star break. At that point, a rookie named Chris Sale was pitching in the bullpen for Triple-A Charlotte and was called up to the White Sox. With a slot to fill, the White Sox signed Adkins and he finished the year (and his playing career) there.

“I wanted to go out on my own terms,” Adkins said. “I didn’t want to bang around Triple A a long time, eating up innings.” He thought he might want to transition to scouting, so he had a conversation with John Farrell, another pitcher from Oklahoma State who later coached there and had just been named manager of the Toronto Blue Jays.

“He advised me to develop my evaluation skills in order to get back on the field,” Adkins said, which he did, and as a result, “I love scouting.”

By the end of the 2010 season, Adkins was hired by the Boston Red Sox as an area scout, the first two years for the Ohio Valley and then three years in South Texas and South Louisiana. He signed Travis Shaw, whom the Red Sox selected in the ninth round of the 2011 draft. In 2015 he was hired by the Los Angeles Dodgers for whom, as of 2024, he was the Northeast regional cross-checker working out of Lexington, Kentucky.

He also went back to school, using MLB’s college scholarship plan. As a native of West Virginia, he chose Marshall University, which many members of his family had attended. In 2010 he earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts. As for his master’s degree, “I’ve had that since I was 20 years old, with all of my life experiences in baseball.”

In his spare time, he said in his 2024 interview, he enjoyed hunting, working out, and spending time with his girlfriend, Jen. They attend football games at the University of Kentucky and of course Oklahoma State, where Jen’s son is on the football equipment staff.

But the majority of his time is spent scouting, where his philosophy is, “If you dominate the job you’re in and be where your feet are, good things will happen.”6 As a high-school pitcher in a small town in West Virginia, he may not have predicted where life would take him, but it seems to be going in the right direction. “I’ve been lucky to be around a lot of good baseball people,” Adkins said. “It’s been a good ride so far.”

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Baseball Almanac.com, ESPN.com, the New York Times, and a number of other publications, as well as the Korean Baseball Organization website at

https://www.koreabaseball.com/record/player.asp?player_id=79596.

Notes

1 Paul Dickson, Bill Veeck Baseball’s Greatest Maverick (New York: Walker Brooks, 2012), 536.

2 Author interview with Jon Adkins on February 20, 2024. Unless otherwise indicated, all direct quotations in this biography come from this interview.

3 “Athletics Acquire Durham for Stretch Run,” ESPN.com, July 26, 2002, accessed October 4, 2024. https://www.espn.com/mlb/news/2002/0725/1410102.html.

4 Doug Padilla, “Ex-Starter Adkins Having Fun in Bullpen,” Chicago Sun-Times, May 18, 2004. Suntimes.com, accessed February 17, 2024. https://www.espn.com/mlb/news/2002/0725/1410102.html.