After Scott Diamond didn’t get drafted in the 2008 major-league amateur free agent draft, the Ontario native found a home with the Braves — but what he didn’t know was that wouldn’t be the last place he called home.
“For a kid to not get drafted, it’s scary,” the former Braves minor-league pitcher said. “When you put as much work in, as much passion, as much love into the game as all of us do and to not feel rewarded for it, it’s incredibly disheartening. I was one of the lucky few to get that second chance.”
Diamond was signed as an undrafted free-agent. He played for the Rome and Myrtle Beach Braves his first year before moving to the Mississippi Braves for 2009 and then finally the Gwinnett Braves in 2010.
“It brought back memories of the opportunities that the Braves did give me in signing me out of a summer-league team,” Diamond said of watching the 2014 MLB Draft.
Even though he always envisioned his Major League debut at Turner field, that ended up not being the case.
“When I wasn’t protected in 2010 and I got rule five’d over to the Twins, my goal was to always make it to the big leagues,” Diamond said. “Sometimes players lose sight of the fact that you could make it with any team rather than the one that choose you.”
The first time Diamond sat in a dugout on Turner Field it wasn’t in a Braves jersey. In 2013, when Diamond was pitching for Minnesota, the Twins made a trip to Atlanta for a three-game series, which the Braves ended up sweeping.
“I was the one guy not to pitch that series, which was kind of funny,” Diamond said. “But it would have been kind of cool facing Freddie (Freeman) or Jason (Heyward) after coming up with them.”
After two seasons of starting on and off for the Twins, Diamond was optioned to Triple-A Rochester.
“My goal is to obviously get back and being a consistent contributor to the (Twins) team,” Diamond said. “I got to pitch a little better here and hopefully I can do that once again.”
Though it’s been four years since Diamond has donned Braves navy blue and red he still considers himself a part of the organization with which he’s spent most of his professional career.
“They definitely built my foundation, but because I got that opportunity with the Twins I consider myself a Twin,” Diamond said. “A lot of my foundation and my characteristics are definitely from the Braves’ organization. So I’m a hybrid.”
