After trade to Rockies, prospect Vidourek finds some familiar faces

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DENVER -- Rockies outfield prospect Landyn Vidourek is still settling in after a week of change.

Last Monday, Vidourek was on Single-A Ontario’s team bus headed for a series at San Jose when he received a call that he had been traded from the parent Dodgers to the Rockies. That meant a flight to Fresno, where he spent his first week in the Colorado system playing for the Grizzlies.

Vidourek found himself back in Ontario, only playing for the Fresno team. In between playing a six-game series against his old club, Vidourek will be packing his apartment in Ontario. While the team buses back to Fresno, Vidourek will drive and truly settle into his new digs.

But Vidourek, 22, has some familiar voices with the Rockies.

When the Dodgers drafted Vidourek in the second round out of the University of Cincinnati last year, Josh Byrnes was that team’s assistant general manager and Brett Pill was the Dodgers’ Minor League hitting coach.

Now, Byrnes is Rockies general manager and Pill is the Rockies’ Major League hitting coach. Both have some background with Vidourek, who has struggled in his first pro season.

“After getting drafted, Josh came out to watch us play and he’s a great guy -- he’s got a lot of trust and hope and faith in me,” Vidourek said. “Brett Pill, I got to work with him right after I got drafted while I was at the complex [for a mini-camp] with the Dodgers. I was going to go out to Arizona and work with him, but he got hired by the Rockies.”

It helps to have familiarity as Vidourek works through some difficult times in his first full pro season.

Going into Wednesday, Vidourek carried a combined .166 batting average in 67 combined games, including a 1-for-19 with 11 strikeouts in his first six games in the Rockies’ system to increase his season total to 111.

Beneath the rough numbers was some of why the Dodgers drafted him so high and the Rockies asked for him, along with Triple-A relief pitcher Nick Frasso, before sending righty reliever Seth Halvorsen to the Dodgers. In his first six games with Fresno, Vidourek drew nine walks to lift his season total to 60 (in 67 games total).

Vidourek has the physical gifts -- 6-1 and 200 pounds with above-Major League average speed -- to realize what the Dodgers and now the Rockies expect.

The athletic ability is a family trait. His great-grandfather, Paul Huesman, played at the University of Cincinnati as a teammate of Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax. Vidourek said with a smile that his grandfather, “is still kicking it and doing really well at 91, and has really good stories.”

His father’s side of the family was full of athletes who made it to collegiate baseball. Those athletes included his uncle, Patrick Foster, who coached him in baseball growing up.

Vidourek, himself, was a well-rounded athlete -- a football quarterback at Badin High School in Hamilton, Ohio (same school that produced one-time Rockies manager Jim Tracy), and a baseball player who went to college as a shortstop and pitcher before going to the outfield so he could get onto the field faster. Vidourek batted .304 with 14 home runs and went 39-for-40 on stolen base attempts his final year at Cincinnati.

So the framework is there. Vidourek said he has hit it off with Fresno’s hitting coach, Greg Jones, and hopes to spend time with Pill this winter.

“It’s just being more consistent,” Vidourek said. “I’ve done a lot of swing changes, trying to figure stuff out. You try other things, and I lost the rhythm that went with the swing I had before. Once we get there, it’s going to be a matter of fine-tuning stuff. I’ll get back to the old me that was barreling balls up a couple of times a game.

“It’s a learning curve, but I’m along for the ride.”