A New Pitch

A New Pitch

INVESTING by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

A top New York Yankees draft pick now dispenses financial advice, not fastballs.

The idea of top amateur athletes having a bevy of people - so-called advisers from long-lost cousins to long-forgotten kindergarten classmates - hanging around them, ready to grab a share of the big money is as old as leather helmets and metal spikes.

And in 1993, when Matt Drews graduated Sarasota High School as one of the top pitching prospects in baseball, he was in a prime position to experience the spectacle. His star-quality resume was magnetic: He played in the Little League World Series in 1986 as a 12-year-old; he was a key part of Sarasota High School's 1993 state championship; and his 90 mph-plus fastball and intimidating 6-foot-8 build were a scout's dream and a hitter's nightmare.

But fortunately for Drews, when the New York Yankees picked him in the first round of the 1993 amateur draft, the hangers-on surrounding him were more like the Three Wise Men, especially when it came to money matters. The trio was made up of Drews' father, Ron Drews, an executive with several Sarasota banks and a former draft pick of the New York Mets; his father's close friend, Sarasota-area CPA Ray Suplee; and his stepfather, Chuck Vollmer, a long-time money manger now who now runs the Longboat Key office of the Stanford Group, a Houston-based global investment firm.

With an entourage like that, Drews quickly learned the importance of having people around him who could offer timely, legitimate and savvy financial advice, from things like which stocks to buy to which tax deductions to focus on to mortgage options.

Drews now uses those lessons regularly in his current day-job, as one of the only financial advisers to focus his career on working for current and former major league baseball players. He quit playing baseball in 2000 and began working at the Stanford Group in 2004. About 80% of his clients are current major leaguers, with the rest being professionals in Greater Sarasota.

"People look at me as more than just a baseball player now," says Drews, 32. "I want to be known as the best financial adviser to athletes."

'Go play'

Many of Drews' clients say it's the combination of baseball and smarts that separate him. Bubba Trammell, an outfielder who formerly played with the Mets, Yankees and Detroit Tigers and is trying to make a comeback this year with the Baltimore Orioles, met Drews through a mutual friend a few years ago.

Trammell says he got to know Drews and realized that he backed up his ideas and suggestions about investing and finances with evidence. Trammel says that finding people he could trust with financial decisions, especially once the "money started rolling in" had always been a struggle. Says Trammell: "Ballplayers are not very trustworthy."

He signed on with Drews and soon realized that his advice was about more than the Dow and the S & P 500. Trammell says he runs basically every money situation past Drews now, from whether to buy a certain new car or how to choose an accountant. "It makes things easy to have someone take care of the financial things," says Trammell, "so I can go out and play."

Another current player Drews represents is Scott Eyre, a pitcher with the Chicago Cubs and a fellow Sarasota native. A framed jersey signed by Eyre hangs on a wall of Drews' office.

Drews says he approaches each player/client with an even-handed approach. Salaries are so lucrative in baseball today - the league's average salary is $2.69 million a year, according to the player's association - that there is a lot of money to be made, as well as lost.

So Drews holds up a client's desired lifestyle to the actual salary and comes up with a plan to cover current needs and long-term investing. "Nobody is there," says Drews, "to tell them about living somewhere in the middle."

The fast track

Drews' says his biggest challenge with clients who double as ballplayers is having frank conversations with them about what they should and shouldn't be doing with their money, both while they are playing and after their careers end. For one, he doesn't like to tell people 'no,' but more poignantly, Drews knows first-hand how difficult it could be when an athlete realizes he can't play at the top levels anymore.

Drews' career officially ended in 2000, when he was with the Devil Ray's top minor league team in Durham, N.C. The culprit was a deteriorating nerve that zapped the strength out of his shoulder. Drews won 34 games in seven minor league seasons and although he accumulated three years of major league service, his injury prevented him from ever pitching in a big league game.

It wasn't long after he officially quit baseball that Drews began to focus on a career in business. He had grown up around banks, going to board and staff meetings with his dad when he was a young boy and then working as a teller when he was a teenager.

Drews enrolled in business classes at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg College just a few weeks after leaving baseball. With the school's help, Drews created an intensive curriculum that allowed him to accelerate his degree: He took day and night classes, as well as ones over weekends and over the summer and by doing so, he earned a four-year Bachelor's degree in finance in two years.

For his college try, Drews finally ended up being applauded as he stood inside Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. Only that day, in the summer of 2002, he was wearing a cap and gown at graduation, not a Yankees or a Devil Rays uniform.

"It was the best thing I ever did," Drews says about going to college and the fast track he took. "It took me completely out of the baseball mindset."

REVIEW SUMMARY

Who. Matt Drews

Business. Financial Advisor, the Stanford Group, Longboat Key

Key. Drews, a former professional baseball player, focuses on former and current baseball players in his second career as a financial adviser.

Been there

A prerequisite for a career in giving financial advice to professional athletes is that one can't be in awe of being around celebrities or otherwise famous folks.

And most of the time, Matt Drews, a Longboat Key and Sarasota-based financial adviser who focuses on counseling former and current baseball players has that concept covered: As a New York Yankees top draft pick in 1993, for example, Drews sat in a luxury box for a game with Yankees owner and part-time Tampa resident George Steinbrenner.

What's more, Drews grew up around a baseball family; his father Ron Drews was a top New York Mets draft pick, while his grandfather, Karl Drews, pitched for the Yankees in the 1940s, including the 1948 World Series.

But even Drews can be awed and silenced around true greatness. Such as the time, in Drews' first spring training as an 18-year-old in 1993, Joe DiMaggio walked into the Yankees clubhouse. The all-time great strolled straight up to Drews to say hello, wish him luck and share memories of playing with Karl Drews.

The younger Drews considers the moment one of his greatest in sports.

-Mark Gordon