Scout School Article

[MassBrew]

We linked to a story about this a couple of years ago -- still cool to see (not necessarily Brewer-related):

 

Link while active:

 

www.azcentral.com/news/ar...ool26.html

 

Elite school teaches chosen few how to spot baseball talent

Joseph A. Reaves

The Arizona Republic

 

Learning to become a baseball scout isn't exactly curing cancer.

 

If it were, Emily Christy might be the only one walking into Game 3 of the World Series tonight at St. Louis' Busch Stadium toting a radar gun and a stopwatch.

 

Christy is a Princeton graduate, former post-bachelor's, pre-med student at Georgetown University and one-time manager of a nationally recognized cancer research lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

 

She's also a lifelong Boston Red Sox fan and one of the newest graduates of Major League Baseball's Scout Development Program, held at the Phoenix Sheraton Crescent Hotel this month.

 

Baseball's invitation-only scout school is an annual event in the Valley of the Sun, but almost nobody knows about it. Nobody that is, except everybody in baseball and anybody who ever yearned to be a scout.

 

At scout school, students learn to grade a prospect's arm strength and evaluate fielding, hitting, power and running. But in the end, it comes down to a judgment call. Is this a major league ballplayer or not?

 

There is an art to going to ballparks across the country and "finding a guy who looks like a player," said Don Pries, former director of the Major League Scouting Bureau and undisputed dean of the scouting world.

 

Pries said that when he started scouting in 1959, "they handed me a black book and said, 'Go sign somebody.' "

 

On the fast track

 

At this year's school, Christy and 40 other hand-picked students spent 12 days and nights learning from some of the legends of scouting how to tell a budding Barry Bonds from the next future flop.

 

Students sat through more than 70 hours of classroom lectures and often-rambunctious discussion groups with a dozen instructors.

 

"It was the fastest two weeks of my life, and that was just the first two days," said Christy, 28, who is on something of a fast track herself.

 

While at MIT, Christy ran the New England Women's Baseball League. She always loved the game, but running that league helped convince her that she wanted to be part of baseball more than she wanted to write another research paper on the "epigenetic effects" of "astrocytoma in mice."

 

She wanted it so much that she left MIT and accepted an internship with the Los Angeles Dodgers' Class-A affiliate in Vero Beach, Fla. For good measure, she double-dipped as business manager for the Rookie League Gulf Coast Dodgers.

 

In just 10 months, Christy rose from intern to assistant general manager of the Vero Beach Dodgers. Then the big league club asked her to go to scout school.

 

"I was really proud to be named assistant general manager, but to tell you the truth, it was more of a big deal to me that the Dodgers sent me here," said Christy, the lone female in this year's class and just the sixth to graduate since scout school began in 1989.

 

Harder than Harvard

 

Christy should be proud. The Scout Development Program is harder to get into than Harvard.

 

Students must be nominated by one major-league team or the Major League Scouting Bureau, which runs the school.

 

"If we opened it to the public, we'd have a thriving business," said Frank Marcos, director of the Scouting Bureau. Marcos scouted for the California Angels and Los Angeles Dodgers before joining the California-based Scouting Bureau in 1988.

 

Marcos is right. The lure of baseball scouts is almost as powerful as their lore.

 

Major league clubs and the Scouting Bureau are peppered year-round with e-mails, phone calls and letters from wannabe scouts.

 

It isn't the money. Even those lucky enough to land a full-time scouting job can expect to make only between $30,000 and $40,000 for seemingly endless, year-round 16-hour days that more often than not end in cut-rate motels with bags full of burgers and dozen of reports to write.

 

A veteran national cross-checker who travels the county doing just that, cross-checking prospects written up by less-experienced scouts, may pull down $100,000 or more. And the top professionals who scout only in the major leagues make $150,000 and up.

 

But those salaries, and those openings, are few and far between.

 

"You have to love the game to want to do this. You're not going to get rich," Pries said.

 

At 76, Pries is the mastermind and master of ceremonies at scout school.

 

"There are a lot of people out there who want to be in baseball, but your clubs chose you," he said.

 

Still, not everyone who attends the school makes it as a scout.

 

Teams have 30 days to hire a person they sent to scout school before the graduate's name goes to the Scouting Bureau to be shopped around.

 

Of last year's graduates, 16 were hired by clubs other than the one that sponsored them at the school.

 

Among this year's scouting class was former major leaguer Mike Thurman, who won 26 games with the Expos and Yankees and turned out to be the best scout in the crowd.

 

"He rated out best in the class," Marcos said, after he, Pries and 10 other instructors spent an intense day and a half ranking every student from one to 41 at the end of scout school.

 

"Mike came in a little slow. It wasn't easy for him. But near the end, he really made the turn and he was impressive."

 

So impressive that the New York Yankees, the team that sent him to scout school, read his evaluation and offered him a full-time job on the spot. Even before some of his classmates had left Phoenix, Thurman was flying back from New York to Arizona to scout future Yankees prospects.

 

What to look for

 

Twenty-four of Major League Baseball's 30 teams nominated students and paid for them to attend school this year. Most of the students earn their invitation the way Christy did, by working for clubs in some capacity.

 

Each major-league team has its own scouts, who cover the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico searching for amateur talent. Only players in those areas are eligible for the annual June draft.

 

Prospects in Japan, the Dominican Republic and other baseball-rich regions are covered by separate rules.

 

In addition to the scouts who scour those areas, each team has its national cross-checkers and talent evaluators who deal with professional players - minor league and major league.

 

Much of what scout school teaches is geared to "finding a guy who looks like a player."

 

Students are trained to rate prospects' abilities in several areas on scales of two to eight, with five being an average performance by someone in the major leagues.

 

"We use two to eight because that puts five right in the middle," Marcos said. "It's easier than using a scale of one to 10. Five wouldn't be in the middle."

 

Scouts grade a prospect's arm strength, fielding, hitting ability, power and running speed. Pitchers are rated on their fastball, curve, slider and whether they have another pitch.

 

Five is considered average - again, average for a major leaguer - and anything below four is unacceptable for a prospect.

 

The numbers are combined to create a player's Overall Future Potential, which ranges from a low of 38 for someone considered a career minor leaguer to a perfect 80 for the next Bonds or Vladimir Guerrero.

 

In addition, scout school students are taught to emphasize different strengths based on the position a prospect might play.

 

Arm strength, for example, is the most important attribute for a catcher. Power is tops for first basemen, left fielders and right fielders.

 

Power, though, is the least-important tool for a center field prospect. Fielding is king in center.

 

"You have to have a passion for the game to do this," scout Jim Walton said.

 

He dazzled students a third his age by pushing two dining tables together one day in scout school and spending the next hour standing, squatting, standing, squatting in cowboy boots and skintight blue jeans to demonstrate the proper catching techniques to look for in a prospect.

 

"Most people don't realize just how fast this game is," Walton said.

 

"The industry has come light speed forward with computers, ray guns and everything else. But unless you have a trained eye, you just can't see what you need to see."

 

Tom Randolph was sent to the school by the New York Mets.

 

"In scout school, subjectivity is praised," Randolph said. "Mr. Pries asked us every day, 'Do you like that guy?' We learned gut feeling is a good thing. Liking a player can be the unscientific manifestation of a scout's years of experience and knowledge."

 

That experience and knowledge starts in scout school - for the lucky few who get to go.

 

Reach the reporter at joseph.reaves@arizonarepublic.com.

[CarolinaTommy]

" "In scout school, subjectivity is praised," Randolph said. "Mr. Pries asked us every day, 'Do you like that guy?' We learned gut feeling is a good thing. Liking a player can be the unscientific manifestation of a scout's years of experience and knowledge." "

 

 

Maybe this is why the draft is such a volatile and risky investment! A "gut feeling" is a good thing? Drafted baseball prospects are investments by major league teams. How would you feel if your financial advisor suggested investing in a junk bond merely because of a gut feeling?

 

The more I think about traditional baseball scouting, the more archaic I feel it is.

[madbad2000]

While I can agree with you carolinatommy that scouting can seem archaic, but really everything a scout does is intuitive. Two people can look at one player and assess his arm, speed, power, etc differently while both seeing the same thing. You can watch a pitcher throw and both have different readings on the gun.

 

So that is why a good scout is important. After watching thousands of players you can just see the differences from one player to the next and realize the gamer. You can recall seeing Ben Sheets throw in college and see a similar fastball in Joe Schmoe who is pitching at a HS in Montana. It's imperfect, but so is almost everything a human being does.

 

I like scouting and finding of gems. If scouting was perfect then the best player would get drafted in slot 1, second best in slot 2, etc. You'd have not busts and no sleepers and it would be boring.

[CarolinaTommy]

I used to really value scouting because of its subjective interpretations and contributions. I haven't been following the baseball draft for all that long. I have made a point to try and go see (mainly) college players for nearly 4 years now. I hardly consider myself to be a talented or well-learned talent evaluator, but I understand some scouting practices. I have done associate scout work for a scout in my hometown and have learned a lot of things from him. I value his insight, "expertise", and experience, but I just think its very difficult to accurately identify amateur players on subjective practices and gut feelings. So many times I see players that I think are great and will be great professionals, but they fizzle out. Or, the converse can also happen, as it has a number of times with me.

 

We've observed a slight paradigm shift in player evaluation with the Moneyball movement. At first, I hated Moneyball and what it stood for. I loved qualitative player evaluation and thought there was nothing better. I now believe there are huge flaws in that process.

 

I have not thought all of this through, but I am merely saying that there may be a better way to train baseball scouts than what is represented in that article. I know it sounds silly, but maybe getting an MBA degree to build objective knowledge skills and more practical evaluation processes wouldn't be such a bad idea.

 

I have little faith left for traditional scouting practices. They don't seem to be effective. I am not saying there is a right or wrong way to do things, because in the case of baseball scouting (especially baseball), that is impossible. I argue that there may be a more effective process out there somewhere.

[colbyjack]

I'm not so sure that traditional scouting is failing, or waning, or fading, or whatever. I still think a lot can be gained by subjective observsations. The Braves and Twins are two teams that have built successful ballclubs largely by embracing more traditional forms of scouting. Hopefully the Brewers can also make that claim in a couple of years.

 

***EDIT: I should have added the Dodgers in that group as well. Every year they seem to have a prep pitcher break-out (Jackson, Miller, Billingsley, Tiffany) that proves they know what they're doing when drafting young arms.

 

That said, I think there should be a blend of the two forms of scouting. Statistical evidence has to be taken into consideration, and teams should at least take trends into consideration (trends like prep right-handed pitchers are more likely to flame out than ever enjoy any prolonged success at the big league level) when making decisions that are often tied into hefty 6 and 7-figure signing bonuses.

 

But as soon as you rely entirely on stats you once again make yourself too one-dimensional, and I think even the teams that embrace the over-used "Moneyball" philosophy term would agree with that.

 

Last night I was looking over some of BA's recent draft report cards and I was wondering what the A's saw in 5th-round prep pitcher Ryan Webb that would cause them to draft a prep pitcher so high? Obviously they saw something that they really liked about him to believe he can succeed as a pro to take such a high pick on a prep righty given their usual aversion to such players.

[CarolinaTommy]

My argument is not in the college vs. prep thing. It is taking an economical and finacial approach to the baseball draft. I read Moneyball and I did not take directly the same thing away from it as others did, apparently. To me, it's not directly the high school vs. college debate, it's not entirely the statistics vs. scouting debate. Those are some important elements in this, but I think the prevailing theme in Moneyball is identifying undervalued assets. This is applicable to all aspects of life, particularly investing in the stock market, because that is basically what the draft is...a crap shoot.

 

I think that the Athletics' pick of Ryan Webb, a high schooler from the Tampa, FLA area, I believe, could be an example of this type of economical thought.

 

I don't necesarily care if a prospect is a HS pitcher or a college position player, but can you put a net present value dollar amount on him? If so, is he an over or undervalued asset? What are the secondary market characteristics (primary paradigm of competing teams)? Obviously, to get this type of information you have to use some scouting and statistical forms of evaluation, but what differs is in this type of approach is how you utilize those forms of evaluation.

[colbyjack]

I think most people got the same thing from Moneyball, the idea of maximizing your resources relative to budget.

 

However, when it comes to the draft, that really leads to the HS vs. college, stats vs. potential debate. Although some teams are starting to do the exact opposite of teams like the A's, valuing prep players that have fallen since more & more teams are focusing on college players.

 

I do know where you're coming from. This past year I suggested taking prep 3B Blake DeWitt with the #5 overall pick. No one considered him to be worthy of the #5 pick, but from everything I saw and heard about him proved to be that he was the best hitter available in the draft. Not only that, but he also projected to play 3B as a pro (he played SS in HS), a position of need in the system. He could have agreed to a pre-draft deal making somewhere in the range of $1.5-2 million dollars, which would have been several hundreds of thousands of dollars more than he would have made going late in the first round like everyone projected him to. It also would have been several hundreds of thousands of dollars less than what the Brewers signed Mark Rogers for. That money could have been spent elsewhere, possibly to sway someone like Drew Bowman or Sean Morgan away from college, or maybe to sign the next a talented player out of the Dominican Republic. Basically, to me DeWitt was a vastly underrated commodity, and while doing some homework they could have made a very astute pick that would have benefitted the team in more ways than one.

 

The Royals handled their first pick the same way, taking Billy Butler for $1.4 million, a couple of hundred thousand dollars less than slot value in an attempt to save money so they could sign all of their high picks.

 

The selection of Mark Rogers really isn't the best way to maximize your resources. Although if he does succeed as a big leaguer like Kerry Wood or Josh Beckett, it will be hard to argue with the results.

 

But I'm growing less & less of a fan of the boom or bust drafting style. I don't know about you Tommy, but one player that I like a lot for next year is Tyler Greene. He's good defensively, has good to great speed, scouts like his athleticism and he has hit with wood with Team USA and on the Cape. That to me is about as sure of a bet as you can get, similar to Jeremy Sowers, and if you have to hand out a $2.5 million dollar signing bonus, why not hand it out to the player that logically seems to have the best chance success? While he's a good hitter, I could see him falling a little bit because he doesn't have a legitimate impact bat that a lot of teams look for within the top 10 picks or so.

 

I think that the Athletics' pick of Ryan Webb, a high schooler from the Tampa, FLA area, I believe, could be an example of this type of economical thought.

 

And that's exactly what I was getting at. What did the A's see in Webb that made them feel he was an underrated commodity? Since they don't make a habit out of taking prep pitchers, what made Webb stand out? Given the A's track record of developing pitchers, this is one of those picks that you just seems to have a good chance of surprising a lot of people.

[nukelalooshlhp]

Webb played in a top notch HS program at Clearwater Central Catholic; comes from a baseball background; didn't want to attend Wake Forest after the coaching shakeup; and was anxious to sign and play. Sounds like solid scouting to me.

 

Webb Eager to Start Pro Career

 

Quote:

---

Wake Forest baseball coach George Greer resigned last week after a 17- year career. Since he signed with the Demon Deacons, Webb is obligated to play for them (should he choose to play in college) unless the school releases him from his letter-of-intent.

 

Wake Forest has not named a successor, which leaves Webb in limbo.

---

 

Quote:

---

Webb's father, Hank, pitched six years in the majors, five with the New York Mets. Ryan considers himself fortunate to be able to lean on his father for guidance.

 

``I feel like it puts me so many steps above all the other high school players and maybe college guys,'' Ryan Webb said. ``The information [Hank] has given me - he has already been through [professional baseball]. He knows what works and what doesn't. He knows what goes on, what to expect, how to handle things. And he knows others as well and gets information from them.

 

``If something goes wrong, I have someone to call. That will help me in the long run.''

 

But listening to Webb, factoring in his situation with Wake Forest and what he sees to be a promising position with Oakland, it's obvious he wants to jump on a plane and begin his professional career.

 

``I want to get signed and start playing as soon as I can,'' Webb said.

---

[CarolinaTommy]

colby, Tyler Greene is interesting. I have seen him play a lot, and you probably have seen him as well, as GA Tech games are covered on cable TV often.

 

He's definitely an athlete. He has an athletic, strong body. He has added some iron in his forearms since his high school days, adding more power with the bat. He is a legit runner, as well. At his size, he really runs quite well. I have never been too enamored with his arm strength but its workable from any position in the infield (a bit below average at 3rd, IMO).

 

He's played extremely well in the summer, both with Team USA and on the Cape League, but underperformed with GA Tech. It seems like a lot of players have underperformed on that team the last couple of years -- is there something to that?

 

He could be undervalued if he struggles again in the spring. He's pretty interesting. One thing that is really good with him is that he can handle SS, 2B and likely could play CF, too, should you need him to. He's got middle of the diamond versatility and some pop in the bat.