Baseball America: What the Scouts Want

[weams]

https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/What-Are-Baseball-Scouts-Looking-For/

Quote

Tools are a basic building block of our coverage at Baseball America. We begin assessing players' tools from the time they become prominent high school players, and we continue to do it through college and the minor leagues all the way to the majors. It culminates with the Best Tools feature that we unveiled last week, but we really write about tools all year long.

That makes sense because tools are a basic building block for players as well. Many other factors enter into the equation of whether a player will reach his potential in his career, but without the basic physical skills the player's career will never get started in the first place.

With that in mind, BA assistant editor Conor Glassey spent the past  year interviewing area scouts, talking to them about specific aspects of their job, with a specific focus on the skills they look for in players and how they judge them.

 

[Frobby]

Truly fantastic article.   I could never do what these guys do. 

[NedFromYork]

IMO a lot of subjective junk in there. Scouts are obsolete, need advanced statistics and then the analytics to exploit them.  Don't need to see the player, your eyes lie, numbers don't.

[jcarm]

4 minutes ago, NedFromYork said:

IMO a lot of subjective junk in there. Scouts are obsolete, need advanced statistics and then the analytics to exploit them.  Don't need to see the player, your eyes lie, numbers don't.

Analytics are largely worthless when it comes to evaluating high school prospects and completely worthless when evaluating international talent. It is even questionable how much they are worth at the College and Minor League levels.

[Frobby]

10 minutes ago, NedFromYork said:

IMO a lot of subjective junk in there. Scouts are obsolete, need advanced statistics and then the analytics to exploit them.  Don't need to see the player, your eyes lie, numbers don't.

Craziest thing I ever heard.   You’re going to judge high school kids based on statistics?    Insane.   

[Tony-OH]

10 minutes ago, NedFromYork said:

IMO a lot of subjective junk in there. Scouts are obsolete, need advanced statistics and then the analytics to exploit them.  Don't need to see the player, your eyes lie, numbers don't.

Well that is certainly an opinion. I mean, it's one that is not set in any kind of reality when it comes to scouting high school, college and international prospects, but it certainly is an opinion you are welcome to have.  

[Tony-OH]

Just now, Frobby said:

Craziest thing I ever heard.   You’re going to judge high school kids based on statistics?    Insane.   

NedfromYork did not even stay in a Holiday inn express last night.

[Hallas]

14 minutes ago, NedFromYork said:

IMO a lot of subjective junk in there. Scouts are obsolete, need advanced statistics and then the analytics to exploit them.  Don't need to see the player, your eyes lie, numbers don't.

Ping me when you can come up with park factors for high school fields that may or may not have been mowed in the past week.  Also ping me when your local high school has the $250K camera/computer setup required to do statcast reporting.

[weams]

Glad most of you liked this. It gives folks like myself a better perspective when looking at all the young players I see in the MiLB games. 

[Malike]

18 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Craziest thing I ever heard.   You’re going to judge high school kids based on statistics?    Insane.   

So funny, I was actually thinking on the way to work about an experiment. Have some experts here put together a World Championship caliber team from a bunch of prospects and in a few years see where they are at. To think that scouts can simply drop the eye test, as well as using advanced statistics is absurd. I'd really like our "experts" here to put some teams together built on a bunch of 14-18 year olds and see what happens in about 10 years. Not feasible I know, but I literally was thinking about this on the way to work and now I read a post suggesting it.

[weams]

17 minutes ago, Malike said:

So funny, I was actually thinking on the way to work about an experiment. Have some experts here put together a World Championship caliber team from a bunch of prospects and in a few years see where they are at. To think that scouts can simply drop the eye test, as well as using advanced statistics is absurd. I'd really like our "experts" here to put some teams together built on a bunch of 14-18 year olds and see what happens in about 10 years. Not feasible I know, but I literally was thinking about this on the way to work and now I read a post suggesting it.

I do believe that analytics could build a good team of first and second year MLB or even Triple A players. Straight analytics. With an age component. 

[Malike]

Just now, weams said:

I do believe that analytics could build a good team of first and second year MLB or even Triple A players. Straight analytics. With an age component. 

More of a chance, for sure. Not remotely close to a slam dunk, though.

[Luke-OH]

The real sweet spot is synergy between good analytics, good scouting, and good player development.

[Hallas]

1 minute ago, Malike said:

More of a chance, for sure. Not remotely close to a slam dunk, though.

Minor league teams have pretty consistent high quality video.  But they still send scouts to radar gun the kids.  That's still an important part of the equation.

I suspect that at some point in the near future, statcast will be installed on minor league fields and at least shared internally between teams.  But that's doable because MLB controls the minor league ecosystem.  They don't control the college and HS ecosystem.

[Malike]

1 minute ago, Luke-OH said:

The real sweet spot is synergy between good analytics, good scouting, and good player development.

This, for sure. For someone to suggest scouting is obsolete is a real head scratcher to me.