Trout Fell to the 25th Pick Because of the Orioles?

[TonySoprano]

Indirectly anyway.  Here's the story

Quote

'The Northeast stigma'

Silvestri: [At the Perfect Game event in Jupiter, October 2008] I knew he was playing for the Tri-City Arsenal, so I said, "Guys, I'm gonna do my own thing," and I stood on the golf cart down the right-field line, as far from everyone as possible, to watch some at-bats. I knew we wouldn't get any for a while because of the weather [in the Northeast]. I came out of there and to me it was a no-brainer, but the question was, "Are we going to get him there at Pick 25?"

I felt like we had a better-than-average chance. You had the left-handed hitter from Jersey who flopped, I wasn't in on that, but you had that stigma, plus the white right-handed-hitting outfielder from the Northeast stigma, you fit everything people don't want to spend money on. I thought we had a shot.

Silvestri is referring to Billy Rowell, the ninth overall pick in 2006, taken by the Baltimore Orioles out of Pennsauken, New Jersey, just one spot ahead of where the San Francisco Giants selected Tim Lincecum.

Rowell hit very well in his first pro summer, but he didn't hit well anywhere in full-season ball and the strikeouts started to mount, leading to questions about whether scouts had overrated his hitting prowess because they saw him only against bad competition in southern New Jersey. Rowell last played in 2011. In 2012, he was suspended for 50 games for testing positive for a drug of abuse, and the Orioles released him that winter.

Eddie Bane, Angels scouting director: Teams were scared because of Rowell, but it was still just an excuse. What did Rowell do compared to Mike!? But they used it, it was there, "I'm not going in to waste three days on this guy after Rowell."

Morhardt: I wasn't scouting in 2006, but I saw Rowell in A-ball the next year, and I thought, "This is an NP [non-prospect], a big guy, a big swing, who can't play." You have to have the ingredients to cultivate. If anyone says, "If he figures it out some day," don't pick the player! Give me reasons why you think he's going to hit. Rowell was never going to hit velocity. Meanwhile, Trout ran 3.85 to first base, he was a 6.4 runner, he was powerful, he played every sport, had a compact swing, had great makeup. ... You're going to compare that guy to Rowell?

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/26864123/draft-heist-century-how-mike-trout-fell-angels

[interloper]

Some of these sentences are weirdly hard to parse. 

But yeah wow Rowell. That seems less and less of a "bust" and more and more of an outright scouting failure.

[Aristotelian]

53 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

The "white right hand hitting outfielder" stigma struck me in an odd way.  Haha.  That would create quite a firestorm if it was anything but white.

Should create a firestorm regardless. If racial stereotypes caused anyone to miss on Trout, that is shameful both from a competitiveness standpoint and from a moral/social standpoint.

[Dr. Unk]

The gift that keeps on giving...

[DrungoHazewood]

If scouts urged passing on a guy they had rated very highly because a vaguely similar guy from the same state flopped, then you can kind of see why analytics has gained such a foothold.  "I know my report has Trout as 70s and 80s across the board, but c'mon, he's from the same state as Billy Rowell!"

[Tony-OH]

Rowell was a huge bust, no doubt, but I gotta question the guy who said he saw him in Delmarva and thought he was an NP. Maybe you could have had questions because of holes in his game, but nobody was NPing him then because he still had that special BP, plus-plus raw power and was 18-years old.

Seems like perfect 20-20 rearview mirror vision to me. 

[Tony-OH]

2 hours ago, interloper said:

Some of these sentences are weirdly hard to parse. 

But yeah wow Rowell. That seems less and less of a "bust" and more and more of an outright scouting failure.

The very nature of the Rowell never getting out of AA does make him a huge scouting failure, but he did have a special BP, plus-plus raw power and a plus arm. Where they missed severely was on the makeup, the defense, and not being able to see him against quality competition. With all the perfect game stuff, trackman data, and showcases, I think teams have much more information to go off of now, and I also think teams do a better job of getting to know kids now.

I know the scout who was Rowell's scout, and he's a good judge of talent and a good scout, he just whiffed badly. Then again, I think Joe Jordan was a really good scout himself, and he ultimately pulled the trigger on Rowell, a year after whiffing on Snyder.

I just think there is too much risk in taking a high school hitter in the first round, especially in the top 15 picks or so. Obviously Trout is an outlier but the first round is littered with high school hitter busts which was why I wanted Rutchsman over Witt.

[Frobby]

10 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Rowell was a huge bust, no doubt, but I gotta question the guy who said he saw him in Delmarva and thought he was an NP. Maybe you could have had questions because of holes in his game, but nobody was NPing him then because he still had that special BP, plus-plus raw power and was 18-years old.

Seems like perfect 20-20 rearview mirror vision to me. 

I had the same reaction.   He put up a .761 OPS there as a true 18-year old who was 3.8 years younger than the league average.   He didn’t set the league on fire, but more than held his own despite being 3 months younger that year than Bobby Witt Jr. was in his senior year of high school.  

[Tony-OH]

3 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I had the same reaction.   He put up a .761 OPS there as a true 18-year old who was 3.8 years younger than the league average.   He didn’t set the league on fire, but more than held his own despite being 3 months younger that year than Bobby Witt Jr. was in his senior year of high school.  

Right. I talked to a lot of scouts back then and saw him take BP multiple times. I never heard one person ever say he was NP when he was 18-years old. Were there some questions about the contact, long swing, hitting lefties and defense at 3B (Everyone thought he would just be able to move to 1B or RF), yep, but NP is extreme. Guess Silvestri was a soothsayer back then.

[Orioles5258]

2 hours ago, Aristotelian said:

Should create a firestorm regardless. If racial stereotypes caused anyone to miss on Trout, that is shameful both from a competitiveness standpoint and from a moral/social standpoint.

I agree, I guess they think its acceptable like saying white men cant jump. The reality is that if you admit that you use racial stereotypes to judge and evaluate people you're not going to limit your negative racial stereotyping to just the white race. 

[Just Regular]

http://mlb.mlb.com/fan_forum/podcasts/index.jsp?c_id=mlb&podcast=full_account

For the 10th anniversary of 2009's draft (Strasburg, Trout, Goldschmidt, etc), MLB introduced a miniseries of long form podcasts on the biggest stories with the benefit of a decade's' hindsight.

So far I've only listened to the Luhnow one as Elias/Sig were in STL with him at that time (the best anecdote from that one for us is that Sig, it says, "literally" pounded the table for Paul Goldschmidt), but I'm sure the Trout one will have plenty on how it happened.  Luhnow's quote in the one focused on him mentioned they had him near the top with Shelby Miller who they actually took, but that as the round was unfolding, the buzz was Trout had a "big number".

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

4 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

If scouts urged passing on a guy they had rated very highly because a vaguely similar guy from the same state flopped, then you can kind of see why analytics has gained such a foothold.  "I know my report has Trout as 70s and 80s across the board, but c'mon, he's from the same state as Billy Rowell!"

 

[Hallas]

8 hours ago, RZNJ said:

The "white right hand hitting outfielder" stigma struck me in an odd way.  Haha.  That would create quite a firestorm if it was anything but white.

Possibly.  I think racism is pretty prevalent in sports scouting, not just in baseball but everywhere.

[atomic]

7 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

If scouts urged passing on a guy they had rated very highly because a vaguely similar guy from the same state flopped, then you can kind of see why analytics has gained such a foothold.  "I know my report has Trout as 70s and 80s across the board, but c'mon, he's from the same state as Billy Rowell!"

Analytics might have said the same thing.  Analytics aren''t always right either.  They give you the most likely outcome not the actual outcome.  Especially when you are dealing with 18 year olds.  Analytics are going you to not sign Altuve or draft Keuchel. 

[atomic]

7 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

The very nature of the Rowell never getting out of AA does make him a huge scouting failure, but he did have a special BP, plus-plus raw power and a plus arm. Where they missed severely was on the makeup, the defense, and not being able to see him against quality competition. With all the perfect game stuff, trackman data, and showcases, I think teams have much more information to go off of now, and I also think teams do a better job of getting to know kids now.

I know the scout who was Rowell's scout, and he's a good judge of talent and a good scout, he just whiffed badly. Then again, I think Joe Jordan was a really good scout himself, and he ultimately pulled the trigger on Rowell, a year after whiffing on Snyder.

I just think there is too much risk in taking a high school hitter in the first round, especially in the top 15 picks or so. Obviously Trout is an outlier but the first round is littered with high school hitter busts which was why I wanted Rutchsman over Witt.

With all that data they are still going to miss more often when drafting 17 and 18 year olds more than they hit.