Reading Between the White Lines

By Zach Elliott

Despite it sometimes feeling like educated fortune telling. Baseball has become notorious for variance in scouting, with Hall-of-Famers being drafted from the first round to the 30^th and college stars materializing out of thin air – despite talent evaluators’ best efforts.

“We’re just taking the information that we have and trying to do some educated guessing on how good they’re going to be,” said Peter Harmot, area scout and staff writer for Prep Baseball Report in Illinois and Wisconsin. “It’s also kind of up to the kid, like how it pans out, right? How hard are they’re going work to try and get to where they – we think they can be.”

As always in the summer sports nadir, I am blindsided by the fact that the MLB draft falls midseason. The efforts of scouts in the NBA and NFL get their own season-independent event, and baseball talent evaluators see the fruits of their labors come to fruition on a nondescript Sunday in July.

In response to the difficulties scouting (and playing) during the pandemic, Major League Baseball shortened its draft – all the way down to 20 rounds. Over 600 players were drafted, with scouting reports ranging from glowing remarks about number one overall pick and potential wunderkind shortstop Jackson Holliday, to bullet points on 616^th overall first baseman Ethan Long.

Before these players are drafted, they are seen by one or more of team scouts that compile an amalgam of data to try to qualitatively and quantitatively grade a player’s tools and potential for success. Even the language used reflects the difficulties therein. Here’s the synopsis of leading MVP candidate Ronald Acuña Jr.’s Baseball Prospectus scouting report, from evaluator John Eshleman:

“Impressive player ready to contribute now despite youth; eventually fits in three-hole with power/hit combo. Will stick in CF; if moves to RF, more than enough glove and arm to handle position. Bat is elite. Player projects to hit for 30 HRs with high average and ability to steal some bases given current development and age. Sky is limit talent-wise, especially if player maintains body and continues improvement in CF. OFP is .300 hitter, 30 HRs, 20 SB in CF.”

“If moves” to RF. “Projects” for 30 HRs. “Eventually” fits in three-hole. Acuña is one of the best players in the game and was a number one prospect before getting promoted to the Atlanta Braves, and even he wasn’t considered a guarantee in any category.

It all serves to underline how fundamentally difficult it is for a baseball scout to map out the high school, college, or professional career of a player – particularly with how many levels baseball players can hail from.

“In baseball it’s tough because obviously there’s still the amateur element versus other sports,” said managing editor at Prep Baseball Report Andrew Sroka. “It’s just out of college for the most part. Obviously, there’s some variables there, but the amateur element adds to it where it’s a higher variance of player when you draft a high school aged kid.”

PBR, 247Sports, even ESPN all employs scouts and analysts with the same goal – to highlight a player’s skills and project them at whatever “the next level” is at the time. As is the case with every industry, young talent needs to replace the old guard eventually – determining who can falls on scouts’ shoulders.

In service of that goal, scouts at nearly every outlet or service are also tasked with accumulating the materials to quantify a player’s skills and using advanced metrics to justify their reports, while setting up opportunities to let players strut their stuff. PBR in particular allocates resources to holding showcases and tournaments to give players opportunity to be seen by college scouts and evaluate them.

“Our data is collected in our showcases where we are using stuff like TrackMan to pick up their fastball velocity with the vetted ball data when they’re taking their batting practice, how far it’s going, how hard they hit it on average,” Harmot – also the lead PBR tournament and showcase operator in Illinois and Wisconsin – said. “We have other tools, like we have something called Blast, which goes on the end of the bat and it measures their hand speed and their bat path… just all sorts of cool stuff.

Data is paramount to scouting. In the days of yore when dinosaurs roamed and ‘White Sox’ seemed like a clever name, people could calculate a triple slash. The analytics well has deepened with the prospect pool; the aforementioned Trackman that PBR utilizes gives young pitchers precise numbers on their release angles and spin rates, while batters get 3D analysis of their exit velocity, launch angle, etc. It all puts players in the best position to succeed, and scouts the slightly less burdensome task of forecasting potential.

“It’s about like figuring out [if] a player has a one percent chance at reaching their ceiling,” Sroka said.

Another significant challenge is the inherent unpredictability of baseball. In a game of skill and strategy, randomness reigns supreme. Scouting requires the ability to identify underlying talent and potential amidst the fluctuations of performance. It necessitates a long-term perspective. Take this Insider headline: “Most Baseball Draft Picks Will Still Be In The Minors Four Years From Now.” After three years only about 15 percent of prospects make it, further validating the difficulties in projecting athletes forward.

“We can miss on all of these guys, but nail one of these guys and it was well worth it,” Sroka said. “And other people were not taking risks like that, so I think that’s where the evaluation and projection comes in. If you can project this player to be realistically become a superstar – probably worth it at some level.”

Everything comes back to the earliest levels of development. Scouting starts in earnest in high school, so to properly assess what someone can become as a major leaguer, you must see what they are versus relative competition. That said, it means trying to evaluate an athlete holistically before they develop fully – but that’s the job.

“As an evaluator we’re trying to evaluate the entire kid,” Harmot said. “So, if you’re good at more things, you’re a better overall player. But there is for sure kids that have a Division I tool. Maybe the rest of their tools aren’t Division I, but something is good. I mean, yeah, that’s fine. That kid has his role in whatever he’s doing.”

There lies some of the beauty in what scouts are able to do at amateur and school-levels. Major league rosters carry 26 players, and high school teams often carry up to 20. Not every player is equipped to make the bigs, but scouts provide valuable information for those aiming to get on that level – or simply trying to make scholarship. A former college pitcher at Divison II Lewis University in Romeoville, Harmot wants young players to be afforded the opportunity to pursue their sport as long as possible.

“In summary, we are just trying to shine light on the amateur baseball world, mostly high school, junior college as well, and we’re just trying to give these kids data attention to get colleges to notice them, get them on the map,” Harmot said. “It’s basically trying to help the kids in any way we can, whether it be through our showcases, tournaments, through the data we collect.”

At the higher levels, scouts are faced with the problem of assessing what talents belong on the major league club. At the amateur levels, they want to get kids into the draft or into college. There is no simplistic “who’s going to be good” question to answer – scouts have to consider these people as human being with goals, not just numbers on Baseball Reference.

In a lot of ways, scouting reflects the counterculture existing within baseball analysis. In reality, data has always been the crux of how evaluators see the game, but it’s difficult to square with how talent evaluation has always been conducted. There’s still a mystique to watching and evaluating baseball at any level.

“I really like the investigative journalism side of all of this,” Sroka said. “I think my dream job would be like being a baseball scout like the 1920s because having to like get on a train and go find some kid in the middle of Iowa who’s never, you know, even heard of like the New York Mets… you really have to get in there and be the private eye.”

Baseball scouts, really, all end up having to be private eyes. Investigating a prospect’s game, life, and everything therein requires a Sherlock-ian level of insight that can be forgiven for being a little off sometimes – and praised when they’re right.

“I think the scouts that are really proud of like certain picks that are like, ‘I found this guy and I convinced people like in the eighth round,” Sroka said. “So I think it’s those stories that have always pulled me to this side of the sport.”