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Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Baseball Prospects
Unlike the other sports, where players come in straight from the non-pro leagues, and make a splash immediately and without surprise, baseball players are not so easy to scout as Geoff Young shows us:
These are questions to ask when evaluating a kid like Strasburg. Is he a great college pitcher? Absofreakinlutely. Is he a great pro prospect? Sure looks that way to me and everyone I’ve heard talk about him. Is any of this a guarantee of future success? Not so much.
Mark Prior blows out his arm, Sean Burroughs forgets how to hit. Miguel Cabrera adds muscle to his frame, Jose Reyes learns the difference between balls and strikes, Chase Utley outworks everyone. You can look back and see signs, but that is cheating. The trouble is, you don’t always know which ones are important until after the outcome is determined, which limits their utility.
The difference I presume is that the “drills” you do in practice in hockey, basketball, football, tennis, and the other sports are actually the kind of action you will see during the game. You can do fielding drills in baseball, but you can’t replicate the batter/pitcher matchup in a drill. The uniqueness of not only the way a pitcher and batter throws/swings, but their approach as to where/when is unmatched, and makes forecasting players from non-pro competition that much harder. How a batter/pitcher approach a 1-2 count separate from a 2-1 count makes a world of difference. How do you “drill” that, especially since you are at the mercy of the uniqueness of your opponent?
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