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Sunday, July 27, 2008
What exactly does scouting a veteran pitcher do?
I am watching Ponson pitch tonight. He is getting shelled. He throws a decent 92-93 mph fastball and a decent curve ball. About the only thing he appears to be lacking is another pitch. However, there are more than a few starters who are successful with primarily two pitches, although you would like to have more.
If you look at Ponson’s numbers, whether it be ERC, FIP, or even regular ERA, he has been terrible for several years. I mean terrible. Like he should be nowhere near a major league ball field.
Yet, the Yankees, a supposedly smart team, sign him to pitch every 5 days. STL signed him 2 years ago, even though I told them he was horrible (not that it wasn’t obvious). They eventually realized how bad he was and released him. MIN signed him last year.
What is up with that? What are scouts seeing? Can you really see anything as a scout that you can’t see in the stats with over 5 years of data? Apparently not.
I really think that you can easily see, as a scout or even as a regular informed fan, whether a pitcher has very good stuff or terrible stuff, although there are very few major leaguers with terrible stuff I think. Maybe none. Yet, there are quite a few pitchers who have decent stuff like Ponson, but if you look at their stats, you can see that they are horrible.
I don’t understand why pitchers like Ponson continue to pitch in the majors and teams continue to sign this guy (and guys like him). What do the scouts say that contradict the numbers, and do teams need scouting like that? If your scouts tell you to sign a pitcher like Ponson, shouldn’t they immediately be fired. Shouldn’t a smart scout say something like, “Well, he looks like he still has decent stuff, but from the numbers over the past 5 years, he is obviously terrible, so I guess there is something that I just can’t see that makes him a bad pitcher.”
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