Coach Russ Bayer

THE SCOUTING CLASSROOM Stories Behind the Report WHEN THE PLAYER IS BETTER THAN THE TOOLS One of the most difficult players to evaluate is not always the player with the huge tools. Sometimes it is the player who gives you almost nothing spectacular to write down. No 70 raw power. No 70 arm. No blazing speed. No tool that immediately separates him from everybody else behind the backstop. You go through the report and keep writing 50. HIT: 50 POWER: 50 RUN: 50 ARM: 50 FIELD: 50 Then you watch him play and something does not add up. The player is better than the grades Ben Zobrist is a great example. Zobrist was a sixth round pick out of Dallas Baptist in 2004. Early professional scouting reports described him as having average tools across the board, with his makeup and instincts standing out more than his physical attributes. He controlled the strike zone, handled the bat, ran the bases, made the plays and understood how to play the game. There was not necessarily a tool that screamed future impact Major Leaguer. But there were very few holes in the player. Eventually Zobrist became one of the most versatile players in baseball. The value came from the combination. Strike zone discipline. Switch hitting. Defensive versatility. Instincts. Adjustability. Baseball intelligence. The ability to move around the diamond and still contribute offensively. The player became the carrying tool Pitchers can present the same scouting problem. Mark Buehrle might be one of the greatest examples. Buehrle was selected by the White Sox in the 38th round of the 1998 draft, by my good friend and fellow “four corners” scout, John Kazanas. Early professional scouting report had his fastball at 88 to 90 mph and actually described the fastball as potentially his weakest pitch in a scout’s grade book. What stood out was his ability to throw multiple pitches for strikes and his advanced command. I recall at times, seeing Buehrle even top out in the mid-80s on the radar gun. But what scouts noticed, was something very important. Hitters were not seeing the baseball. They were swinging through pitches that the radar gun said they should have been able to hit. That is scouting. The radar gun measures velocity. It does not measure the pitcher! Buehrle understood how to change speeds, locate, sequence pitches, disrupt timing and get hitters out. He repeated his delivery, threw strikes and competed. He eventually pitched 16 Major League seasons and more than 3,200 innings. If you evaluated Buehrle only by velocity, you probably walked away. If you evaluated Zobrist only looking for a plus physical tool, you might have walked away from him too. That is where scouting becomes more complicated than assigning numbers. The 20 to 80 scale is essential. Tools matter. Grades matter. But the grades are supposed to help us describe the player. The player does not exist to justify our grades There are players with 60 and 70 tools who never become good Major League players, ore even get out of Class A ball. And there are players filled with 50s who somehow become much more than the sum of those grades. Why? Because baseball is not played one tool at a time. Instincts matter, feel matters, anticipation matters, strike zone discipline matters, pitch-ability matters, Adjustments matter. Knowing what to do and when to do it matters. The difficult part for the scout is identifying those qualities before Major League performance proves they were there. Anyone can look backward and explain why Ben Zobrist or Mark Buehrle succeeded. The scout’s job was to recognize the ingredients before everyone knew the answer. Sometimes you finish the report and there is no 70. Maybe there is not even a 60. But you keep watching because something keeps telling you the same thing. A scout watches and over time, says this guy can play! And sometimes that might be the most important grade on the entire report. #BehindTheRadarGun 🔎