Today's Fantasy Rx

The scouting seminar included Saturday night (instead of an AFL game), Sunday afternoon, when he assigned everyone specific players to evaluate during the game, and then Monday morning, wherein we discussed Sunday's game and miscellaneous players and theories of scouting and development. As per the last few days, I don't intend to directly regurgitate the information presented nor the many intriguing off-the-record stories, however David Rawnsley made several general points that deserve a wider audience.

We spent most of Saturday night reviewing the structure of a team's scouting staff and the grading scale used by scouts. The scouting director, responsible for supervising the entire department of anywhere from fifteen to over sixty scouts depending on the team, reports to the GM and is considered a prime burnout job; few SDs last more than 10 years. With the scouting director on the road for over two-thirds of the year, the assistant scouting director normally handles the necessary administrative duties of the office. National and regional cross-checkers supervise the dozen or more area scouts, who in turn look for future big leaguers with the help of part-time scouts and unpaid bird dogs. The A's generally field the smallest scouting staff in baseball since they essentially don't scout high school players, and following Toronto's firing of 17 scouts around the end of the season, we're seeing J.P. Ricciardi move that franchise closer to the Oakland model. Atlanta's owned the largest scouting staff for years, and we can observe the results in their drafts. Regardless of team, "well-paid scout" ranks among the biggest oxymorons in baseball.

Following decades of evolution, teams now use a grading scale of 20-80 to rank a player's tools; 50 is the current major league average. For the scale to have integrity, 20 and 80 must respectively represent the lower and upper limits of major league ability. Rey Ordonez's hitting and the speed of many catchers would rank at 20; Mike Sweeney's hitting and Luis Castillo's speed would rank around 80. Scouts almost only evaluate the standard five tools: hitting for average, hitting for power, speed, arm, and defense; tools are physical gifts while skills are how athletes use tools.

A batter's ability to hit for average generally shows the strongest correlation between past and future performance among the five tools. Scouts don't even think about strike zone judgment up to A-ball, although the A's are the exception to nearly every rule here.

Power consists of raw power and power frequency. Mark Teixeira once hit a homer in high school at a field in Santa Clara with a freeway over LF; he hit the ball onto the freeway, which was at least 400 feet from home plate and 100 feet in the air. Nearly all amateurs use aluminum bats because they lose a competitive advantage if they don't. For both hitters and pitchers, power is usually the last tool to appear.

Speed is normally measured by timing a batter from when the ball hits the bat to when his foot hits first base. The major league average is around 4.2-4.3 seconds. No one seems to know why anyone runs the 60-yard dash. (Our theory is that someone, likely Branch Rickey, wanted to time batters from 1st to 3rd.)

Arm strength is comprised of velocity and carry; stronger throws bounce straight. Accuracy is not a tool as scouts believe you can develop accuracy. Catcher "pop times" are measured from when the ball hits the catcher's mitt to when the ball hits the mitt of the 2B/SS. One idea we floated was to measure fielder's arm strength objectively (like catchers) by timing the glove-to-glove times of infielders throws, along with charting where the fielder releases the ball.

Rawnsley suggested an interesting idea for outfielder arms. He believes left fielders should have stronger arms than right fielders. The three throws from the outfield are to 2B, 3B, and home. Only on a runner advancing from 1B to 3B should the right fielder have the stronger arm, and since more balls are hit to left field due to the number of right-handed batters, the left fielder needs the stronger arm because he makes more plays.

Athletic ability and fielding ability are closely related. Range is the most underrated aspect of defense as players only make the "great" player after getting bad jumps.

Pitchers are rated on the strength of their pitches, as well as control and movement. You calculate an overall grade for positions players, the Overall Future Potential (OFP), by adding the 20-80 scores in the five tools and then dividing by five. For pitchers you add the scores for their fastball, control, movement, and up to two extra pitches, normally a breaking ball and a changeup, and then divide by 4 or 5 depending on if the pitcher can throw two pitches or three or more.

Teams generally like taller pitchers because the additional height means the ball arrives at the plate at a different angle from what batters are used to seeing. Only a few teams take chances on shorter right-handers, although a half-dozen of every fifty pitchers measured at 6'0" are listed generously. Pitching requires looseness to both facilitate the motion and avoid injury. Pitching mechanics and arm action, generally determine command. Balance is vital for pitchers, giving yoga devotees like Barry Zito and A's pitching coach Rick Peterson an edge.

Advance scouts in the majors fill the role of coaches at lower levels. You should have your best (and best paid) coaches in rookie ball since the youngest players need the most instruction, but this rarely ever happens. The primary reason that prospects don't make the majors is off-field problems.

The best scouting story that Rawnsley told on Friday night, aside from the Teixeira homer, is that Adam Dunn had a huge hitch in his swing in high school. He moved his hands down and up before swinging for timing. Cincinnati evaluated him by firing balls from only thirty feet away. After one pitch, Dunn dropped the hitch and started raking.

We wound up evaluating the second pitchers on Sunday afternoon: Neal Musser of the Mets and Kevin Barry of the Braves. I sat behind home plate, occasionally peaking at radar gun readings, while Jess spent part of the game behind first base for a different perspective.

The left-handed Musser suffered from an inconsistent release point and will encounter more arm injuries based on his motion. We graded him out to a 37 now with a 42 upside.

Barry, a right-handed reliever two years older than the 22-year-old Musser, had a nice compact motion and a fastball only a shade below a 50. However his great A-ball numbers seem more a product of taking advantage of younger competition, and we didn't see anything that suggested he'd reach the majors for more than a cup-of-coffee. However, due to his solid overall delivery, while we only graded him at a 36 now, we gave him a 44 upside. Based on what we observed, Barry has a better chance of making it to the majors than Musser, although the grades could change completely if Musser fixes his motion.

We spent most of Monday morning discussing the evaluations of players, grouped by position, by the Scouting Seminar attendees. However we also covered more general information that appears more valuable.

Scouting separates into three levels, divided by the final evaluation necessary. For minor leaguers such as AFL players, teams need to know if they should look to acquire the player. Scouts rank amateur talent by where to slot in the draft, and rank foreign talent with the value of the bonus that they deserve. Teams generally want 15-20 reports by 6-8 scouts over a full year before spending a top draft pick.

In the increasingly publicized annual May meeting of scouting directors, each team receives a sheet with the bonus caps for each slot. The only exceptions are for major league deals and dual-sport players like Joe Mauer or B.J. Upton; teams can then spread the bonus over five years. Tampa Bay signed Jason Pridie this year for a bonus over the recommended cap and they were fined $50K the next day.

Profiling is the emerging yet relatively new concept in current scouting; profiling essentially means taking each position and understanding, as an organization, "what plays in the big leagues" at that position. Selecting which tools each position requires may be the essence of profiling.

One way to implement profiling is to change the calculation for OFP. Instead of essentially rating a player by weighting each tool at 20%, why not specify by position. For example, a catcher's speed is irrelevant, so rank their speed at 5%, and then rank their total hitting (power and average) at between 35-40%; then weight both their arm and fielding at about 30% each since most teams want catchers with good defense. Now you've raised the scouting rating of an excellent defensive catcher with no speed from perhaps a 49 to a 57.

Scouts can overvalue the arm strength of catchers since throws include seven parts: the pitch, the catch, footwork, grip, motion, velocity, and carry.

We can attest to a phenomenon nearly every scout experiences: they almost never know the score, innings, numbers of outs, or even where a batted ball lands since that's an outcome and doesn't reflect tools.

Finally, scouts, and especially managers, prefer fielders who can make routine plays, "turning outs into outs". Consistency seems more important to many "baseball men" than even a ridiculously logical concept like a fielder with greater range possessing greater value than a more consistent fielder who makes two-dozen less errors.

For elaboration on all the concepts listed above, as well as a tremendous amount of in-depth information about players, we strongly recommend that all our readers attend the Symposium and the Scouting Seminar next year if Rawnsley is able to return. We were a little disappointed in the amount of time spent on information we already knew like the grading scale, but the overall experience definitely deepened our baseball knowledge. Although ideas like profiling aren't too useful for most fantasy players, they can help you understand why teams choose certain players, especially guys with weaker offensive stats.

One last note for anyone who plays simulation games like Scoresheet: we'd like to see a sound statistical basis for the idea that a team's strongest arm should be in left field due to the greater number of plays, however the argument seems rather logical. We'd be interested if anyone tries out this strategy in the future.

I'll review this year's Arizona Challenge tomorrow.

Today's Fantasy Rx: During the Symposium, we learned of dozens of off-field problems for various players that dramatically impacted our opinions of those players. Almost never discount publicized information about a player's problem, since if the mainstream media actually bothers to report a perceived problem, you usually can assume its fairly serious considering the huge number of unreported incidents.