Law: What We Talk About When We Talk About Players

When I started with the Toronto Blue Jays in January of 2002, I was the stats guy … or the whole stats department, really, there to provide a view from a distinct perspective than that offered by the team’s scouts. After a couple of years with the team, including three draft cycles, I realized that using the statistical lens on its own was insufficient (more like a pair of statistical handcuffs, artificially limiting our player pool) and began to ask some of our scouts to show me how they did their jobs. Their generosity laid the foundation for the methods I still use today when evaluating players, even though I’ve changed and refined those methods over the past fourteen years.

I still prefer to see players live whenever possible before writing about them. It’s not always possible, of course, especially in the draft — actual scouts spend all spring chasing players around their areas or across the country, and even they don’t always get everyone — but I try to get all the top prospects I can each year, right into the fall. While I know some teams have moved away from employing armies of scouts to evaluate players in-person, I still believe, based largely on personal experience, that there is too much information you can only gather by watching a player live (versus video) in game situations that you can’t glean any other way. If you give me good video of a player, I can talk about his swing, or his delivery, but I can’t see him respond to game situations or change his approach based on who he’s facing.

When I do go see players live, I try to walk into the park with an open mind, and just start taking notes on everything the player does while filming from a couple of angles. For hitters, I like to track not just outcomes of at bats, but how they responded even in certain counts, or against specific pitch types — if they seemed unable to pick up spin, for example, or whether they change their approach with two strikes. I bought into Gleyber Torres’ potential hit tool when I saw him, at age 18, showing an advanced two-strike approach against much older pitchers with an end-of-season promotion to high-A. He didn’t see the results, but he had such a good feel for hitting at that age that I saw a much higher probability that he’d end up with a plus hit tool as he matured.

Traditional scouting revolves around the five tools we evaluate for hitters: power, speed, glove (which can include both range and hands), arm, and of course the all-important but nebulously defined hit tool. The first four are relatively easy to evaluate as long as the player has something hit his way during the game(s); the hit tool is by far the hardest, as any actual scout will tell you. You might see a guy go 12 for 10 the weekend you see him, but it’s just because he matched up well against those pitchers or had extraordinary luck; you might go see a player, as I did many years ago with a high school hitter in Punxsutawney, Pa., named Devin Mesoraco, and see him get walked intentionally every trip to the plate. In theory, at least, you’re evaluating the player’s present and future ability to hit, which should take into account his swing mechanics, his ability to hit different pitch types, and his two-strike approach. I do not fold plate discipline into the hit tool and prefer to think of it as its own distinct skill; a player might have a great swing and be able to hit a good fastball but lack the ball/strike recognition to put that into effect.

The run tool is usually evaluated primarily by the hitter’s run time from home (moment of contact) to first (moment his foot hits the bag). It’s an accurate proxy for speed in the majority of players, but you have to bear in mind that some players are especially slow out of the box (Jacoby Ellsbury, when he was still playing, would grade out average or a shade over that by home to first times), while many left-handed hitters will give you “jailbreak” times because they hit and turn to run in what appears to be a single motion. Ichiro’s hitting style had him halfway down the line before the ball had left his bat, which I think earned him many, many extra hits over his career.

When talking power, I sometimes distinguish between raw power and game power. Think of raw power as what a hitter might show you during batting practice, while game power is what he gets to show when he is facing live pitching and also has to consider things like the count or the need to try to hit, not just to try to dead-pull everything he sees. Raw power is necessary for game power, but not sufficient.

For pitchers, there are a couple of macro variables I try to figure out while also evaluating individual pitches. The first is whether the pitcher’s delivery will allow him to throw enough strikes, or throw enough quality strikes, to have a major-league role. If you can’t repeat your delivery — especially getting your hand to roughly the same release point each time you deliver a pitch — you’re probably going to struggle with command. That can be the difference between being a starter and a reliever, or between being a big-leaguer and a career minor-leaguer. I can use video for this kind of evaluation, but MLB teams now have much more sophisticated technology that allows them not just to diagnose issues like this but work with pitchers to try to improve their deliveries.

The second big variable I look at with pitchers is the starter/reliever question, recognizing that there are certain things you have to be able to do to be a successful starter in the majors. Your delivery has to be not just repeatable, but repeatable over 100 pitches; nearly every major-league starter generates at least some of the power in his delivery from his legs, and pitchers who do so almost entirely with their arms or torsos tend to get hurt. You also need a pitch to get hitters on the other side of the plate out. Usually that means a changeup or splitter, although some pitchers can do this with a cutter. The axiom about starters needing three pitches — a fastball, a breaking ball, and a changeup or splitter — is generally true, but I think misleads you a little bit about the relative weights of those pitches. A pitcher with a plus fastball and changeup and 45 breaking ball can still be a starter (Chris Paddack comes to mind). A pitcher with a plus fastball and breaking ball and 45 changeup might have too big a platoon split for that role.

In the span of just a few years, the industry has moved away from the belief that players are what they are and come to understand that many players can change in dramatic ways, and alter their outcomes by multiple grades. The Dodgers have shown a particular ability to overhaul swings by optimizing launch angles, unlocking additional power in players like journeymen Chris Taylor and Max Muncy, or in a prospect like Will Smith, taking him from a soft regular to a probable All-Star. I like to highlight examples I see of players who might benefit from one of these overhauls, but I also recognize I lack the tools that MLB teams have, so I tend to write and evaluate primarily against what the player is right now, and mention any such potential state changes as secondary thoughts.

In parallel, I look at the statistical information we have on the player, and if possible talk to team analysts who have access to even more data and may be willing to share it. The best reports I write come when what I see in person (or, if necessary, on video) lines up with the data we have on the player’s performance. That does happen, but there are also many cases where the two approaches point in different directions, and in those cases I believe it’s my job to try to explain the disconnect and lay out the differing scenarios for the player’s future. I had concerns about Austin Riley’s bat speed going back to his pro debut, and that didn’t change even as he hit his way up the minors … until he reached the majors last year, and the bat speed became a contributor to his struggles at the plate, with a .279 OBP and 36.4 percent strikeout rate in his rookie season. Considering the possible scenarios for his future development, and the probabilities of each, requires some assumptions about what his main obstacles are (e.g., his slider bat speed) and whether they can be addressed.

My next major project for The Athletic will be my top 100 prospects package, which will include org reports for all 30 teams and detailed reports on the prospects in the global top 100, so you will see much of the philosophy of evaluation I detailed here put into action next month. I hope this at least pulls back the curtain a little bit on my thought process and makes it a little clearer for when I rank a player somewhere you didn’t expect to see him.

(Top photo of Riley: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)