It’s been a pretty exciting year so far. I got an email from Aaron recently reminding me that the EWC first-year anniversary is coming up. As expected, we’re hosting a party at New York City’s Plaza Hotel featuring P-Diddy, Reon Kadena, Tadano Kazuhito, Bai Xin Hui, and a number of other celebs. We’ve been trying to get A-Rod to stop calling us off the hook for guest passes but to no avail.

It’s been a year of non-stop change out here in Taiwan–I got married last summer, EWC continues to grow (mostly due to Aaron’s manic yet quality overwork), my wife and I celebrated the birth of our daughter on May 6th, and at the same time it’s been six months since I started my MLB scouting gig.

I can write very little about what I see and observe about the world of scouting on EWC. Secrecy is a big deal in scouting, sometimes too much. But it’s the protocol of the world I’ve entered. I think writing general things about my experience is fair play though, and it’s 3 AM and I have a wicked case of insomnia, so here goes:

First off, I’m not sure what this job would be like in the States. It would be hard to spend as much time away from my family as I do if I weren’t in love with Asia. There’s always a new city to discover, new food to try, new people to meet. If I had to live out of a suitcase and stay at corporate chain hotels, drive on freeways for hours to go to middle American cities and eat Subway or Friday’s for meals I’m not sure the job would have the same appeal. Being able to learn about Taiwan and the culture here is one of the nice parts of the job.

Probably the biggest joy of scouting is being able to learn the game from people who love and obsess about it as much as I do, many of whom played at the professional level. The fact that anyone who played baseball in MLB actually takes what I say seriously (if they do) at all is really one of the things that makes me enjoy what I do the most. It can give you chills. You don’t have to have played to be a good scout; some of the best scouts came from non-baseball backgrounds. But the stories players have and their eye for detail is hard to replicate.

Like most fans in the realm of mortals, most of my observations about baseball were through stats, and working as a scout observing tools rather than stats has been a unique way to re-train my eye and re-consider how I watch it. It’s wreaked havoc on my fantasy baseball teams. But listening to the simple yet dead-on way that former major leaguers and top baseball minds break down players can teach you more in minutes than you can figure out by looking at years of stats on pages. Especially when the differences between an MLB player and someone who gets stuck at AA can be slight, just due to some mechanical glitch, etc.

Scouts are extremely savvy, no bullshit people. It is a very competitive, fierce art, especially here in Taiwan where there are at least a dozen scouts competing for a limited talent pool in an area smaller than West Virginia. Being a scout for just six months has forced me to hone my communication and observation skills, and as a rookie scout whose bosses live in other countries, a lot of it has been trial by fire, learning by doing. Doing it in another culture adds an added level of intrigue, as you have to compete with scouts that speak Chinese and Taiwanese fluently and have a deeper understanding of the culture, language, and certain codes of communication. The flip side of this, however, is being a wai-guo-ren scout carries a certain degree of cache with it. Taiwanese both revere and revile foreigners so it’s a blessing and a curse doing it from the perspective of an outsider to the culture; You’re privileged and have the inside track and also at a disadvantage simultaneously.

Being on the inside of MLB is something that I appreciate every day. Working for the team I work for, its especially cool to watch first hand how a small-budget club remains competitive with clubs with unlimited resources–by meticulous data and record-keeping, and exhaustive attention to every part of the world internationally. It’s a lot of paperwork, probably more than any other team. But doing that paperwork, filling out tons of reports, keeping team sheets on any team that plays a game on the island, has really sharpened my eye for evaluating players. I know I have as much data or info on players as any scout on this island.

There’s a lot of characters you meet in scouting, different ways of going about things. Some scouts are strictly business, humourless, secretive, and poker-faced. (It’s certainly the safe way but not necessarily the most interesting). Some are young, smooth-talking Harvard MBA types, others grizzled ex-jocks. It’s interesting to see the different approaches people take to analyzing the game, there’s as many ways of doing it as there are scouts Some keep detailed notes. Others just sit and watch. Some sit and talk your head off, trying to throw you off, giving the appearance they’re not paying attention while secretly observing what they need to see.

I get asked the stat vs. moneyball question a lot, especially since I also write as a blogger, and that tends to attract stat-heads. Some scouts love stats, others detest them. I personally think the “moneyball” vs. “scouting” dichotomy is a ridiculous false dichotomy. The whole debate is superfluous. I can’t understand how any scout could rule out using stats as a way to supplement their observations about players (especially at the professional level), but at the same time the naive romanticism of people who think that only stats are relevant is kind of laughable, as if they’re going to “solve” baseball with math formulas. As a scout, the foremost thing is information, adding another level of information to your palate. Whatever info you can get helps you paint a picture for your scouting director. Whether its a short video clip of a players delivery (a picture speaks 1,000 words), a stat formula, everything has its place.

I haven’t signed my first player yet. It can be kind of disappointing when you spend a lot of time following a player, meeting their family, getting to know them, writing reports, and then you don’t end up signing them. But at the same time it’s a good lesson in patience. You want to sign the right people. Some scouts sign people just to ‘get on the board’ as it were, but most teams don’t have the luxury of throwing money at a player they’re not all that interested in just for some kind of symbolic act or for the sake of making a statement. My supervisor tells me you haven’t got a complete picture of any player until you’ve seen him seven times, talked with him, and observed him in non-game situations. It seems excessive, but having a good read on players tendencies and off-field habits is a crucial part of the picture.

On that note, one of the things that makes me most uncomfortable about scouting at the same time is the kind of constant sizing up and judging you’re doing of other humans, and the act of assigning a dollar value to human beings’ dreams and aspirations. At times it can be kind of disheartening, when parents of kids who have staked their kids’ future on his pro ball career come up to you and ask you if their kid has a chance…and he’s a 5′4 senior catcher with a poor arm. Make-up is so key, but at the same time one of the risks of scouting is the temptation to make a damning evaluation of a players’ character or throw him under the bus. After all, a former crack-addict just broke the HR derby record and has been a legit triple-crown candidate. In a lot of cases, players just need love or positive re-inforcement that they’re not getting in order to boost their self-confidence.

Pro sports is not a place for insecure people, or at least outwardly insecure people, and yet the makeup of the industry– has to be one of the most anxiety-causing and insecurity-inducing atmospheres possible. Appearing confident and bravely facing this in a relaxed, non-chalant manner seems to be the way to survive and thrive. (Doug Glanville wrote about this internal fear players cope with beautifully in this NY Times piece). Constant competition, constantly being evaluated, knowing you can be cut at any minute, traded, or told your services are no longer needed isn’t exactly an environment that is going to make humans feel comfortable.

There’s some things I wish I could change about baseball in Taiwan, first and foremost being the managers’ handling of pitchers at the amateur level. It’s no accident that every pitcher that has come out of Taiwan to make it to the big leagues has needed surgery at some point. Throwing a baseball very hard repeatedly is a violent action, one that easily leads to injury, especailly if not done in a proper way. The idea of preserving a pitchers’ arm for future use just doesn’t come into a lot of managers’ minds in high school here, especially since those managers are under a lot of pressure themselves to win.

I also wish that there were a viable professional league that reflected the passion and drive Taiwanese people have for baseball. The degree to which Taiwanese people know and love the sport is fantastic. Everyday people on the street know a lot about the game, even if its just about the small handful of players that have made it to the show. It’s entrenched into the culture here even more than in the U.S. The other day I was watching a game with my wife, who certainly wouldn’t list baseball as one of her hobbies or loves, and yet she turned to me and said “Lin Che Hsuan really gets good reads on the ball off the bat. He has quick instincts defensively”. (Note to MLB clubs: She is not yet signed to a team as a scout).

Anyways, I hope to continue these periodic observations about scouting if they haven’t bored you to tears….The next week I’ll be checking out the olympic team that’s headed to Beijing for the “speed-ball” 11 inning-fun ball competition.