I think the best Fire Joe Morgan post ever was this one from 2006 — riffing on an article written by Bill Plaschke about Dodgers scout Al LaMacchia. I laughed so hard I think I was in tears by the end. So when I came across this recent article posted on Baseball Think Factory about Mariners [...]

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As time goes by, I’m getting more fascinated by defensive metrics. As a scout and a baseball fan, I love defense. I know I don’t need to go into some diatribe about how important, yet overlooked, defense is.
But I also see it, and I’m going to generalize here a little, as one area where actual [...]

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 In case you haven’t noticed, the baseball statistics oriented community has been paying a lot more mind to defensive statistics — or really, in my humble opinion, to the general lack thereof. This article in the New York Times suggests we might be coming upon a new frontier in the world of defensive metrics. Very [...]

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Early this spring, one of my scouting mentors showed me Gare Joyce’s very good ESPN article about Tony Lucadello, the legendary scout considered the greatest ever by many in the industry.  He signed an astounding 52 big leaguers in his day, with a resume including Hall of Famers Mike Schmidt and Fergie Jenkins, as well as [...]

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Last night I had an interesting talk with an professor of economics from UC Santa Cruz. He’s here teaching a summer class at a university in Seoul and was in Busan with a mutual friend. Economics and baseball cross paths often, something I realized a few years ago when economists like Andrew Zimbalist kept popping [...]

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It’s a frequently used scouting quip — he’s got some sack, usually referring to pitchers who aren’t afraid of throwing inside or coming right at a hitter. The term is a bit intuitive, but whatever. These are woodblock prints created by Japanese artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861) of Tanuki (raccoon dogs) using their large scrota in all [...]

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Big news in the world of international baseball and thereby international baseball scouting — QSL Sports Limited, led by Chinese-born financier Kenny Huang Jian Hua, who’s heading a group attempting to buy 15% of the Cleveland Cavaliers, announced that it has formed a binding partnership with the Chinese Baseball Association (CBA) to develop a Chinese [...]

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Most scouts have a lot of inside baseball information, but since they can only communicate these things with fellow scouts (for the most part), their brains become a little heavy, metaphorically speaking. Take a scout out of the business and what do you have? Well, you probably have a guy that likes to blab a [...]

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It’s a favorite anecdote of a number of scouts — the fact that at one time Randy Johnson was considered by most scouts to be a non-prospect. I love this idea, because it goes to show how much ambiguity there is in the craft. I guess it could be viewed as frustrating as well, but [...]

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When I started scouting for the Cubs I was reminded of something I read in a sushi cookbook years ago, which was that premiere sushi chefs in Japan often spend the first seven years of their career exclusively preparing rice. That might sound a little goofy, but that’s become my approach to scouting.
When I finished [...]

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(This the final installment of the series. Find Part 1 here and Part 2 here)
Throughout the morning I made a few attempts to speak to the scout who’d invited me in. Sometimes when I’m under pressure my Korean speaking ability vanishes. But I didn’t want to screw this up. I planned each sentence before I uttered [...]

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(Part 1 can be found here)
Two of the people smoking in one corner of the room were managers of high school teams. A young, timid-looking umpire tried to re-size a dirty chest protector while someone stood behind, watched and occasionally helped. Occupying the other best seats in the house were two other scouts from Korean [...]

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I’m trying something a little new here. This is part 1 of a short series detailing my scouting life in Korea. It’s in narrative form, is non-fiction and heavy on observation. I’ve written about 30,000 words of this stuff since last year (some of it good and some it likely crap), and my pie-in-the-sky goal [...]

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Written by Mac
So I’m in Nagoya, home of the Chunichi Dragons and Ichiro Suzuki’s stomping grounds. My boss and two scouts from another organization were at the ballgame that night, and the four of us crammed into a cab to return to Nagoya Station.
We may have gotten the best cab driver in the whole gloomy [...]

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No, not me. A much bigger fish. This is a piece about Jake Ciarrachi, whose official title is Player Development/Scouting Assistant with the Cubs. The piece says he started as an intern in 2006. I haven’t met Jake, but I see his name on emails all the time. I suppose I’ll get to meet him [...]

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Don’t be thrown off by the dumb title Search party — Red Sox scouts are always on the lookout for talent, it’s a good piece. You know, the writers rarely write those things. The article gives a little background on scouting in general, starting with a scene at an unnamed Northern California junior college, and [...]

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Written by Mac
I had spent all day in the war room, watching the Seattle Mariners select 45 players on Day Two of the 2007 MLB Amateur Draft. I saw grizzled, middle-aged scouts dash out of the room, hands over their ears, on the phone with the best remaining players, checking signability one last time before [...]

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Scouting Essentials: A stopwatch, radar speed gun, team sheets, a laptop, Under Armour collared shirts tucked into khaki pants, visors, shades on your baseball hat. Whenever possible, a well-earned middle aged beer gut to show your rank. Dip if you’re so inclined.
And if you’re anyone in the world of MLB international scouting, [...]

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For the few readers that noticed (I’m OK mom, don’t worry), for the last couple weeks I’ve been AWOL, scouting a major high school tourney in Taiwan.
All in all, the tourney was quite an affair, with at least 16 major league teams sending scouts to the party. Some teams were there bearing down on [...]

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Good article plus video on scouting in the Caribbean from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Dejan Kovacevic. The title, Pirates in the Caribbean: Mining for diamonds is a bit unfortunate, but that shouldn’t detract you from reading the piece and watching the video.
Mostly the story follows Sadid Frias, who the team ends up signing for $70,000, and [...]

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