The New Age of Scouting

Approximately 16 million baseball players compete on American soil, and by the time high school rolls around, many of them have college scholarships and professional baseball in mind. To help better support these players, we need to be interested in draft research and understand what makes an athlete a future MLB superstar.  

I recently submitted a manuscript in peer review on the draft related to future Wins Above Replacement (WAR) and the prospects of making it to the MLB level. WAR is an all-encompassing metric that indicates a player's value to his team above a replacement player. 

The higher the WAR statistic, the greater the player value. 

For the most part, results were intuitive, as first-rounders produce the highest WAR, and nearly 71% make it to at least one MLB game appearance. The odds of making it to the show and producing high WAR decline after the first round, but there's always a chance when you have your foot in the door as a minor league player.  

What I found interesting is that in the first round, the 4-year college pitcher produces significantly less WAR than pitchers and hitters from high school and junior colleges. However, many teams put much more money into first-round signs who pitched at D1 institutions.  

So, what is the cause of such lowered WAR returns upon reaching the MLB level for the D1 player?  There are so many variables, and the number one rule in research is that correlation doesn’t equal causation.  However, I have seen some clear factors involved.

For starters, the draft is slanted toward selecting high-round position players, so it's become tougher to be drafted as a pitcher in the first round. (Unless you are the Angels who selected all pitchers in the 2021 draft, but this is unusual).  

My gut is that the D1 rotation exposes the throwing arm to injury by the increased competitive demands and leaves a player burnt out playing virtually year-round with summer seasons playing from February until late August. Then when the player goes into the pros and starts facing better batters, fatigue and accumulated workload catch up.

The stud in high school or junior college is likely going to be more fresh coming into professional baseball with less workload and shorter seasons.  This may keep velocities sustained for the majority of their development in their beginnings.  This can offer a greater opportunity to be promoted when inside the walls of an MLB team and could have them reach the MLB level at an early age, which means later velocity declines would be seen due to aging.

It’s also anticipated that they will be ahead in counts more often, allowing more work on secondary pitches by establishing counts with fastball velocity.  Maintained fastball velocity can establish deception with auxiliary pitches in keeping MLB hitters on their toes. 

This concept of mixing in pitches and changing locations is called effective velocity. The lesson is that fastballs can get you in the door, but pitchability—mixing pitches and changing locations and minimizing hard contact and runners on base—will get you to the show and lead to better offers and greater opportunities to increase WAR.  

It shouldn't necessarily deter a player from taking a D1 offer to play at, but players at all levels should keep this in mind if professional baseball is in their future and maintain arm strength and consider recovery periods throughout collegiate baseball years. 

ArmCare is The Bottom Line

The reality in professional baseball is that as the gap between velocities reduces, the pitches start to blend, and a weak arm that does not sustain velocity will likely increase the opportunity for hard contact.  

You will also notice that pitchers have less success as batters have more at-bats on them during the game as they become familiar with the non-throwing cues to anticipate what's coming.

Imagine a pitcher who throws a 95 mph fastball and an 85 mph changeup but then lowers his fastball velocity to 92 mph as he becomes fatigued in the fourth inning. The differential from fastball to changeup goes from 10mph to 7 mph and can significantly affect barreling the baseball.  

The bottom line is that pitchers who can extend deception either in the delivery or in the pitch velocity characteristics will see more success throughout the game, and this interests more scouts more than just a radar gun.

I anticipate that the new wave of scouting will involve ArmCare for qualifying future performance for amateur prospects heading into the draft and providing early insights to high-performance teams in adjusting training when the athlete is signed and onboarded.  

The data provided by the ArmCare platform will help determine how prepared throwing athletes, especially pitchers, are primed and ready for high performance at the next level.

Additionally, if you have watched the draft this year, you will also note what happened to Kumar Rocker, an incredible first-round selection from Vanderbilt, who did not get signed because of an MRI abnormality.   

Players need a better system to bulletproof the arm, so this does not happen to our 4-Year pitchers or any pitcher for that matter.  

We need to raise the bar for our future MLB hopefuls and give them the best chance not only to be signed but signed in higher rounds that will increase their odds of playing in the big show and getting there earlier in the minor league development.

More on Scouting

Our latest podcast talks about ways to impress college and pro scouts, and in a few weeks, we'll share our conversation with Carlos Gomez, Director of International Scouting with the Los Angeles Angels.

Through these episodes, you'll find a ton of great information for players and coaches in preparing athletes for professional baseball and what scouts look for in a player.

Have a great week!

Train hard,

Ryan

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