Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
June 29, 2003
The Old Guard

My local paper is the Springfield Republican. Their senior sports writer is a man named Garry Brown. I don't read Garry much, but today's headline caught my eye, Scout's instinct must count. It's a direct challenge to the ideas in Moneyball.


Has the evaluation of young players become too sophisticated?

Veteran baseball scouts say yes, although they'd rather not talk about it out of respect for their bosses.


And out of fear of their jobs.

Those bosses are the general managers of today, most of whom believe that on-base percentage and other such statistics tell all they need to know about the players they pursue at draft time. So it was with the June 3 selections of college and high school players. In many cases, scouting directors felt uncomfortable with the restrictions placed upon them.

What were these restrictions? You can't draft a player because he looks good in his uniform? You mean you can only draft players who actually showed signs of being able to play baseball?

Statistical analysis certainly has its place in rating players, but general managers would do well not to underestimate the value of good old-fashioned scouting.

Stats have their place, and it's in the garbage can.

In that regard, they might consider the career of Bill Enos, who spent a lifetime scouting New England for the Boston Red Sox.
Enos scouted by sight and instinct. He sometimes would recommend players that other scouts might overlook, simply because he saw something he liked about a kid.

But isn't this exactly what Billy Beane is doing? Finding kids with good stats that the scouts are overlooking because they don't fit the image of a ballplayer? Anyway, I'm sure Garry is going to give us lots of example of Enos' outstanding finds.

Case in point would be Rich Gedman, who was drafted and signed by the Red Sox at the insistence of Enos. When Gedman played high school and American Legion ball in Worcester, he was way overweight. He had no speed and seemingly no chance of ever playing professional baseball.

Enos thought otherwise. There was something about Gedman that caught his attention. He had a nice left-handed swing, and pretty good arm strength. Gedman did a lot of pitching in junior ball. Enos thought he might do better as a catcher.


Why? How many other players had Enos seen with that swing that turned in ML ballplayers? How many fat high school pitchers turned out to be ML catchers?

As Enos followed Gedman, he did what the scouts call "projecting." That means trying to envision what kind of player a kid might be in five years. He believed Gedman would lose the baby fat as he matured. He also took into account the fact that Gedman really hadn't played much baseball, given the New England weather during the high school season. Let him play, and maybe he'd learn to hit with power.

Ahh, I've heard of this system before. Prof. Harold Hill used it in The Music Man. He called it the think system. You didn't have to take music lessons, you just had to think a song, and you could play the song. Needless to say, Harold Hill was a con man.

As Red Sox fans now know, Enos had it right. Gedman made it to the major leagues in 1980, and he had an 11-year career highlighted by a 1986 season in which he helped the Red Sox win their last pennant. He caught Roger Clemens' first 20-strikeout game, hit some dramatic homers during the stretch drive and did an outstanding job of handling the pitching staff.

As non-Red Sox fans know, Gedman had two good years, 1984 when he hit for power, and 1985 when he got on base and hit for power. He was declining in 1986, and it would be his last year as a full-time starter. So Enos' think system had gotten the Red Sox a three year starting catcher, with a career OBA of .304. Now I like Rich Gedman, and I thought the Sox treated him poorly in 1987, but I would not hold up Rich as a shining example of old-time scouting. Not when the fastest rising star in the A's system is a fat catcher who no one else in the majors even thought of drafting!


Posted by David Pinto at 11:12 AM | Management | TrackBack (1)