The Evolution of the Scouting Process in Major League Baseball

Things would be a lot easier for Major League Baseball teams if they had crystal balls instead of scouts. They could gaze into the futures of every young player on their radar and determine right then and there which ones were worth pursuing.

Maybe teams will get crystal balls someday. But until that day comes, scouts will have to do.

There's this much to be said about scouting, however: It's still not an exact science, but it's certainly more of one than it used to be. Scouting has come a long way.

I'm not going to pretend like I was there to observe the evolution of scouting with my own two eyes, but it shows up if you take an hour or two to get lost at Diamond Mines. The site's collection of old scouting reports reveals much about players that previously hadn't been public knowledge, and they  tell a story of a process that's undergone a lot of change over the years.

If you'll follow me this way into the TARDIS, we can go back and relive it.

1950s: Not a Whole Lot to It

There's a limit to how far back Diamond Mines' database goes. As much as I'd love to read what the scouts made of Old Hoss Radbourn in the 1800s, it looks like anything before 1950 is the great beyond.

Lucky for us, some notable scouting reports survived from the 1950s, such as the ones for Frank Robinson in 1953, Willie McCovey in 1955, Bob Gibson in 1956 and Gaylord Perry in 1957.

Take a look at the four of those, and you'll see that there wasn't much to scouting back then. For position players like Robinson and McCovey, the only things that mattered were the five tools: hitting, power-hitting, fielding, baserunning and throwing. For pitchers like Gibson and Perry, there were boxes for velocity, curve, change, control, poise and stamina.

Intangibles were a secondary concern, as both hitters and pitchers had only their attitudes, habits and hustle put under the microscope. Evidently, scouts were much more concerned with viewing prospects as ballplayers than as human beings.

Regardless of their specific attributes, prospects weren't graded using numbers. Scouts graded their attributes with short little word descriptions like "Good," "Fair-good" or "Excellent."

Scouts weren't given much space to expound on each player's strengths and weaknesses, either, but they didn't seem to require that much space anyway. For example, the assessment of McCovey's strengths and weaknesses went like this:

• Player's Strength: Youth, height, good power.
• Player's Weakness: Weak on curve, good pitching.

Scouts could elaborate further in the section marked "Baseball History and Remarks," but it apparently wasn't necessary. All Frank Fahey wrote for his summary of Bob Gibson was:

"This boy attends Creighton. He has not had much pitching experience but has nice loose arm and can throw hard. Will be a junior at Creighton this fall."

There's three sentences about a future Hall of Fame pitcher, and only one of them had to do with Gibson's actual pitching abilities.

When it came to making an actual definitive ruling on whether the player in question was a prospect, all scouts had to do was put "Yes" or "No" on the line next to a very simple question: "Is player prospect?"

Based on the format of these scouting reports, the idea wasn't to paint a specific picture of what each player was at the time and what he was going to become. The idea was more to paint a general picture, with only some very basic thought paid to what the future held.

It was going to take something drastic for things to be shaken up.

Like, you know, a draft.

1960s: Baseball Gets a Draft, and Scouting Gets an Overhaul

It makes sense that 1950s scouting reports were so simple, for the acquisition of young talent in those days was pretty easy in its own right. With no draft in place, all teams had to do was go looking for young talent and present a contract if they liked what they saw.

And provided they had enough money, clubs could zero in on whoever they wanted. As denizens of New York, the Yankees, Giants and Dodgers could basically sign any prospect. The St. Louis Cardinals were another superpower of the day that could sign whoever they wanted.

The scouting process didn't change all that much in regards to amateur free agents in the 1960s, as the scouting reports for Rod Carew from 1964 and Tom Seaver from March of 1965 show. Both players were the subjects of bare-boned scouting reports before they were signed by the Minnesota Twins and New York Mets, respectively.

According to The New York Times (subscription required), the Mets were one of four big-time clubs along with the Yankees, Dodgers and Cardinals that fought back against a draft when the idea was being kicked around in the early 1960s. They didn't like the idea of bottom-feeders getting fair shots at top talent.

But they couldn't stop it from becoming a reality. The draft was created, and Cardinals general manager Robert L. Howsam understood right away what it meant: "It means we'll have to scout more."

The first draft was held in 1965, and the scouting game started to change. You can tell by looking at three scouting reports from the end of the decade in 1969: Chris Chambliss, Mike Schmidt and Rick Reuschel, each of whom would eventually be drafted.

These scouting reports switched out words for numbers in key areas, such as when it came time to grade Chambliss' and Schmidt's five tools and Reuschel's fastball, curveball and control. Another major change involved a lot more space at the bottom for an in-depth assessment, and the scouts who filled out the reports for Chambliss, Schmidt and Reuschel took full advantage.

For example, here's what Vedie Himsl wrote about Schmidt:

"

Saw this boy play six games in the Central Illinois Collegiate League. Well built boy with quite a bit of ability. A steady type player – one you keep looking for him to do more. He could be a little more aggressive all around – in the field and at the plate. Throws the ball well when he throws overhand – has tendency to drop his arm down to the side and does not throw well from there – needs to charge ground balls more. At the plate he takes a good cut; short swing and has strong arms. He did some switch hitting in practice but did not see him hit left handed in any of the games. Has been blessed with better than average ability – just must work a little harder and he could develop into a good player. The more I saw him the more I liked his chances.

"

Remember when that one scout assessed Gibson as a prospect in three sentences, only one of which was about his actual pitching ability?

Yeah, Himsl went a little further than that. He expounded on everything he liked about Schmidt and everything he needed to work on in detail, thus painting a much more complete picture of the kind of player Schmidt was and the kind of player he had a chance to be.

Naturally, more complex assessments came with a slightly more complex judgment call. Gone was the yes or no "Is player prospect?" question. In its place was a "Prospect Rating" box where scouts could enter a one, two or three: one for a definite major league prospect, two for a good major league prospect and three for a fair major league prospect.

As complex as these scouting reports were relative to those of the 1950s, however, there were still stones left to be turned. 

1970s and 1980s: The Overhaul Continues

The implementation of the draft forced baseball to rethink its approach to scouting, but there's one very important thing that the scouting reports we looked at from the late 1960s didn't address: signability.

In theory, the draft was supposed to make it easier for the bottom-feeders to accumulate the talent to compete with the big guys, but it didn't magically make money appear for teams that needed it. Organizations still had to worry about how much they had to spend.

Best I can tell, it was in the early 1970s that teams started to address that concern while they were in the process of scouting players.

Take the scouting report Jim Martz filled out for the Baltimore Orioles in 1970 regarding a young lefty named Frank Tanana. Right there at the top next to basic information like height and weight was a section for signability.

One line read "Probability of Signing" and was flanked by boxes for "Good," "Uncertain" and "Poor." Below that were spaces for a recommended signing bonus and an expected signing bonus.

Then came the talent and personality grades, and the Orioles spiced things up by asking scouts to grade both arm strength and arm accuracy, as well as fastball speed and "liveliness." The Orioles clearly wanted to know the prospects on their radar down to the last detail.

Scouting reports from the next couple of years contain similar changes. A scouting report of Fred Lynn from 1972, for example, contained an area for "Money Expected" and a one-to-10 grading scale for various attributes. Like the 1969 reports, there was a ton of space at the bottom for scouts to write an in-depth assessment.

In 1974, baseball scouting became centralized for the first time when Milwaukee Brewers general manager Jim Wilson left his post to become the head of the brand new Major League Scouting Bureau. According to The New York Times (subscriptions required), the organization was formed by 17 clubs to "pool efforts to obtain new talent."

That process involved coming up with a uniform scouting report, and you can see what the Bureau came up with by taking a look at Jim Martz's scouting report for Kirk Gibson from 1978.

The phrase "all the fixings" comes to mind. Scouts were charged with using the 20-80 scale to grade both present and future abilities. This made it easier for them to give executives an idea of what sort of player the prospect in discussion had a chance to become.

There was still a need for word descriptions, but only in the intangibles section. That included things like habits, dedication, aptitude and emotional maturity. Assessing talent was still a priority, but this goes to show that scouting prospects as human beings was increasing in importance. Teams were becoming more and more interested in what sort of people they were about to invest their money in.

Under all this were sizable boxes for scouts to elaborate on physical features, abilities, weaknesses and signability. In Gibson's case, that was a spot for Martz to acknowledge the elephant in the room while also making it clear where he stood on the matter:

"

Has the tools and makeup to be an offensive superstar and put people in the park. This date Gibson states he is still very adamant about playing SR. year of college football. A high doubtful sign. Baseball needs this player.

"

The format of the Gibson scouting reports turns up often among 1980s scouting reports. There's one for Darryl Strawberry in 1980, David Cone in 1981, Mark McGwire in 1984 and Mike Mussina in 1987. 

Along the way, the Major League Scouting Bureau officially became a part of the commissioner's office. That went down in 1985, but it apparently didn't bar clubs from doing their own thing when it came to scouting.

The Seattle Mariners' 1987 scouting report for Ken Griffey Jr. was a sort of hybrid of the Major League Scouting Bureau format that asked the scout if he had spoken directly with Griffey's parents or Griffey himself. Evidently, the Mariners were interested in knowing if their scouts had any sort of personal relationship with the prospects on their radar.

Elsewhere, the Chicago White Sox's 1988 scouting report for Frank Thomas looks like an evolved version of the Major League Scouting Bureau format. It allowed the scout, current Washington Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo, to elaborate on precisely what kind of hitter Thomas was ("Power" was circled) and what kind of power he had ("Home Run" circled). In addition, makeup was assessed not with words, but on the 20-80 scale.

Scouting may be regarded as an inexact science, but efforts clearly took place in the 1970s and 1980s to make it as much of an exact science as possible. Scouting became almost mathematic, and teams really started to fret over more than just talent when it came to the prospects in which they were interested.

Thus, the stage was set for the modern era.

1990s to Today: Got Everything Covered

What happens to scouting after an era in which it got more and more specific?

Easy. It gets more specific.

Consider the Cincinnati Reds' scouting report for Derek Jeter from 1992. In the realm of personal information, it contained everything from the occupations of Jeter's parents to the name of the family doctor. In the talent assessment part, there was space for the scout, Gene Bennett, to grade Jeter's specific abilities on the 20-80 scale and for descriptive remarks of each ability.

Next to that was a space for Bennett to work out a "Prospect Formula" for Jeter, which was a mathematical equation based on Jeter's ability grades, with extra points available by virtue of "Scout's intuition."

Jeter rated as a 56.25 prospect. That classified him as a "Good" prospect, though the Reds may have given him extra consideration because of the all-caps "YES" in the section marked "REDS type." 

Elsewhere in the world of super-talented 1990s shortstops, the Milwaukee Brewers' scouting report of Alex Rodriguez from 1993 shows that they had him very well figured out. His tools and makeup were graded on the 20-80 scale, and the scouting report even provided a space for the scout, Russ Bove, to check off the phrase that described A-Rod the best.

The options were: "Bull Dog," "Hard Nose," "Aggressive," "In Control," "Average," "Marginal," "Passive" and "Quits." A-Rod's checkmark fell next to "Hard Nose."

Below that was a great big section for Bove to elaborate on things like A-Rod's speed and strength, and to project his production at the major league level. He pegged Rodriguez as a future .275 hitter with 20-homer power and 20-steal speed.

You'll recall that when we started this discussion, we were talking about scouts looking at prospects and basically going, "Yeah, that's pretty good. And that's pretty good. And that's pretty good..."

Now here we are talking about scouts looking at prospects and analyzing their skills from a multitude of directions while also taking stock of their personalities and making projections for their futures. Over the decades, scouts basically went from being mere observers to being more like baseball anthropologists or private detectives. A cross between both, perhaps.

Has scouting undergone any further advancements since the turn of the century?

It's hard to say where teams are concerned, as Diamond Mines' database doesn't appear to stretch into the 2000s. More recent official scouting reports must be under wraps.

Not that baseball fans need teams to provide scouting reports on all the best prospects these days. There are any number of publications that can do that, from Baseball America to Baseball Prospectus to Bleacher Report. 

Opinions will vary depending on where you go, but the substance of the reports won't as much. Any good scouting report you come across is going to tell you all about a player's specific strengths and weaknesses, any notable personality traits or flaws and what sort of major leaguer he projects to be.

Substance like this is what baseball fans have come to expect, and understandably so. But the next time you read an in-depth scouting report, remember that you're reading something that would blow a 1950s scout's mind.

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