Scouting and Drafting Amatures

[bucksfan2]

I was wondering about the scouting that goes on with both high schoolers and college athletes who are potental draftees. I understand that every major league club has a pretty indepth scouting department. I just wonder how much scouting on a particular player is actually done by the team itself and how much scouting is left up to scouting services (BA, BP, etc.). With the draft growing in popularity each first round selection is scrutinized more and more every year. But I also realize that when drafting a HS player how many actual games are you able to watch? With the advent of CSTV more and more college games are on TV and more and more video is available. But when you look at HS how many players have access to video as well how high of a quailty is a video?

Do the Reds have pre-draft camps? How do you evaluate players from both Puerto Rico as well as Canada. With last years draft, Votto, and the possibility of Lawrie, it seems as if the reds have made some significant inroads in Canada but when you look at it further how many games are scouts able to watch? I mean in all reality when does the weather break in Canada that enables the teams to play outdoors?

Hmmm, I don't know how much stock I'm willing to put in this. If the Reds pick Lawrie with Smoak, Alonso, and Crow on the board, RedsZone's minor league forum might just explode.

This comment is from another thread but I find it interesting. In the NFL Draft you have 3 years of college football to watch. You also have tapes of every game and I would imagine that most of the tapes you will recieve will come in HD. As for baseball it almost sees as if even the top college programs (Miami, Clemson, ASU, etc.) are the equvilant of smaller school football. I saw promo video of Crow and it looked pretty basic whereas when the Bengals drafted Rivers a few months ago think about how much tape they actually had on him.

I guess my question is how much do we know about each individual draft pick? If the reds do pick a guy like Lawrie, other than what several draft prognosticators say how do we know that Smoak, Alonso, or Crow are that much better? Every year in football we see players fall drastically during draft day and that is after 4 months of evaulation, combines, tapes, etc. With baseball you have a short high school/college season and the draft is done while a lot of players are still committed to a team.

[dougdirt]

I was wondering about the scouting that goes on with both high schoolers and college athletes who are potental draftees. I understand that every major league club has a pretty indepth scouting department. I just wonder how much scouting on a particular player is actually done by the team itself and how much scouting is left up to scouting services (BA, BP, etc.).

Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus don't employee scouts. They get their information from baseball scouts in the business.

With the draft growing in popularity each first round selection is scrutinized more and more every year. But I also realize that when drafting a HS player how many actual games are you able to watch?

Well, for high schoolers, you watch these guys as early as Freshman in high school. There are so many camps and tournaments as well as summer ball that you actually do get a good chance to see these guys play a lot (position guys more than pitchers).

With the advent of CSTV more and more college games are on TV and more and more video is available. But when you look at HS how many players have access to video as well how high of a quailty is a video?

You generally aren't scouting players on video. You generally employee several scouts per area of the country. You see a guy with potential, you generally send out the bigger guns to check them out to make sure its the real deal.

Do the Reds have pre-draft camps? How do you evaluate players from both Puerto Rico as well as Canada. With last years draft, Votto, and the possibility of Lawrie, it seems as if the reds have made some significant inroads in Canada but when you look at it further how many games are scouts able to watch? I mean in all reality when does the weather break in Canada that enables the teams to play outdoors?

Yes they do have camps. The Reds have scouts for the Canadian and Puerto Rico area's. You hear about guys by word of mouth and send someone to go check them out. Canadian kids that are quite good play on traveling teams, who will come to the US and play scrimmages to get more time in.

This comment is from another thread but I find it interesting. In the NFL Draft you have 3 years of college football to watch. You also have tapes of every game and I would imagine that most of the tapes you will recieve will come in HD. As for baseball it almost sees as if even the top college programs (Miami, Clemson, ASU, etc.) are the equvilant of smaller school football. I saw promo video of Crow and it looked pretty basic whereas when the Bengals drafted Rivers a few months ago think about how much tape they actually had on him.

I guess my question is how much do we know about each individual draft pick? If the reds do pick a guy like Lawrie, other than what several draft prognosticators say how do we know that Smoak, Alonso, or Crow are that much better? Every year in football we see players fall drastically during draft day and that is after 4 months of evaulation, combines, tapes, etc. With baseball you have a short high school/college season and the draft is done while a lot of players are still committed to a team.

You just summed up why the MLB draft is the biggest crapshoot of them all there. No one really knows. Was Jay Bruce really the 12th best player taken in 2005? Was Danny Dorn really a 32nd round talent?