Inside six weeks of the MLB draft usually is crunch time for amateur scouting departments.
With a lot of players having not been seen since March, opinions have changed based on health, performance and signability. Cross-checkers are constantly on the move to get additional looks at players the club has interest in.
That was then.
This is now, when the only thing known is the draft will be held June 10 and be no more than 10 rounds, with the possibility it will be five. Last year it was 40.
With the coronavirus shutting down high school and college games, scouts are looking at prospective draft picks on video instead of getting a close-up look from the seats. Instead of a scout talking to the player face-to-face, it is done by video conferencing.
“We talk to them about their [abbreviated] season and how they think it went,’’ said Damon Oppenheimer, the Yankees’ head of amateur scouting since 2005, about the hour-long talks with potential draft picks who actually played college and high school games before baseball vanished. “It’s been a fact-finding mission on some of them and it’s been really good. It’s crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s. Making sure the medical information that needs to be in is in. It is a lot of video and a lot of discussions. A lot of stuff we wouldn’t normally have the same amount of time to do because of seeing players. We are trying to capitalize on it and do the best we can.’’
While it has been somewhat beneficial partially due to the players being so comfortable about communicating with cell phones, attempting to evaluate players without seeing them in the meat of their schedules runs second to live eyes collecting information.
“I don’t think there is any substitute for watching kids playing baseball, watching them interact, watching them how they perform under pressure and things that aren’t necessarily on video, angles that aren’t on video,’’ said Oppenheimer, whose club owns the No. 28 pick. “You don’t know what the competition looks like. There are so many things that go into scouting an amateur player that don’t necessarily go on scouting a professional player.’’
For some players the last time a big league scout saw them play live was last summer. And while a lot can change from August to now for players 17 to 22, the more detailed those reports are the better.
“It’s a credit to the scouts that across the summer they made a true evaluation of a player and not just an identification of players that you are going to get to [see] them in the spring,’’ Oppenheimer said. “I think a lot of our guys put in the core hard work to evaluate them as if they were going to be drafted sooner.’’
Like so many work environments everywhere, there are hurdles to clear that never existed.
“It’s not ideal. Players get better, players change, players at this age we are scouting they grow and get stronger. The level of competition comes into play. Different levels of pressure, you see them under pressure,’’ Oppenheimer said. “It’s not the best way to do it, but it is what we are dealing with.’’