One of the biggest trade wins in recent memory plays shortstop in San Diego.
Almost from his first day in the Padres organization, Fernando Tatis Jr. had the makings of a star. He crushed every level of the minor leagues, then made the big leagues out of spring training in 2019 and finished third in National League Rookie of the Year balloting.
At the time he was traded in 2016, Tatis had yet to play an official game for his signing franchise. The White Sox had inked him out of the Dominican Republic in a 2015 international signing class that also included Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Juan Soto.
The process the Padres went through to acquire Tatis as the second piece—along with lefthander Erik Johnson—in the deal that sent James Shields to Chicago was extensive. Four of the team’s scouts with decades of combined experience saw Tatis on the backfields in Arizona before recommending that he be included in the trade.
The Padres have one of the most robust professional scouting staffs in baseball, with 15 scouts tasked to cover the major and minor leagues. That’s tied with the Rays, Pirates and Marlins and ranks behind just the Yankees (19), D-backs (17) and Mets (16).
These teams’ scouting staffs stand in contrast with current trends. More and more teams have opted to downsize their scouting departments across all levels.
Entering the 2019 season, per information listed in media guides and the annual Baseball America Directory, teams employed a combined 1,909 full-time scouting directors, assistant directors, special assistants, special assignment scouts, amateur, professional and international scouts. This season, that number is down to 1,756, for a difference of 153 fewer scouts. That’s an average of 5.1 fewer scouts per team, but the losses were not evenly distributed. Four teams have more scouts and front office scouting personnel in 2021 than they had in 2019. Seven teams’ departments lost 10 or more scouts from 2019 to 2021.
The financial losses teams have sustained throughout the course of the pandemic exacerbated the trend, but teams were eschewing in-person scouting in favor of analytics and video scouting before Covid-19 became a part of our collective vocabulary.
“I think Covid, obviously you could say this for probably anything,” one scout said, “but I think it happened at a really bad time for scouting.”
[https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/6245/665483/60bf1fab2eb34/1623137859255.jpg]
Simply put, some teams have looked at their books for places to save money and have come to the conclusion that scouts are expendable and player evaluation can be done just as effectively—and more efficiently—either through analytics or via video.
The technology around the game has exploded in the last decade, to the point where nearly everything is measurable, and a great deal of that information is public or will be in the near future. Any big league pitcher’s velocity or spin rate is available with a few clicks of a mouse. The same goes for a player’s exit velocity or sprint speed or even catchers’ pop times.
The public data isn’t particularly plentiful in the minor leagues yet— some teams do tweet about exit velocities every now and again—but most of the sport is available to stream via MiLB.TV. Some minor league teams even have broadcast TV deals.
The quality of the minor league streams, especially at the upper levels, is so good—and is slated to get much better because of Major League Baseball’s new broadcast requirements—that some clubs have decided to stop in-person scouting of Triple-A and the big leagues.
In one former scout’s opinion, this could ultimately hurt scouts’ development. The most respected voices in the room have put in decades at all levels. They’ve likely seen every level of the minor leagues, as well as plenty of amateur baseball both domestically and internationally. All that is usually in addition to a playing career. No matter the path, these scouts have shaped their perspective over years on every type of ballfield imaginable.
“I think what you’ll lose in doing that is the development of scouts. There’s some really, really stinking good scouts out there. Really good scouts with a phenomenal feel for players,” one former scout said. “What they say matters, and even the most analytical organizations listen to these types of guys. You’re going to miss out on the development of those types of guys, and they’ll be gone in the game if you continue to neglect Triple-A and Double-A.
“Why? Because you need to have scouts learn what a guy looks like at 18, 19, 20, 21 and in A-ball and all the different demographics. The college kid, the old college kid in A-ball, the Dominican kid, the Venezuelan. There’s so many subsets of players with so many different backgrounds that you have to see them all, and then you have to track their development—and then you have to evaluate how well you did evaluating. That’s how you get good at it.”
That proliferation of data and video has, for some teams, led them to employ fewer scouts.
Instead of having, say, 15 scouts for the big leagues through the lowest levels, they can have 10 scouts do in-person games for Double-A through Rookie ball, while also doing six upper-level teams on video.
For now, this affects pro scouts more acutely than it does scouts in amateur or international departments, though amateur departments were significantly slashed from 2019 to 2021 as well. There are still thousands of players at high schools and colleges where data is not easily captured. Without that data, teams can’t easily use forecasting models to come up with predictions for their career paths. Thus, more eyes are still needed to adequately cover those levels.
For pro scouts, that means more in-person looks than ever are focused on players at Class A and below. That’s where a keen scout might be able to clue his team into a player who has made great changes in the offseason, or the player on the back fields whose name hasn’t reached the mainstream.
“It’s just a constant trickle-down of focusing on the levels of baseball that we have the least amount of information, the least TrackMan data, the least video,” the first scout said, “and using that to prioritize our in-person looks.”
But while it remains true that the players at the lowest levels are the ones for whom the least data is available, that doesn’t mean that scouting the upper levels and the big leagues lack value. The top players are likely to continue being the top players—and probably aren’t going to be available in trade or free agency in the near future—but the fringe or second-tier big leaguers, the ones who might fill out a roster the next season, could yield big results for a smart team.
“We know who the best players are in the big leagues. Do you need me to tell you that Mike Trout is good at baseball? No, you do not need me to tell you that,” the first scout said. “However, there’s going to be guys that play in the big leagues this year who don’t play well in the big leagues, don’t perform well, and they end up going on waivers or signing as a free agent, and they’re going to end up playing well down the road.”
Nearly all pro scouting in 2020 was done via video because of the pandemic, and scouts are fearful that the practice—despite its flaws— could become more commonplace because it is much cheaper.
And while that’s undeniably true, video scouting does not allow for the finer points of the scouting profession. While a scout can see a great number of games on video, and analytics can help illuminate some aspects not visible to the naked eye, there are more elements to scouting beyond evaluating the player in front of you.
[https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/6245/665483/60bf1fab2eb34/1623137893249.jpg]
A rough winter
More than 150 scouting jobs were lost due to the pandemic and an industry-wide emphasis on data, analytics and cost-efficiency
This offseason was the most brutal in recent memory for the scouting industry.
At the beginning of the 2019 season, teams employed 1,909 scouts across their amateur, professional and international departments. That includes all manner of scouts, from special assistants to directors to crosscheckers to pro scouts to area scouts. In 2021, that number is down to 1,756. All scout head counts referenced in this story were sourced from team media guides and the annual Baseball America Directory.
There are a number of factors at play here, not the least of which is the continuing coronavirus pandemic, which led to a 60-game major league season and canceled minor league season in 2020. The lost revenue across the sport led to pay cuts, furloughs and layoffs in teams’ business, scouting and baseball operations departments.
The pandemic wasn’t the only factor, though. For years, the proliferation of data and technology and the corresponding cost savings led several teams to make massive cuts to their scouting groups. Entering the 2019 season, for example, the Astros employed a combined three people with the titles pro scout, advance scout, special assignment scout or special assistant.
Just 10 years earlier, Houston’s total number of people with those titles was 42.
The Astros are the most famous example, but they’re far from alone in reducing the scope of their scouting staffs.
From 2019 to 2021, seven teams reduced their scouting staffs by double-digits across all departments. The Rays and Brewers were each down by 10 scouts, the Dodgers and Giants each were down 13, the Cubs were down 20 and the Angels and Mariners were down 23 apiece.
The decreases by those teams don’t paint the whole picture. The Dodgers and Rays, still have 71 scouts apiece, tied with the Royals for fifth in the game. The Reds, Red Sox, D-backs and Yankees each employ more than 75 scouts throughout all levels.
By and large, scouting departments are still much larger than they were in 2009. That year, teams employed a combined 1,332 scouts, or 424 fewer than today, even after the pandemic-fueled downsizing.
Just four teams employ fewer scouts today than they did in 2009 thanks in part to significant growth in international scouting departments. The Astros are down 43 people in scouting. The Orioles are down 11. The Angels are down seven, and the Mariners are down five.
Many of the scouts let go during the cuts over the last year are older and more experienced, meaning they commanded high salaries.
Dave Yoakum of the White Sox—a founding member and 2010 inductee of the Professional Baseball Scouts Hall of Fame—was in his 29th season with the organization when he was let go. Brad Sloan of the Red Sox had been a scout for 40 years at the time of his dismissal.
Pete Mackanin, one of just eight people to have played, managed and scouted with the Phillies, was let go in 2020 as well. The Phillies also let go of special assignment scouts Howie Freiling and Dave Hollins. Freiling had been a minor league manager or scout since 1991. Hollins won a pennant with the Phillies in 1993 and had been a coach or scout since 2004.
Even though scouting staffs are still well populated compared with where they were in 2009, there’s a concern that even when the pandemic is in the rear-view mirror, teams may still opt to downsize their departments in the name of more cost-efficient methods, like video scouting or analytically driven evaluation, in place of people.
“It’s not just the game. It’s our country writ large. There’s such a death of expertise. It doesn’t matter to people anymore,” one scout said.
“. . . It doesn’t matter to people who are hired or who are hiring, because they just think they can do it better. There’s just there’s no respect for people who have been there and done it.”
—Josh Norris
GOING UP
Seven MLB organizations have added to their scouting departments or maintained since 2019.
Pirates +17
Blue Jays +5
Astros +4
Twins +3
Rangers +3
Red Sox +0
Mets +0
GOING DOWN
And there are seven MLB organizations that have cut 10 or more scouts since 2019. Numbers include directors and assistant directors of scouting departments, special assignment scouts and assistants, pro, amateur and international departments and are based on media guides.
Mariners –23
Angels –23
Cubs –20
Giants –13
Dodgers –13
Rays –10
Brewers –10
[https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/6245/665483/60bf1fab2eb34/1623138048463.jpg]
From the field to the booth
Scouts are increasingly finding ways to share their knowledge of the game behind the microphone
Over the course of the year, major league scouting departments shrunk by an average of roughly five scouts per club. Virtually all of those job losses were the results of layoffs or firings because of cost-cutting during the pandemic and clubs’ continuing shift toward analytics and data.
At least one scout made the choice to leave the industry on his own terms. Vinny Rottino, a nondrafted free agent out of Wisconsin-La Crosse in 2003 who played parts of five seasons in the big leagues before joining the Rangers’ pro scouting department in 2017, decided during the pandemic that it was time to leave scouting—but not the game—behind.
The long, arduous months of near-nonstop travel had worn on him in prior years, especially with a young family at home. The pandemic pushed him over the edge.
“I don’t know if I would have left if the pandemic didn’t happen, like actually pulled the trigger,” Rottino said, “because the fear factor of ‘What if I lose my job?’ wouldn’t have been there, because I loved it.”
But the pandemic did happen (and is still happening), and Rottino decided to hand in his resignation. So where does a scout go after baseball? In this case, the broadcast booth.
Rangers special assistant Mike Anderson is the brother of Brewers broadcaster Brian Anderson, so Rottino already had an important connection.
“Once I told Mike that I was leaving, he was like, ‘Hey, man, my brother thinks you’d b...
Almost from his first day in the Padres organization, Fernando Tatis Jr. had the makings of a star. He crushed every level of the minor leagues, then made the big leagues out of spring training in 2019 and finished third in National League Rookie of the Year balloting.
At the time he was traded in 2016, Tatis had yet to play an official game for his signing franchise. The White Sox had inked him out of the Dominican Republic in a 2015 international signing class that also included Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Juan Soto.
The process the Padres went through to acquire Tatis as the second piece—along with lefthander Erik Johnson—in the deal that sent James Shields to Chicago was extensive. Four of the team’s scouts with decades of combined experience saw Tatis on the backfields in Arizona before recommending that he be included in the trade.
The Padres have one of the most robust professional scouting staffs in baseball, with 15 scouts tasked to cover the major and minor leagues. That’s tied with the Rays, Pirates and Marlins and ranks behind just the Yankees (19), D-backs (17) and Mets (16).
These teams’ scouting staffs stand in contrast with current trends. More and more teams have opted to downsize their scouting departments across all levels.
Entering the 2019 season, per information listed in media guides and the annual Baseball America Directory, teams employed a combined 1,909 full-time scouting directors, assistant directors, special assistants, special assignment scouts, amateur, professional and international scouts. This season, that number is down to 1,756, for a difference of 153 fewer scouts. That’s an average of 5.1 fewer scouts per team, but the losses were not evenly distributed. Four teams have more scouts and front office scouting personnel in 2021 than they had in 2019. Seven teams’ departments lost 10 or more scouts from 2019 to 2021.
The financial losses teams have sustained throughout the course of the pandemic exacerbated the trend, but teams were eschewing in-person scouting in favor of analytics and video scouting before Covid-19 became a part of our collective vocabulary.
“I think Covid, obviously you could say this for probably anything,” one scout said, “but I think it happened at a really bad time for scouting.”
[https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/6245/665483/60bf1fab2eb34/1623137859255.jpg]
Simply put, some teams have looked at their books for places to save money and have come to the conclusion that scouts are expendable and player evaluation can be done just as effectively—and more efficiently—either through analytics or via video.
The technology around the game has exploded in the last decade, to the point where nearly everything is measurable, and a great deal of that information is public or will be in the near future. Any big league pitcher’s velocity or spin rate is available with a few clicks of a mouse. The same goes for a player’s exit velocity or sprint speed or even catchers’ pop times.
The public data isn’t particularly plentiful in the minor leagues yet— some teams do tweet about exit velocities every now and again—but most of the sport is available to stream via MiLB.TV. Some minor league teams even have broadcast TV deals.
The quality of the minor league streams, especially at the upper levels, is so good—and is slated to get much better because of Major League Baseball’s new broadcast requirements—that some clubs have decided to stop in-person scouting of Triple-A and the big leagues.
In one former scout’s opinion, this could ultimately hurt scouts’ development. The most respected voices in the room have put in decades at all levels. They’ve likely seen every level of the minor leagues, as well as plenty of amateur baseball both domestically and internationally. All that is usually in addition to a playing career. No matter the path, these scouts have shaped their perspective over years on every type of ballfield imaginable.
“I think what you’ll lose in doing that is the development of scouts. There’s some really, really stinking good scouts out there. Really good scouts with a phenomenal feel for players,” one former scout said. “What they say matters, and even the most analytical organizations listen to these types of guys. You’re going to miss out on the development of those types of guys, and they’ll be gone in the game if you continue to neglect Triple-A and Double-A.
“Why? Because you need to have scouts learn what a guy looks like at 18, 19, 20, 21 and in A-ball and all the different demographics. The college kid, the old college kid in A-ball, the Dominican kid, the Venezuelan. There’s so many subsets of players with so many different backgrounds that you have to see them all, and then you have to track their development—and then you have to evaluate how well you did evaluating. That’s how you get good at it.”
That proliferation of data and video has, for some teams, led them to employ fewer scouts.
Instead of having, say, 15 scouts for the big leagues through the lowest levels, they can have 10 scouts do in-person games for Double-A through Rookie ball, while also doing six upper-level teams on video.
For now, this affects pro scouts more acutely than it does scouts in amateur or international departments, though amateur departments were significantly slashed from 2019 to 2021 as well. There are still thousands of players at high schools and colleges where data is not easily captured. Without that data, teams can’t easily use forecasting models to come up with predictions for their career paths. Thus, more eyes are still needed to adequately cover those levels.
For pro scouts, that means more in-person looks than ever are focused on players at Class A and below. That’s where a keen scout might be able to clue his team into a player who has made great changes in the offseason, or the player on the back fields whose name hasn’t reached the mainstream.
“It’s just a constant trickle-down of focusing on the levels of baseball that we have the least amount of information, the least TrackMan data, the least video,” the first scout said, “and using that to prioritize our in-person looks.”
But while it remains true that the players at the lowest levels are the ones for whom the least data is available, that doesn’t mean that scouting the upper levels and the big leagues lack value. The top players are likely to continue being the top players—and probably aren’t going to be available in trade or free agency in the near future—but the fringe or second-tier big leaguers, the ones who might fill out a roster the next season, could yield big results for a smart team.
“We know who the best players are in the big leagues. Do you need me to tell you that Mike Trout is good at baseball? No, you do not need me to tell you that,” the first scout said. “However, there’s going to be guys that play in the big leagues this year who don’t play well in the big leagues, don’t perform well, and they end up going on waivers or signing as a free agent, and they’re going to end up playing well down the road.”
Nearly all pro scouting in 2020 was done via video because of the pandemic, and scouts are fearful that the practice—despite its flaws— could become more commonplace because it is much cheaper.
And while that’s undeniably true, video scouting does not allow for the finer points of the scouting profession. While a scout can see a great number of games on video, and analytics can help illuminate some aspects not visible to the naked eye, there are more elements to scouting beyond evaluating the player in front of you.
[https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/6245/665483/60bf1fab2eb34/1623137893249.jpg]
A rough winter
More than 150 scouting jobs were lost due to the pandemic and an industry-wide emphasis on data, analytics and cost-efficiency
This offseason was the most brutal in recent memory for the scouting industry.
At the beginning of the 2019 season, teams employed 1,909 scouts across their amateur, professional and international departments. That includes all manner of scouts, from special assistants to directors to crosscheckers to pro scouts to area scouts. In 2021, that number is down to 1,756. All scout head counts referenced in this story were sourced from team media guides and the annual Baseball America Directory.
There are a number of factors at play here, not the least of which is the continuing coronavirus pandemic, which led to a 60-game major league season and canceled minor league season in 2020. The lost revenue across the sport led to pay cuts, furloughs and layoffs in teams’ business, scouting and baseball operations departments.
The pandemic wasn’t the only factor, though. For years, the proliferation of data and technology and the corresponding cost savings led several teams to make massive cuts to their scouting groups. Entering the 2019 season, for example, the Astros employed a combined three people with the titles pro scout, advance scout, special assignment scout or special assistant.
Just 10 years earlier, Houston’s total number of people with those titles was 42.
The Astros are the most famous example, but they’re far from alone in reducing the scope of their scouting staffs.
From 2019 to 2021, seven teams reduced their scouting staffs by double-digits across all departments. The Rays and Brewers were each down by 10 scouts, the Dodgers and Giants each were down 13, the Cubs were down 20 and the Angels and Mariners were down 23 apiece.
The decreases by those teams don’t paint the whole picture. The Dodgers and Rays, still have 71 scouts apiece, tied with the Royals for fifth in the game. The Reds, Red Sox, D-backs and Yankees each employ more than 75 scouts throughout all levels.
By and large, scouting departments are still much larger than they were in 2009. That year, teams employed a combined 1,332 scouts, or 424 fewer than today, even after the pandemic-fueled downsizing.
Just four teams employ fewer scouts today than they did in 2009 thanks in part to significant growth in international scouting departments. The Astros are down 43 people in scouting. The Orioles are down 11. The Angels are down seven, and the Mariners are down five.
Many of the scouts let go during the cuts over the last year are older and more experienced, meaning they commanded high salaries.
Dave Yoakum of the White Sox—a founding member and 2010 inductee of the Professional Baseball Scouts Hall of Fame—was in his 29th season with the organization when he was let go. Brad Sloan of the Red Sox had been a scout for 40 years at the time of his dismissal.
Pete Mackanin, one of just eight people to have played, managed and scouted with the Phillies, was let go in 2020 as well. The Phillies also let go of special assignment scouts Howie Freiling and Dave Hollins. Freiling had been a minor league manager or scout since 1991. Hollins won a pennant with the Phillies in 1993 and had been a coach or scout since 2004.
Even though scouting staffs are still well populated compared with where they were in 2009, there’s a concern that even when the pandemic is in the rear-view mirror, teams may still opt to downsize their departments in the name of more cost-efficient methods, like video scouting or analytically driven evaluation, in place of people.
“It’s not just the game. It’s our country writ large. There’s such a death of expertise. It doesn’t matter to people anymore,” one scout said.
“. . . It doesn’t matter to people who are hired or who are hiring, because they just think they can do it better. There’s just there’s no respect for people who have been there and done it.”
—Josh Norris
GOING UP
Seven MLB organizations have added to their scouting departments or maintained since 2019.
Pirates +17
Blue Jays +5
Astros +4
Twins +3
Rangers +3
Red Sox +0
Mets +0
GOING DOWN
And there are seven MLB organizations that have cut 10 or more scouts since 2019. Numbers include directors and assistant directors of scouting departments, special assignment scouts and assistants, pro, amateur and international departments and are based on media guides.
Mariners –23
Angels –23
Cubs –20
Giants –13
Dodgers –13
Rays –10
Brewers –10
[https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/6245/665483/60bf1fab2eb34/1623138048463.jpg]
From the field to the booth
Scouts are increasingly finding ways to share their knowledge of the game behind the microphone
Over the course of the year, major league scouting departments shrunk by an average of roughly five scouts per club. Virtually all of those job losses were the results of layoffs or firings because of cost-cutting during the pandemic and clubs’ continuing shift toward analytics and data.
At least one scout made the choice to leave the industry on his own terms. Vinny Rottino, a nondrafted free agent out of Wisconsin-La Crosse in 2003 who played parts of five seasons in the big leagues before joining the Rangers’ pro scouting department in 2017, decided during the pandemic that it was time to leave scouting—but not the game—behind.
The long, arduous months of near-nonstop travel had worn on him in prior years, especially with a young family at home. The pandemic pushed him over the edge.
“I don’t know if I would have left if the pandemic didn’t happen, like actually pulled the trigger,” Rottino said, “because the fear factor of ‘What if I lose my job?’ wouldn’t have been there, because I loved it.”
But the pandemic did happen (and is still happening), and Rottino decided to hand in his resignation. So where does a scout go after baseball? In this case, the broadcast booth.
Rangers special assistant Mike Anderson is the brother of Brewers broadcaster Brian Anderson, so Rottino already had an important connection.
“Once I told Mike that I was leaving, he was like, ‘Hey, man, my brother thinks you’d b...
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Baseball America (Digital) - 1 Issue, June 2021