As you watch games and evaluate players, one important reminder is “Don’t scout the box score.” Practically anyone can look at a box score and see what the results were for any given player that day. Instead, you should be looking at how the player achieved those results.
For hitters, if a player goes 2-for-4 with two singles, but was facing lackluster pitching, there may not be any major takeaways from that performance alone. Some helpful questions or things to keep in mind when watching hitters would be:
“What’s the quality of pitches they are facing? How are their swing decisions? How does their approach change from 0-0 to hitter’s counts or pitcher’s counts? What quality of contact do they make? How consistently are they able to make contact on the barrel? Do they make adjustments during at-bats or from one at-bat to the next?” These are all questions that cannot be answered by the box score, but they can be answered by an evaluator.
As with hitters, there’s value in looking at box scores for pitchers, but it’s important to look at how the pitcher achieved the numbers in their box scores:
“What is the quality of hitters the pitcher faced? Did the pitcher “out-stuff” the hitter by overpowering them with high velocity or throwing big breaking pitches to young hitters? More specifically, does the pitcher’s stuff project to succeed at the Major League level? Did they show flashes of Major League-quality pitches? If a pitcher is walking a lot of batters, is he doing so while being aggressive with his pitch selection, or is he simply unable to hit his spots? Does the pitcher have a pitch he can rely upon to get outs in tough situations?”
Summary
Performance is always important. Anyone can say what a player did. But context of performance and being able to ask why and how a player performs or doesn’t perform is what makes a good evaluator.
Comments