Makeup is one of the biggest separators among prospects and a critical area for every scout to evaluate. Makeup can make or break a prospect. There are countless stories of players over the years who have had a bevy of tools, but may never put them all together in pro ball due to poor makeup. On the other hand, many scouts say some of their biggest misses were due to underestimating a guy’s makeup.
So, what is makeup? To put it simply, it describes what’s in a player’s head – their personality, work ethic, responsibility, integrity, intelligence, overall demeanor, habits and motivations, essentially all of the intangible elements that go into a person/athlete.
Makeup has a direct effect in games, but also plays an important role in that players’ personal development, in the clubhouse and in off-field situations. Good makeup can help a player’s tools play up above his perceived natural ability, as he constantly works to improve his skills and get the most out of his talents.
Some of these players quickly pass up those who are naturally more gifted. Poor makeup can cause players to fall behind if they have poor work ethic, or it can derail entire careers if a player has many off-field problems.
Part of a scouts’ job is to learn as many of these elements of the player as possible so as to be factored into the overall prediction/evaluation of the player.
Scouts can’t read players’ minds, but they can watch how players carry themselves and how their teammates perceive them. They watch how seriously players take their practice swings, pitches, and throws. They watch their body language after successes and failures.
Scouts will also talk to players themselves, along with coaches, teammates, and other acquaintances of players to get a feel for who the player is as a person.
All of these things provide little clues about what type of work ethic a player has, what drives them, and how they deal with adversity in pro ball. Projecting how a high school player will act when he’s set to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions in a signing bonus isn’t easy.
But as scouts see more and more players succeed and fail, they begin to see patterns of the makeup that allows different types of players to succeed or prevents others from improving.
Summary
As baseball is increasingly moving toward more quantified means of evaluating players, makeup is becoming increasingly central to the jobs of scouts who help decide whether players as people are worth investing time and money into.
Comments