Couch Scout: A term used to denigrate someone who makes assertions about prospects while not attending the games themselves.
There is some merit to the term. If you’re reading this, chances are you enjoy prospects as much as everyone on Prospects Live does. You have an expectation of us to provide valuable information from our live looks on players. And when it comes to the fantasy side, you trust that our call to actions come with the authority of having seen a player.
Sometimes, though, it doesn’t work out like that. There are myriad reasons why I sympathize with prospect enthusiasts that can’t make it out to games but still want to contribute to the conversation. Perhaps they’re not well geographically located and the nearest ballpark is three hours away. Or their work schedule makes it impossible to attend more than one or two games a month. Maybe it’s as simple as their significant other actually enjoying the presence of the person in the house rather than shooing them away to a game, making it difficult to barter away three or four nights of a relationship in a week.
I live in Tampa, which is one of the best spots to be in if you’re a prospect fanatic. With good traffic, I’m within one hour driving distance of five Florida State League (High-A) teams and GCL action in the summer. Last year, which was my first full year as a prospect writer, I made it out to just three games, all Tampa Tarpons ones. One of them I was with a buddy and while I took some video, I wasn’t really in a scouting mindset. For all intents and purposes, you could have labeled me a couch scout. I still made my prospect ranks, hyped up players I’d never seen before, made shrewd pickups across leagues and more.
This year, however, I made a conscious decision to attend more games with the goal of improving my scouting eye so that I can contribute to this website beyond just fantasy and grant myself the ability to unearth diamonds.
This is going to be a running series, acting almost like a journal of things I pick up, challenges I faced, and things I learn in my path to improving my ability to scout live games. I’m going to be open about my shortcomings, some of which may be surprising for someone who’s been in this industry for almost a couple of years now. But I hope that if someone is out there and is hesitant about attending games for fear of feeling out of place or like you can’t learn to look at a game with a scouting eye, this spurs you to just get out and try your hand at it.
I’ve gone to four FSL games thus far, usually guiding my attendance by the pitchers on the mound. I’ll peruse this page and if there’s a game in Lakeland or Tampa with a good pitcher, I’ll cross-reference my work schedule to see if I can make it. Pro-tip: Working in sports, while trying to spend your free time watching other sports, is tough. I work in the University of South Florida Athletics department as a video production coordinator. Thankfully, college sports die down in summer, leaving me half of May through July to try to take as much in as possible until soccer, football and more pick back up. Anyways, here are some random scatterings of thought in the early going:
Jotting Down Notes
It sounds dumb, but one of the things I’m still finding my groove with is simply how to register what I’m seeing. When I saw Yankees RHP Clarke Schmidt for the first time, I showed up with nothing but my phone. I went up to the press box to grab the lineup and roster sheets, but I forgot a pen. So throughout the night I would look at a pitch, look at the velocity reading on a scout’s radar gun in front of me (Tip: When trying to scout, sit a row or two behind a scout with a radar gun so you can peek at velo readings) and jot it down. Essentially I felt the need to chart the game so I could refer back to it and see how his pitch usage changed from inning to inning and how the velo fluctuated. This is what it looked like.
One issue here is I have no idea what was a ball or strike and more importantly where it was located. So it’s a balance to try and identify what the pitcher is actually trying to do versus the raw results. As the game is going along, I’m writing notes and thoughts down on his delivery, where he’s missing with pitches most often, are hitters barreling him, what pitches are his go tos for a strikeout, etc.
I now carry a couple of charting documents that I try to utilize but often times I feel like I get bogged down, miss the game and taper off the charting after the fourth inning or so. Also, those things are really intricate and easy to get lost in.
Sequencing
I’m not good at picking it up from a pitcher yet. It’s easier when you’re at home and you can glance briefly at the top of your screen, see the catcher’s signal and location and wait for the pitch. But in a stadium, it’s a little more difficult for me. I’m laser focused on the pitcher, usually only glancing at the balls and strikes when an at-bat has gone on for a while. Therefore I miss what the plan of attack usually is. For now, I’m making an effort to at least pick up when it’s two strikes to see what putaway pitch he prefers. For the most part, it’s the same song and dance for pitchers in the FSL: very fastball dominant the first time through the lineup and then slowly mix in the breakers and offspeed.
Pitch Break
Movement is a lot harder to pick up when you’re sitting behind home plate and the umpire and catcher are blocking your view as the pitch approaches the batter. This is where the velocity readings are a must, to help me differentiate between pitches. I’m still learning to pick up a slider and curveball differently, especially if both of these are in the same band. Then it’s a bit of a nightmare for me. I’m also still picking up the difference in movement for some pitchers with their fastballs at different bands. I noticed Schmidt’s fastball has a bit more run when it’s 91-92 rather than 93-94. Florida State League games aren’t televised, so I can’t refer back to a centerfield camera angle to confirm my thoughts.
Tampa (NYY), St.Lucie (NYM), Lakeland (DET), or Palm Beach (STL) don’t have any must-see bats right now, so I’ve enjoyed being able to focus on just the pitcher, for the most part. I did catch a game where Bradenton was visiting Tampa, but unfortunately Oneil Cruz was hurt and Travis Swaggerty didn’t start. I was left with Cal Mitchell. Here’s a fact that even somewhat seasoned scouts will agree with: It’s hard as hell to take in both a pitcher and a batter at the same time. I had to consciously change my focus from Schmidt to Mitchell and choose one or the other, which sometimes felt like I was robbing myself of extracting the most information I possibly could.
I have a stopwatch courtesy of a Christmas gift from Jason Pennini, but given that no bats have appealed to me, it sits unused on my lap for most games. When there is a catcher throwdown to second, I’m caught off guard. Alas, another facet to improve.
My big points of improvement right now are:
Pick up the spin of a pitch to properly identify it
Be more cognizant of the situation (i.e: ball/strike count) to understand what game plan the pitcher is trying to execute
If I’m looking at a batter, focus on evaluating the bat speed
One piece of advice for those getting their feet wet is pore through videos in slomo and cross referencing a scout’s notes (JP’s posts are fantastic for this type of exercise). Try it out one day. Look at a video of a player and form some opinion on him. Do you think the delivery looks high effort? Does he get extension? Does a batter’s swing mechanics look like it’s a multi-step process rather than one fluid motion? Then compare your thoughts to what your trusted source wrote and see how close you got. And then feel free to ask questions! We’re not paid scouts, so it’s OK to share information and insight.