Living in South Dakota and being a prospect hound has been a challenge for many years. But being hours away fro the closest minor league team has given me a chance to hone the art of video scouting.
With 200+ published video scouting reports under my belt over the last five years, I've developed a fairly strong system to understanding what to look for and how to evaluate while watching on video in order to give a proper review to a prospect.
As the ability to watch players in person has been stripped from many, what to look for on video has become a big thing. I'm going to break this down into three main components - viewing pitching, hitting, and fielding. There are also some general pointers that I'll open with that should allow you to put together your own report.
While some could argue that I'm essentially giving away my "secret" and costing myself that exclusivity among prospect writing, I'm of the belief that even with 10 of us viewing the exact same games of a player on video (or in-person), there would be 10 at least slightly different opinion on what we saw.
Part of the beauty of baseball is the human subjectivity, and even with what I'm going to mention here, multiple reports on Luis Robert could arrive at varying conclusions about his ultimate overall grades - and that's good!
General Observations
The first video piece that I wrote was on Mike Foltynewicz. That piece caught the eye of a former Houston Astros scout who became a mentor to me on what I could and could not see by watching a video-only presentation of a player. He would proceed to watch the same game as I did and read a few more of my reports while giving me pointers about my "blind spots" by only having video. We'll go through those here:
1. Camera angles
Because the views for minor league or prospect reports are based often on games through MiLB.tv or captured and broadcast through other amateur means, the cameras are not typically in an ideal location to scout, so you need to account for that. This will be mentioned for each aspect of scouting further down, but whether it's hitting, pitching, or fielding, one broadcast could be perfect to evaluate one of the three, two of three, or none of three. If you ever find an amateur broadcast that allows you to properly evaluate all three, buy a lottery ticket immediately!
2. On-field and off-field conversations
The little things that a coach will holler or a catcher will yell out to a pitcher can make a huge difference in your scouting report if you're at the game and note that the pitcher suddenly makes an immediate change that affects his performance. You really cannot tell these on video, so it behooves you to be even more observant of the little tiny changes from inning to inning and at bat to at-bat.
3. Sample size
While at a game, one can see so much more of how a play develops around the final result, and that allows for a better evaluation. For instance, if a runner is attempting to steal second, evaluating the catcher's ability to throw him out without knowing that the umpire tripped up the catcher's feet, that the middle infielders were slow heading to second to cover for the throw, or that the runner had timed the pitcher's delivery tremendously well in his jump would all be things that you really won't see on the video.
That's why it's incredibly important to utilize not just multiple plays from a single game, but to utilize multiple games, and if possible, I like to utilize multiple games over the course of the season when I write up a report on a player. That gives a good view of the player's ability multiple days against multiple situations.
Now to specific scouting areas...
Hitting
Scouting hitting through video is one of the hardest things to do well. While getting YouTube clips can help because of the camera angles, they're also typically one or two at-bats, and they don't show many things that you want to be able to capture in order to evaluate the player.
Most game videos are broadcast from an angle that's either done from behind home plate or from center field. To evaluate hitting, it's often good to have a side view of the swing to slow down the video or even take still shots to evaluate hands, hips, shoulders, and head in the swing.
Upper-level (Double-A and Triple-A) games often have multiple camera angles, so you're going to have better luck there finding a side angle view on a swing. Lower levels will be more tricky.
Pitching
The angles available for reviewing minor league games make pitching by far the easiest to get a quality evaluation on movement, delivery, fielding, and so many other aspects of pitcher evaluations are ideal from the primary angles offered at pretty much any minor league park.
Here is one thing to consider, however. While the camera from the outfield is often from the centerfield area, it's rarely from straightaway center. That means when evaluating pitch movement, you do need to take into consideration where the camera is shaded from directly straight on and build that into how you're seeing the break of the pitch. An angle coming from left-center could make a sweeping slider from a righty look like it has much more break as it moves away from the camera angle. It's minute, but when you're wanting to truly nail your reports, the minute can separate from being able to call a pitch a 55 or a 60, for instance.
There are also some advantages to getting a few side shots of a pitcher's delivery to understand if he's leaning toward or away from the plate during his delivery. Taking the time to find a game with that view will give the full scope on a pitcher's delivery.
Fielding
This is where camera angles hurt the most. For anyone who has done video scouting for football, you'd be familiar with the "All-22" view. This is the wide-angle view of the entire play that does not focus on any aspect of the play as the play happens, allowing any player to be scouted throughout the play to watch how he is adjusting even when the play is not focused right at him.
Most video feeds are focused on the tunnel of the pitcher to the plate. That means that you can often get a good view of a pitcher's defensive reactions, a catcher's reactions, and if you're lucky, you could potentially catch a shortstop and/or center fielder as well.
In order to get a good view on how a fielder is reading the ball off the bat, often you'll need to find a Twitter game video or find one of the rare game angles that spends some time with a feed from behind the plate or down either baseline out at the field.
A great example this past year was a pleasant surprise when reviewing tape on draft prospect Mick Abel to see a wide-angle video from behind the plate. While the other players in the game were not at the same elite level as Abel, there were multiple potential future draft picks on that field, and reviewing their defense in that game was one of the few games to get a good review on them in-game outside of the showcase circuit.
Conclusion
More than anything, watch games that draw your interest. Frankly, if you're not having fun watching the games, it's not worth doing, and honestly, putting together the views needed to really get a valid video evaluation on a player can be quite tedious, so it's certainly understandable that it's not for everyone.
That all said, this is how essentially every other major sport spends the majority of their time doing pro and amateur scouting.
Give it a try, watch a few games of a favorite player and see what you see. Perhaps you'll notice quirks you never noticed taking notes at the ballpark!