Re-Introducing Myself

A few minutes ago, we announced that Dan Farnsworth was going to be taking over as our new Lead Prospect Analyst. Because I know he wouldn’t, I brought up some of his previous excellent work published here as a part-time contributor, and explained why we are excited to offer Dan this opportunity. If you haven’t already, go read that post. Now, we’ll allow him to introduce himself.

As Dave noted this morning, today is my first official day as the Lead Prospect Analyst for FanGraphs. It is an unbelievable honor, and I cannot wait to start discussing a wide range of players with you, our readers. Though you may have read some of my previous work, this is a new role for me, and I know the site has grown tremendously over the last few years. In that light, I wanted to introduce myself more fully, as well as provide you with some ideas I have for projecting players and how I will be presenting that information. Kiley McDaniel really stepped up the game for publicly available scouting data, and I hope to continue that standard of quality going forward.

First, a little about me personally and professionally. I graduated from Franklin & Marshall College in 2008 with a Bachelor or Arts in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History — I’m coming for your title of weirdest baseball writing background, Cistulli — where I played Division III baseball as a catcher. At the time, I was interested in the medical field, and I applied and was accepted to Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine in New York City. While I enjoyed the coursework, it became clear that becoming a doctor was not for me. I left school in 2011 to dedicate myself to working in baseball, and started coaching and teaching lessons at a baseball facility in Pennsylvania. Since then, I moved to Los Angeles to work with hitters in one of the best baseball regions in the country. At the beginning of the 2015 season, I moved back to New York City and worked as a Remote Scout for Inside Edge, mainly focusing on pitch charting and sequencing. Along the ride, I have met and learned from a lot of great baseball people.

I first wrote for FanGraphs in 2013 on the Community Blog, and have since written on both the main site and over at The Hardball Times. My work has touched on a range of topics, though most have been associated with hitting and hitting mechanics. Dave linked to a number of my more notable FanGraphs articles in his announcement, so I won’t repeat them here, besides noting that you shouldn’t expect me to keep batting as well as I have been; I’m bound to regress to the mean in a larger sample.

Professionally, most of my focus in private instruction has been with hitters, though I have also worked with a lot of pitchers in the same manner. Previously, I’d worked with a significant number of catchers on their defensive skills as well. Over the years, I have worked with a number of professional, high school and college players, as well as young players of every skill level.

In all aspects of coaching, at least on an individual basis, I have found success using video recording and professional comparisons to help players understand why their skills play out in a unique way. This approach can be misused, since it is easy to fall into the trap that the similarities in the best players can lead to believing in a model for mechanics, footwork or my favorite, physical build. However, the vast differences in the physical and mental compositions of every player make it necessary to blend fundamental ideals and individualized deviations from the rest of the baseball population to get the most out of given abilities. Every player has weaknesses, deformities, and irregularities in both their mental and physical tools, even the most elite athletes.

While I will not be teaching players in this position, working with players and coaching various teams has given me an important library of experiences to understand more of what goes on beyond seeing a few at-bats or a 100-pitch outing in a given look at a player. If a pitcher’s biggest weakness is command of an off-speed pitch or stride consistency, but it is obvious he is working on something in total opposition to that development need, it will limit the amount of development time he has available to reach his full potential. If a hitter has problems turning his raw power into home runs in games, seeing him focusing on swinging down may lead to an even longer delay in those skills being realized.

I also feel quite comfortable using statistics to support the scouting process, taking care to weigh the efficacy of certain stats with the level of competition and phase of development in mind. With data becoming increasingly more robust by the day, it is a necessity to be able to discern what is a descriptive and/or a predictive piece of data, and I do not know any scouts that do not take numbers into account in some way. Understanding the place for numbers in the scouting process is something I will be touching on in reports frequently, and a discussion I encourage all of you to join when it comes up.

I have always enjoyed scouting players, trying to learn what makes the game work on the most granular details, as well as to figure out how some developed into Major League contributors and others did not. I have focused much of my time in the past two years on projecting players based on how they play the game, while minding their prospects for future physical and mental growth, and it is something I truly enjoy. I like hanging my ideas out there for scrutiny and criticism, since the public baseball community is collectively a better think-tank than any Major League team could hope to assemble.

I have found there are a lot of ways to judge baseball athleticism beyond the easily observed and measured tools. We all can use a stopwatch to measure a 60-yard dash, or a radar gun for a pitcher’s fastball. In the same way, we can all see how far a hitter mashes balls into the seats in batting practice, and remember the amazing play a defender made in the hole. While all of that is important data to inform our projections, I believe there is much more information to be harvested in determining how playable those tools are. Talk to anyone in the game, and they will have a story about a player who had all the physical talent you could ask for, but was never able to put it together successfully on the field. Sometimes that is the result of mental makeup issues, others it is a lack of attention to how different tools and actual skills are. There are many hitters who can put balls in the seats in batting practice, but many fewer that can do it facing a pitcher. A pitcher may have top-of-the-scale velocity, but if he can’t locate it or add movement to it, can we really call it an elite pitch?

We will talk about players using all the contextual clues we can uncover, and the resulting conclusions will be as fresh and informed as possible. Before we start our offseason reports, I will provide more information on what to expect from my grades and rankings. We can discuss some of the more specific things I will be looking for in players, as well as the grading system I will be rolling out as a continuation of some of the interesting things Kiley introduced. For now I can promise you, fans of graphs and prospects, a couple things:

1. Many of my evaluations will be unique and original; I won’t always agree with the industry consensus, and I think that’s okay.
2. None of us really have this thing figured out; the scouting world projects players incorrectly all the time, and I won’t be immune to bad judgment or unexpected changes in a player’s skills.
3. Discussions and questions are ENCOURAGED; I fully expect some of my opinions will be surprising, and I want to engage you guys as much as possible.

I hope you guys are half as excited to read my new content as I am to write it. I love baseball, and I love challenges. To me there is no more interesting or greater challenge than trying to analyze what will happen in the future. Big league teams spend countless dollars and hours on the same quest, and the process is absolutely fascinating to me. I am determined to provide the best information you can find, so we can all learn and love the game even more. I’m looking forward to our future conversations, and what we can all learn from each other.