When Can One Scouting Look Make a Big Difference?

Roch Cholowsky is one of the top high school shortstop prospects in the 2023 draft class, and one of the few potential first-rounders to do the full battery of drills at last week’s MLB Draft Combine. Attending the combine was unusually convenient for Cholowsky, who went to high school in Chandler, Arizona, less than half an hour from Chase Field.

It’s a very, very good place for a young ballplayer to grow up. In the suburbs east of Phoenix you’ll find six teams’ spring training complexes, plus Arizona State. This part of the world has no shortage of high-quality baseball infrastructure, and is crawling with scouts on the lookout for the next Gold Glove shortstop.

“Moving here was the best decision my parents ever made,” Cholowsky says.

Plus there’s the weather. I asked Cholowsky if he’d ever even owned a winter coat.

“I wear shorts and a hoodie in December,” he says. “I definitely do feel like I take that for granted.”

Kids in New England or the Upper Midwest have to wait until mid-to-late spring before they can even think about playing baseball outdoors, and even then it can be perilous.

“Your fingers get super stiff. You’re on the on-deck circle trying to loosen up your wrists and your fingers,” says Princeton outfielder Scott Bandura, who recalled a particularly cold series against Navy in which he says nobody hit a ball farther than 300 feet all weekend. “We had a lot of brutal days. I hit 12 home runs; I feel like I could’ve hit 15 or 20 in different conditions.”

“I’ve got one for you: 39 degrees, 27 mile-an-hour winds, doubleheader, 11 a.m.,” says Max Clark, who grew up not far from Indianapolis. “Facing a kid that was [throwing] 90, 91. I went 3-for-4 with two doubles, a single, and a K. That first at-bat I fouled two off the end of the bat straight back. I could not feel my hands, so I swung and missed. Literally could not feel my hands.”

Clark, a top-five pick, obviously managed to get noticed by scouts. But not all players are that lucky. Players from outside traditional scouting hotbeds, who might otherwise struggle to get scouts’ attention, can get one last chance to shine before the draft.

It’s hard for players from non-traditional regions to get the same attention. And that can apply for reasons other than cold, wet winters that turn foul balls into an agonizing experience. Some high school players have favorable weather, but they play in parts of the draft catchment area that are difficult for scouts to reach. Among the most-watched prospects at the combine were Hawaii high schoolers Nolan Souza and Devin Saltiban, and catcher Jandaniel Gonzalez from Yabucoa, Puerto Rico.

Geographical considerations impact high school prospects the most, but even college players can feel secondary effects. The best programs still play in the South and on the West Coast, but recruiting is more democratized than it used to be. Schools like Vanderbilt, Virginia, and North Carolina draw heavily from the Mid-Atlantic and New England. The Big Ten has invested heavily in baseball over the past decade, going from de facto mid-major to a genuine power conference. Expansion has brought ACC baseball to Pitt and Boston College, and next year — hilariously — UCLA and Southern Cal will play in the Big Ten.

Nevertheless, it can be hard to break through. Boston College, the only Power Five baseball program in New England, fell just on the wrong side of the regional hosting debate this year. The Eagles’ leading hitter, Joe Vetrano, traveled to Phoenix for the combine and put on a show in batting practice, pounding several balls out to right field at speeds in excess of 110 mph.

“This year, we definitely got more attention, which is good for the program and everything,” Vetrano says. “But as a Power Five school from the Northeast we just get looked down upon, which stinks because we work so hard. We don’t get the stuff the southern schools get, we don’t get the nice weather. But I think we do a good job of making it our own advantage and just being tough, tough players.”

Vetrano grew up in the Hudson Valley, and while he obviously got scouted enough to play in the ACC, it’s not easy for a player from New York to get the exposure necessary to end up a serious draft prospect.

“My senior year [of high school], I actually didn’t have, because of COVID,” Vetrano says. “So for me, it was more showcases I had to do. The Northeast is tough. You have to travel a bit to get noticed. I remember coming here [to Phoenix] in high school, hitting at the Perfect Game national showcase. So that’s somewhere I got exposure, but you have to go somewhere.”

For cold-weather high school prospects, national discovery can be a gradual process.

“Different scouts had seen me, they heard ‘tall, lanky lefty from Rhode Island throws high 90s,’” says Vanderbilt commit and potential first-day pick Alex Clemmey. “Then I got out on the circuit a little bit. I wasn’t really known; I had to make myself known. I was one of the last [Prospect Development Pipeline League] invites last year. I think I got the second-to-last invite about a week before the event.”

PDP is held at the USA Baseball training complex in Cary, North Carolina, while other showcases — the Perfect Game All American Classic, the Area Code Games, and so on — take place either in Arizona or California. So even when kids from up north, or Hawaii, or Canada, do get invited, it’s a big commitment in terms of travel, time, and money.

“I was a pretty local kid up until my junior year, which is the biggest summer circuit for professional scouting. Then junior year hit and I was home maybe three weeks out of the whole summer, living out of hotels,” says Clemmey, who for his part enjoyed the travel. “It was a great experience. I built a lot of maturity through that time and I’m very thankful for the opportunities I’ve had.”

Clemmey sits at an uncertain position; the no. 48 prospect on The Board, it’s unclear whether he’ll get the kind of lucrative bonus that would make it a no-brainer to go pro. And with a spot at Vanderbilt waiting for him if he doesn’t sign, the 6-foot-6 Clemmey has better leverage than most prospects. If he does make it to campus, he’ll slide into a spot vacated by another gigantic left-handed New Englander, Hunter Owen.

Owen, a 6-foot-6, 261-pound southpaw from South Portland, Maine, pitched out of the rotation for the Commodores this season after two years in the ‘pen. Or rather, he pitched out of the rotation for most of the season. Owen was shut down with fatigue and shoulder soreness in early April; over the final two months of the season, he made just four starts totaling 18 innings, and pitched more than four innings just once.

In the grand scheme of things, Owen’s health issues are a hiccup in an age when Tommy John surgery has become routine for pitchers his age. But they were particularly ill-timed, considering that there are questions about his ability to stick in the rotation in the pros.

Owen is not the only SEC weekend starter coming off an inconvenient injury; South Carolina ace Will Sanders had to work out of the bullpen in the NCAA tournament after a leg injury cost him a month of the season, and possibly first-round status. Sanders appeared at the combine but did not throw a bullpen. Owen did, and was arguably the best pitching prospect to do so.

There’s plenty of tape on Owen, as there would be on any Vanderbilt pitcher, so there’s a limit to how much he can change minds in a couple dozen pitches in shorts and a t-shirt.

“It went all right. I think it could always be better,” Owen says. “But in the time they gave me, I think I showed some stuff. It is what it is and you do what you can with it.”

In his last start, against Oregon in Vanderbilt’s regional on June 3, Owen gave up four runs and six hits in four innings, but he still thinks throwing at the combine can help reassure scouts that his shoulder is sound. And with all of his focus on the college season until recently, Owen was as eager to get information from teams as he was to persuade them to draft him.

“[My goal] for the bullpen was just to show people I’m healthy, you know, that I’m fine,” he says. “Then for the meetings, just to talk with all the different organizations that are interested, because I don’t have a lot of information right now.”

Lucky for Owen, the exchange of information is what the combine is all about. For most players, one extra bullpen or round of BP won’t change much. But for prospects who — due to geography or injury — have something to prove, that opportunity can change the course of their careers.