Baseball America confuses me sometimes
Posted on February 16th, 2009 by erik in Deryk Hooker, tags: baseball americaCan’t live without BA, but right now I’m researching Deryk Hooker and all I get is conflicting information.
2007:
Hooker produces easy velocity from a steep, downhill plane, with a fastball that sits at 90-93 mph and tops out at 94. He commands his heater to both sides of the plate and complements it with a true 12-to-6 curveball. His changeup also has the potential to be a plus pitch.
He’s mechanical at times in his delivery, and when he gets too deliberate he’ll fly open on his front side. But that’s an easily correctable flaw.
So he’s young and has three solid pitches? Awesome.
From a chat, 2007:
He throws from a steep, downhill plane anywhere from 90-94 mph that he commands to both sides of the plate and has an above-average 12-to-6 curveball. Changeup still coming, and an effective third pitch will be key to dictate future success.
Wait, I thought he already had a changeup?
2008:
He pitches at 89 and touches 92, and he commands the pitch to both sides, but he throws across his body, leading to questions about his delivery and arm action. All of Hooker’s secondary offerings are below-average — his curveball is a lazy floater that he gets underneath most times, his slider is a sweeper that moves across only one plane, and he slows his arm down to throw his changeup.
Wow. Now I’m really confused. Now he has one pitch, it’s a tick or three MPH’s down from the year before, and his breaking pitch and changeup are now garbage?And why didn’t the scout they talked to the year before mention his awful mechanics. All they said his he can fly open at times, just a correctable flaw.
Which one is it BA?
Don’t get me wrong, I love Baseball America. I think their writers are fantastic. I buy the book every year, subscribe to the site, and they’re the first magazine I grab off the rack when I go to the local bookstore. Butthis conflicting information is a little aggravating. Is it because a scout saw Hooker during a bad outing or two and another scout saw him in pure form before? Did he regress? Thoughts, anyone?
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I can’t say I’m really that surprised to hear such a disparity between scouting reports. I’ve never seen an example firsthand, but I suspected scouting was more subjective (and therefore variable) than some people admit. That subjectivity is not a bad thing, per se. But it does lead to confusing and conflicting reports like the ones you’ve seen.
I think the reason I always suspected this was the case was hearing caveats from prospect rankers who talk to the scouts firsthand (Goldstein, Sickels). The convention is to hedge your bets when evaluating scouting reports and, having seen this post, that seems wise. (Similar story with Will Carrol. Even though his reports are on injuries and health, he always exercises a similar hedging since he gets his info from various and often conflicting sources.)
It’s the baseball equivalent of a fog of war: as analysts and fans who don’t have direct access to the players, we/you have to rely on the opinions of people paid to give them. It’s why advanced statistics have been such a boon to player evaluation. Stats don’t make scouting worthless, but they can provide a counter-point to the often conflicting opinions of pro scouts.
I have been pimping Hooker for awhile but when I have tried to find out more information about him I have encountered the same inconsistencies. When I go back and look at his high school scouting reports, they look more like the first two descriptions rather than the third:
http://www.perfectgame.org/players/playerprofile.aspx?ID=10229&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
Ranked above Moustakas here:
http://www.californiabaseballzone.com/rankings/player_ranks/07/3_9_06/07rankings.asp
I can no longer find some of the other stuff I read before. Anyway, seems to me that at this point the results speak for themselves. Hooker has been very good at each stop. This year will be a good test for him as he will be starting the year at full-season ball for the first time. If his results continue like they have before, I expect to see him in Springfield before the end of the year. At the very least I expect that he will start the 2nd half of the season at PB.
Here is an interesting article about young Cards pitchers at Viva El Birdos. Hooker is on there at number 4.
http://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2009/1/21/729711/in-search-of-the-elusive-u
I’ve subscribed to BA since it’s inception and I love scouting reports but there’s usually very little explananation as to where they’re coming from. It’s usually “one scout” or “an opposing manager” or “according to one report”. Different people seeing a player on a different day when he’s working on a different pitch or whatever can account for some of the discrepancies. Then again I’m sometimes reminded of how similar movie reviews supposedly written by different critics sound like each other. Turns out some critics haven’t actually seen the movie but make up their reviews from reading other reviews. I hate to say it but I think that sometimes happens in the scouting reports. If I had a dime for every time I read about Nick Webber’s “Mid nineties fast ball with whiffle ball like movement” my 401k would look a lot healthier. Trouble is that heater was getting whacked all over the ball park at every level he played at. Anyway I’m glad we’re getting critical about this stuff. Hopefully the “scouts” will be more likely to do their home work and the media will be more careful about what and who they quote.
The last one is confusing, but the first two are pretty much the same.
One says the changeup has “potential to be a plus pitch.”
The other says the changeup is “still coming.”
Surely one has a more positive spin than the other, but they pretty much say the same thing.