What Scouts Look For In A Pitcher

This article is reprinted from the August 18, 2010 issue of "Baseball America".

By Conor Glassey
August 18, 2010

Tools are a basic building block of our coverage at Baseball America. We begin assessing players' tools from the time they become prominent high school players, and we continue to do it through college and the minor leagues all the way to the majors. It culminates with the Best Tools feature that we unveiled last week, but we really write about tools all year long.

That makes sense because tools are a basic building block for players as well. Many other factors enter into the equation of whether a player will reach his potential in his career, but without the basic physical skills the player's career will never get started in the first place.

With that in mind, BA assistant editor Conor Glassey spent the past year interviewing area scouts, talking to them about specific aspects of their job, with a specific focus on the skills they look for in players and how they judge them.

Scouting Pitching
When you're watching a pitcher for the first time, what are you looking for?

"First, it's his arm slot. Is he sidearm or three-quarters, high-three quarter or overhand? And then his arm swing in the back. Is it clean in the back? Or is it short and compact? Is it rigid? And then arm speed coming through. Does he have a live arm? That's really the first thing because the guy that has a slow arm, obviously, isn't going to throw very hard. And then his size. Traditionally, you want a guy 6-foot-1 or above, because that's going to give him leverage and create plane on the fastball to home plate. The ability to spin the breaking ball, too, especially a high school kid. He's got to be able to spin either the curveball or the slider." A lot of times there's been guys with good arms that don't have an feel to spin it, but then they get in the minor leagues and not only do they have to have success with getting hitters out, when they're learning a breaking ball, it's tough for them. It's something that I'd really like to see a young high school pitcher have, is the ability to spin the breaking ball with a good tight spin and have some feel for it. A college guy, obviously he better have feel of some type of breaking ball to have any type of success at the college level and then at the pro level, too.

"It's always been about stuff, just pure stuff. Fastball, curveball, changeup—you know, what do those things do now and what are they going to do in the future? The projection, for me, is not so much the body. We all like the big, projectable body and you know what that looks like. But it's not so much that, it's the arm speed. If you want to throw 90 mph, you have to make your arm go 90 mph. It's real simple, but that's the biggest thing I look at if I think they're going to project and get those pitches to get better. The second thing is, and I'll go to my grave with this one. I follow all the guys I've scouted with this and that's if they are strike throwers in high school, I don't care if they're throwing 85 mph, but if they're strike throwers in high school, they're going to continue to be strike throwers. But if they're not, they are not going to become strike throwers. I don't care if Houdini works with them or some combination of Leo Mazzone and the other best pitching coach in the world, whoever that might be. If you don't throw strikes at a young age, you're not going to learn how to throw them. To me, that's the biggest thing. I've drafted some big arms and they've made it to the big leagues as relievers or whatever, but they're always going to give their managers headaches because they'll be like, 'Can he throw a strike?' "

"You hate to say it, but velocity is kind of the first thing that jumps out at you. There are plenty of kids out here that can pitch but are throwing 80 and that just isn't going to work. I like to see athleticism in the delivery, a repeatable delivery and a low-stress delivery—something where they're not significantly fighting their body to throw quality strikes. I don't like to see a lot of side-to-side movement—pitchers that either throw across their body or stride open and open their front side early. Generally, that creates a lot more stress in the delivery and it's going to hinder their command and their stuff. The ultimate goal this guy has is getting the ball on a straight line to the plate, so if they have that side-to-side movement and creating momentum with their body toward either first base or third base, they have to then fight back to get to the plate and throw strikes. So, as much as guys can minimize that, is certainly a good thing. And you want to see a delivery that works together, the bottom half and the upper half, so a guy's not just throwing all arm. The more athletic the guy is, the more apt he's probably going to be to making these sort of adjustments. If you have a guy who isn't particularly athletic and has a high-maintenance delivery, it's going to become difficult for that guy, as he becomes physically mature, to straighten out his delivery. It's nice when you go in to see a pitcher and then the next day he's playing shortstop or center field or catching and hitting in the three hole. Those are the type of athletes that you're looking for. I feel that if a kid is athletic and shows some aptitude on the mound, then a lot of those delivery flaws are fixable. I tend to think arm action is arm action—the first time you pick up a ball and throw it is generally how you throw and trying to change someone's arm action isn't particularly a successful practice. Most of the guys get hurt or they lose their stuff. It's kind of a fine line where some people have to make a decision: Are they going to continue pitching in a way that is likely to get them hurt, but maintain their stuff, or are they doing to take a risk and see if they can maintain their stuff while changing their arm action significantly?"

"I look at arm action, I look at how clean and easy it is. But it depends, you know, because a lot of relievers in the big leagues throw with some effort. I think it's hard to find starters. Number one, I'm looking for athleticism or a guy that has the ability to repeat his delivery consistently. As long as he can repeat it, there's a good chance he can repeat it with a fastball, which means he's going to be able to locate his fastball. And, if he's a dude, he should be able to locate his secondary pitches also. Starters, for me, should have at least three average pitches or better with plus control. If it's a lefthander, I'll give him a little bit of the benefit of the doubt on the fastball velo if he can paint and mix. The biggest thing though, for me, if you're a starter—especially if you have average stuff—you better be able to command it. You better be able to have some fastball sink or exceptional movement. Because if it's just straight or it's just fringy movement, you don't have a chance, dude—you're going to get hammered. The more movement, the better. That's why everyone wants Halladay because the movement is ridiculous."

"The delivery: how his arm action is in the back and how the ball comes out of his hand. A lot of times we're always worried about, if he doesn't have the prettiest arm action, is that an injury waiting to happen down the road? If it's a clean arm action and the ball comes out good, but the velo might not be there, well you can project that when he gets bigger and stronger, the velo's going to be there because he has good arm action, he's clean. I look where his front foot lands, too. If his front foot lands open—if he's a righthanded pitcher and his left toe is pointing to the first base dugout—that's not good. That's muscle memory and it's hard to get a kid out of that. You don't want to land with an open heel because you're losing velo and you're losing your lower half there. I'm not saying it can't be corrected, but pitching coaches I've talked to say it's hard to get a kid out of it. Unless the kid's blowing 92-94 (mph) already, well then you can live with it. But if he's 88-90, well, he's generic then."

What do you like to see and what don't you want to see when it comes to a pitcher's mechanics?

"For me, as a scout, if I don't see any major red flag areas, I'm OK with the delivery and I know our guys are good enough that they'll tweak him to where he can do things a little bit better, so I don't concern myself with that too much. I'm kind of a big mouth, but I go down the side like everybody else does with a righthanded pitcher—you know, down the third-base line. And when I'm walking down, I always go, 'I'm just walking down here to BS, fellas. I'm not quite sure what to look at down here.' Some scouts will watch a pitcher's mechanics and they'll go, 'See, he got over his front leg!' And I'm just like, 'Let me tell you something. I don't care if he got over his front leg or not, that curveball just went like this and their best hitter just swung and missed at it.' You can go over your front knee all you want, but if you don't have any stuff to get him out, you're not going to be any good!"


Tim Lincecum
"Usually the guys that repeat their delivery better are the guys that are more athletic. For example, Tim Lincecum, who is ultra-athletic. Actually, if you've ever seen him golf, he's a really impressive golfer. When we're talking arm action, ideally you want a cleaner circle. You don't want a stab or a jab, where they're basically stabbing their arm back and it doesn't come out of the glove as a clean circle, because that action, as your body moves forward, is very hard to repeat. Take, for example, Greg Maddux, who had a very clean delivery. How was his command? Pretty good. Jamie Moyer? How's his command? Very good, right? John Lackey—really fluid, easy arm action, but it's always on time, you never see it dragging behind, for the most part. Or a Josh Beckett—power arm, but a very clean delivery in my opinion. Everyone's got a little flaw here and there, but the reason we want those arm actions to be like a clean either full circle, or a medium circle, or even like a Bartolo Colon who had a short circle in his prime, it's because circles are like a timing mechanism and they end up being on time more often than a guy that stabs or stops his arm. You've still got your Rick Sutcliffes who actually plunge their arm down and came back up—there are some exceptions to the rule. But, in most cases, that's kind of the ideal arm action we're looking for and that helps with repeating your delivery and delivering the baseball. So, we can say, 'Hey, this is what we want.' But do you know what the reality is? Along comes a Tim Lincecum who like stabs the ball behind his back and then brings it all the way around—and he can pound the zone with three pitches—and then that goes right out the window. So, there's an ideal model I think we're all looking for, but we're also not going to ignore the guy that has a great feel for repeating his delivery and timing."

"The red flags, mechanically, are a real short arm action in the back. Maybe a low-slotted elbow, when the elbow's lower than the shoulder and just pushing the ball toward the plate, that would tend to create problems over the long haul. And this happens with most players, most of them stand straight up and down, nowadays. They don't get good extension out front and they don't finish the pitch. And I'm talking about finishing the pitch with the hand outside of the knee on the land leg there. They all stand straight up and down and I believe that they do that because it's physically easier to finish the pitch standing straight up and down. But with that, they're not going to get extension and the ball is going to have the tendency to be up in the strike zone more. Extension is the one thing that I don't see a lot of pitchers get out there in the amateur world. And when you do see it, he definitely stands apart."

What kinds of things do you look for that make you think someone will add velocity down the line?

"First and foremost, if he's a max-effort guy and he's already maxing out, he's probably going to go backward. It's kind of like a four-cylinder engine on a vehicle—the harder that it's got to work to go uphill, eventually the guy that's a V-8 can get up the hill a little easier. Loose as in it comes out with a little less effort—it looks like he's playing catch, right? The reason we want those guys is because if they work at a lower effort and they can maintain velocity, they're going to probably be able to go a little harder maybe when they need to or probably be able to maintain that 92-93 mph sinkerball through nine innings without a problem."

"First, it's the eye test. We're looking for tall, lean—I'm not going to say skinny kids, but non-mature kids that three or four years down the road, they're going to get in the weight room to where you can project that they are going to throw harder. If you go out there and you already see a mature kid that's 90-92, well I don't know how much you can project any more in that. But if you get the skinnier kid or the leaner kid with good arm action that's already sitting 89-91, you're going to believe he's going to add more velo to his fastball. As a scout, we're hoping to project on a kid. I don't like going to the ballpark and the 18-year-old senior is already a man and there's no projection there, it is what it is. I think, as a scout, the worst thing a kid can have as a high school senior or even a high school junior is a beard. That's not good. You walk into a ballpark and you've never seen the kid yet, but you walk in and he's got a fully grown beard. That tells me he's mature and there's not projection there. It's all about perception. Perception is 90 percent of it. Whether it's right or wrong, if I walk into a ballpark and I see a kid with a beard and he's just OK, well I can't project anymore. The kid's fully matured. That's one thing for me, I like baby-faced guys."