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January 30, 2013 Youth MovementRespect the 8Even as baseball fans and those within the industry gain a deeper understanding of statistics, one number remains largely misinterpreted and misunderstood. The elite post atop the traditional 2-8 (or 20-80) scouting scale, the 8 represents the territory so far to the right on the scouting bell curve that few scouts dare to tread there. It represents only the most elite of tools and should always be respected. As a young scout learning the ropes in the mid-2000s, I didn’t immediately understand the significance of this extreme end of the scouting scale. But gradually, my respect for it grew as I began to understand its scarcity. In 2012, I watched countless games from high school to the pros. I spoke to scouts and industry insiders at all levels of baseball. And only very rarely did I hear mention of an elite-level tool. Given the nature of scouting, elite grades are most often placed on fastball velocity and running speed. These are the only two traditional scouting categories that offer a standardized, empirical measurement-based scale by which grades are assigned. Pump your fastball consistently in the 97-plus-mph range, and you’re going to get an 8. Get down the line to first in less than 4.0 seconds from the right side (3.9 seconds from the left), and you’re going to get an 8. The benefit of such a scale is that the risk of tossing around bold grades evaporates. But when grading all other tools, evaluators aren’t afforded that luxury, which makes the 8 grade far more nerve-wracking to commit to. For the past couple of years, Billy Hamilton’s speed has fascinated us all. He’s raced to first fast enough to make stopwatches explode and routine groundballs become an adventure. Hamilton deserves something better than the top of the scale. He breaks the scale. When I discussed players with scouts last year, two others were routinely cited as having legitimately elite speed: Toronto’s D.J. Davis and Philadelphia’s Roman Quinn. Of course, burners are relatively easy to find, and there are additional players with 8 speed in the minor leagues. But none was mentioned with the frequency reserved for Hamilton, Davis, and Quinn.
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i have trouble understanding how an 8 defense even could be put on most players. It seems like defense is the most context-specific of these skills, and the opportunities to show 8 defense are most dependent on so many factors. If you think a guy in high school could be an 8 defensive outfielder, do you call him that or do you wait for him to show it at A, AA, etc before being so bold? Of all these tools, I would expect defense to be the one that reveals itself more in retrospect and is the hardest to judge on the 20-80 scale. Is that a fair assessment?
Thanks for the question.
I don't think what you highlighted pertains to defense alone. Part of the point of this piece was to identify just how rare and special the "8" is in the game. Defense is extremely hard to project to that level, but it does exist on occasion. There are times where hindsight may reveal that someone has gotten to that level, but even those cases are rare.
to clarify- how do you separate, say, a 5 from a 7 in defense? i would think hit tool, arm strength, etc show themselves at all levels and even in batting practice. a 22 year old making flashy defensive plays in the outfield, though, would mean something different at high-A than it would at AA (i would assume). i wonder if context plays more into evaluating defense than other tools.
as a catcher, how many times do i need to catch billy hamilton stealing to go from looking like a 60 to looking like an 80? and if i attempt but just miss, how much of that is on me as the catcher rather than the pitcher or 2nd baseman who may not have been in position? how do you separate the flashy plays from the actual tools to determine the difference between a 70 and an 80 in defense?
To quote Joe Sheehan, I am not a scout. However, my understanding of scouting defense is that there is significant emphasis on the pre-pitch setup and first step of the defender. The outfielder who consistently has a good start on a route is going to project better than one who seems to be guessing half the time. Also, the one who's always making the diving catch may be doing so because of a weak first step. His youthful speed may hide that deficiency in the minors, but the future projection would suffer.
Makes perfect sense. Thanks. Still seems hard to evaluate the difference between a 6 and 7 here, but this explains a lot
It is hard to differentiate between grades in many cases. That's a large part of the reason grades aren't always consistent. It can vary with the plays you've seen them make, the way you perceive defense, etc.