How to Make Pro Baseball Scouts Notice You

How to Make Pro Baseball Scouts Notice You

Author: Al Goldis

Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.

Published: 2009-01-01

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 1602396841

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Al Goldis has spent more than forty years as a major league scout, having worked in the front offices of the Cincinnati Reds, Baltimore Orioles, Anaheim Angels, Chicago White Sox, Chicago Cubs, and New York Mets. In those forty years he has seen and signed some of the game?s greatest talents. As the Scouting Director of the Chicago White Sox in the late 1980s, Goldis spearheaded the amateur drafts that brought future All-Stars Frank Thomas, Robin Ventura, and Jack McDowell into the Sox organization. After so many years scouting young players, Goldis has a pretty good idea what to look for in a player beyond the commonly accepted standard of the?five tools? (hitting for average, hitting for power, a strong throwing arm, excellent defensive skills, and speed on the basepaths). And in How to Make Pro Scouts Notice You, he and former pro ballplayer John Wolff have set out to create a blueprint for young ballplayers with big league aspirations to follow. The purpose of the book is twofold: one, to give young ballplayers an inside look at what scouts are really looking for in their search for professional-caliber ballplayers; and two, to help them market and sell themselves so that those scouts will know they exist and see them put their best skills on display. How to Make Pro Scouts Notice You is written with the intent of helping young ballplayers keep their dreams of playing pro ball alive and flourishing.


How to Make Pro Baseball Scouts Notice You

How to Make Pro Baseball Scouts Notice You

Author: Al Goldis

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2009-06-23

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1626369801

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The purpose of this book is twofold: one, to give ballplayers an inside look at just what scouts are really looking for in their search for professional ballplayers; and two, to help them market and sell themselves so that scouts will know they exist and see them put their best skills on display. This book has been written with the intent of helping ballplayers keep their dreams of playing pro ball alive and flourishing. All any ballplayer wants is a shot at playing pro ball, and by reading this book, they will be that much closer to having their dreams come true.


How to Make Pro Scouts Notice You

How to Make Pro Scouts Notice You

Author: Al Goldis

Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781570282003

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This is the straight talk the book you've wanted to see in print. Read it and re-read it. The sections on why scouts sign certain ballplayers and bypass others are right on the mark.----Joe McIlvaine, former New York Mets vice president, Baseball Operations


Baseball's Endangered Species

Baseball's Endangered Species

Author: Lee Lowenfish

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 1496214811

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"A comprehensive look at professional baseball scouting from post WWII to the present day"--


Scouting and Scoring

Scouting and Scoring

Author: Christopher J. Phillips

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-03-26

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 069118898X

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An in-depth look at the intersection of judgment and statistics in baseball Scouting and scoring are considered fundamentally different ways of ascertaining value in baseball. Scouting seems to rely on experience and intuition, scoring on performance metrics and statistics. In Scouting and Scoring, Christopher Phillips rejects these simplistic divisions. He shows how both scouts and scorers rely on numbers, bureaucracy, trust, and human labor in order to make sound judgments about the value of baseball players. Tracing baseball’s story from the nineteenth century to today, Phillips explains that the sport was one of the earliest and most consequential fields for the introduction of numerical analysis. New technologies and methods of data collection were supposed to enable teams to quantify the drafting and managing of players—replacing scouting with scoring. But that’s not how things turned out. Over the decades, scouting and scoring started looking increasingly similar. Scouts expressed their judgments in highly formulaic ways, using numerical grades and scientific instruments to evaluate players. Scorers drew on moral judgments, depended on human labor to maintain and correct data, and designed bureaucratic systems to make statistics appear reliable. From the invention of official scorers and Statcast to the creation of the Major League Scouting Bureau, the history of baseball reveals the inextricable connections between human expertise and data science. A unique consideration of the role of quantitative measurement and human judgment, Scouting and Scoring provides an entirely fresh understanding of baseball by showing what the sport reveals about reliable knowledge in the modern world.


Catching-101

Catching-101

Author: Xan Barksdale

Publisher: Author House

Published: 2011-07-28

Total Pages: 165

ISBN-13: 1463439598

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CATCHING-101: The Complete Guide for Baseball Catchers is the most comprehensive book ever written for baseball catchers. It contains tips, drills, and proper mechanics that will help every catcher or coach better understand the most difficult position on the field. This book contains information on EVERY aspect of catching that Coach Barksdale has learned through his years of experience from coaching nationally ranked NCAA teams, and playing at almost every level from Little League to professional baseball. A few of the topics covered in CATCHING-101 are: Receiving Blocking Catching Pop Flies Throwing Fielding Bunts Plays at Home Plate Drills Pitchouts Pass Balls/Wild Pitches Giving Signals And More! If you have been searching for a source with lots of high quality information about catching, this is the book for you! CATCHING-101 was written by Coach Xan Barksdale who is currently an NCAA Division I baseball coach and an ex-professional baseball player. Coach Barksdale played in the Atlanta Braves organization and has been a featured speaker at the prestigious ABCA (American Baseball Coaches Association) national convention.


The Matheny Manifesto

The Matheny Manifesto

Author: Mike Matheny

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2015-02-03

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 0553446711

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St. Louis Cardinals manager Mike Matheny's New York Times bestselling manifesto about what parents, coaches, and athletes get wrong about sports; what we can do better; and how sports can teach eight keys to success in sports and life. Mike Matheny was just forty-one, without professional managerial experience and looking for a next step after a successful career as a Major League catcher, when he succeeded the legendary Tony La Russa as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals in 2012. While Matheny has enjoyed immediate success, leading the Cards to the postseason four times in his first four years−a Major League record−people have noticed something else about his life, something not measured in day-to-day results. Instead, it’s based on a frankly worded letter he wrote to the parents of a Little League team he coached, a cry for change that became an Internet sensation and eventually a “manifesto.” The tough-love philosophy Matheny expressed in the letter contained his throwback beliefs that authority should be respected, discipline and hard work rewarded, spiritual faith cultivated, family made a priority, and humility considered a virtue. In The Matheny Manifesto, he builds on his original letter by first diagnosing the problem at the heart of youth sports−it starts with parents and coaches−and then by offering a hopeful path forward. Along the way, he uses stories from his small-town childhood as well as his career as a player, coach, and manager to explore eight keys to success: leadership, confidence, teamwork, faith, class, character, toughness, and humility. From “The Coach Is Always Right, Even When He’s Wrong” to “Let Your Catcher Call the Game,” Matheny’s old-school advice might not always be popular or politically correct, but it works. His entertaining and deeply inspirational book will not only resonate with parents, coaches, and athletes, it will also be a powerful reminder, from one of the most successful new managers in the game, of what sports can teach us all about winning on the field and in life.


Future Value

Future Value

Author: Eric Longenhagen

Publisher: Triumph Books

Published: 2020-04-14

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1641253975

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An unprecedented look inside the world of baseball scouting and evaluation from two of the industry's top prospect analysts For the modern Major League team, player evaluation is a complex, multi-pronged, high-tech pursuit. But far from becoming obsolete in this environment—as Michael Lewis' Moneyball once forecast—the role of the scout in today's game has evolved and even expanded. Rather than being the antithesis of a data-driven approach, scouting now represents an essential analytical component in a team's arsenal. Future Value is a thorough dive into baseball's changing world of talent acquisition and development, a world with its own language, methods, metrics, and madness. From rural high schools to elite amateur showcases, from the back fields of spring training to major league draft rooms, Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel break down the key systems and techniques used to assess talent. It's a process that has moved beyond the quintessential stopwatches and radar guns to include statistical models, countless measurable indicators, and a broader international reach. ?Practical and probing, discussing wide-ranging topics from tool grades to front office politics, this is an illuminating exploration of how to watch baseball and see the future.


Infinite Baseball

Infinite Baseball

Author: Alva Noë

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-03-01

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0190928190

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Baseball is a strange sport: it consists of long periods in which little seems to be happening, punctuated by high-energy outbursts of rapid fire activity. Because of this, despite ever greater profits, Major League Baseball is bent on finding ways to shorten games, and to tailor baseball to today's shorter attention spans. But for the true fan, baseball is always compelling to watch -and intellectually fascinating. It's superficially slow-pace is an opportunity to participate in the distinctive thinking practice that defines the game. If baseball is boring, it's boring the way philosophy is boring: not because there isn't a lot going on, but because the challenge baseball poses is making sense of it all. In this deeply entertaining book, philosopher and baseball fan Alva Noë explores the many unexpected ways in which baseball is truly a philosophical kind of game. For example, he ponders how observers of baseball are less interested in what happens, than in who is responsible for what happens; every action receives praise or blame. To put it another way, in baseball - as in the law - we decide what happened based on who is responsible for what happened. Noe also explains the curious activity of keeping score: a score card is not merely a record of the game, like a video recording; it is an account of the game. Baseball requires that true fans try to tell the story of the game, in real time, as it unfolds, and thus actively participate in its creation. Some argue that baseball is fundamentally a game about numbers. Noe's wide-ranging, thoughtful observations show that, to the contrary, baseball is not only a window on language, culture, and the nature of human action, but is intertwined with deep and fundamental human truths. The book ranges from the nature of umpiring and the role of instant replay, to the nature of the strike zone, from the rampant use of surgery to controversy surrounding performance enhancing drugs. Throughout, Noe's observations are surprising and provocative. Infinite Baseball is a book for the true baseball fan.


The MVP Machine

The MVP Machine

Author: Ben Lindbergh

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2019-06-04

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 1541698959

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Move over, Moneyball -- this New York Times bestseller examines major league baseball's next cutting-edge revolution: the high-tech quest to build better players. As bestselling authors Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik reveal in The MVP Machine, the Moneyball era is over. Fifteen years after Michael Lewis brought the Oakland Athletics' groundbreaking team-building strategies to light, every front office takes a data-driven approach to evaluating players, and the league's smarter teams no longer have a huge advantage in valuing past performance. Lindbergh and Sawchik's behind-the-scenes reporting reveals: How undersized afterthoughts José Altuve and Mookie Betts became big sluggers and MVPs How polarizing pitcher Trevor Bauer made himself a Cy Young contender How new analytical tools have overturned traditional pitching and hitting techniques How a wave of young talent is making MLB both better than ever and arguably worse to watch Instead of out-drafting, out-signing, and out-trading their rivals, baseball's best minds have turned to out-developing opponents, gaining greater edges than ever by perfecting prospects and eking extra runs out of older athletes who were once written off. Lindbergh and Sawchik take us inside the transformation of former fringe hitters into home-run kings, show how washed-up pitchers have emerged as aces, and document how coaching and scouting are being turned upside down. The MVP Machine charts the future of a sport and offers a lesson that goes beyond baseball: Success stems not from focusing on finished products, but from making the most of untapped potential.