The One Thing All Scouts Want

The main quality scouts look for is player potential – who you could become on the field and off, rather than who you are now. Scouts know what resources will be available to their players, so they envision what the player will look like after a year or two in the college program or a minor league setting. It’s about the future, not the present.

You cannot control the future. I tried, and it fails 99.9% of the time. So how can you get noticed by the scouts who hold the key to the diamond-shaped castle?

“Once we as scouts get around to watching them play, they need to be a “baseball player” – worried about the things they can control, not what people think of them, focused on having fun and being a good teammate, not worrying about scouts or rankings or the rest of the noise out there.” New York Yankees Northeast Area Scout

Every scout looks for the same thing: potential.

Look the Part

You only have one impression. Make it count. If you show up late, your uniform is dirty, or you look like something out of the Bad News Bears, chances are you will be crossed off the list.

• Clean Your Cleats: Before you get to the field take some scrubbing bubbles, spray your cleats and wipe all of the dirt and dust off. I spent 45 minutes scrubbing black cleats as a high school freshman before going to my first Mets tryout. Excessiveness aside, I looked good and it did wonders for my confidence.
• Wear Clean Pants: If you wear them short, have them hemmed and fitted. If you wear them long, make sure they don’t interfere with your cleats. If you don’t have a fitted pair of pants, high socks or stirrups are a good choice for scouting events. And make sure you have your belt. Nothing looks sloppier than pants without a belt.
• Have the Right Equipment: You shouldn’t have a fourteen-inch glove if you play infield, nor should you have a 11 ¼-inch glove if you play centerfield. Own your position and get the right equipment. If you are a hitter, have your batting gloves, helmet, and bat ready to go. Don’t rely on others to provide what you need. Remember you are all fighting for the same spots.
• Sunglasses or Eye Black: Always bring a pair of sunglasses to the field or wear eye black as a position player. You’d rather be prepared for that high pop fly than fight the elements and look bad doing it. Eye black should be simple. Don’t channel your inner Braveheart.
• Tuck it In: Tuck your shirt in and keep it tucked. End of story.
• Wear Your Hat the Right Way: Like it or not, you are not Fernando Rodney.

Don’t Walk, Run

While pitching for the University of Connecticut (UCONN), I played with one of the most underrated players in the Big East Conference for two years. He was our second baseman and stood about 5’8” tall and weighed about 160lb soaking wet with cinderblocks in his pockets. But none of that mattered. What stood out was not that he was the best player on the field, although often he was, but the fact that he never let anything about an at-bat or error in the field change his passionate approach. He would sprint onto his field position from the dugout no matter what.

He showed up with a clean uniform, but by the end of the game it looked like something out of a mud-wrestling match. Although his numbers were great at UCONN, his passion, leadership abilities, and way he played the game made him stand out from the several first-round picks on the field (including Mike Olt, George Springer, Matt Barnes, and Nick Ahmed). His talent, heart, and hustle eventually helped him get drafted for the Chicago Cubs organization.

“The most successful players I’ve scouted are the ones who love to compete, love to play the game, love the preparation and the push to be better each time out. Those prospects make scouting them fun because they hold themselves to a high standard of what kind of player they want to be and they aren’t concerned about the stuff that becomes distractions.” Matt Hyde, New York Yankees North East Area Scout

Stay Within Yourself

Players who feel they don’t measure up to others or who focus on impressing scouts and coaches often try to stand out by doing something different. Fight the temptation to change your approach to the game. It is important to play the best version of your game, and to showcase the skills you’ve been working on all year.

If you are an average hitter but you can run and field, you’d better make sure that you show those skills. During in and out (pre-game infield and outfield) make sure you hustle onto the field and show enthusiasm while fielding your position. When you try to do something you’re not used to or capable of, you may find yourself unable to stay calm in high-pressure situations. This has manifestations on the field, like gripping the bat or ball a little tighter or making careless mental and physical errors.

Staying within yourself requires a lot of maturity, a quality that all scouts are always looking for. The game is hard enough and putting external pressure on yourself is not necessary. Play your game as best you can and leave it all on the field.

Act Like a Professional

After I read the book Thinking Body, Dancing Mind (I still reference this often as a coach) my motto became ‘Act as if.’ I wrote this in my hats and used it as a mantra that I could go back to when I was struggling on the field. After reading this book my senior year of high school, I made it my daily mission as a baseball player to act as if I was on the mound of a big league park. Imagine yourself as the major leaguer you want to become – the player you want to be.

Acting like a professional entails not showing too much emotion when eyes are on you. The game of baseball is about being consistent and steady, both in your playing abilities and your emotions. Controlling yourself emotionally is a great sign of maturity. Don’t get too high and don’t get too low. That includes celebratory dances after a home run. Act like you’ve been there before.

Baseball is all about being consistent and steady.

Trust Your Game

There is only so much we can do to enhance our natural ability. But we can control the level of attention we apply to the game. When you are performing in front of scouts and coaches, stay confident in your abilities and what you did to prepare. Trust that even if you don’t play your best game, you can still exhibit characteristics that will add value to their program or organization.

Outside of superstars like Mike Trout, the people that go the farthest in this game are those who play the game the correct way and display the unteachable qualities of leadership and preparation.

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Photos courtesy of Shutterstock

The post From Minors to Majors: How to Get Scouted in Baseball appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The struggle lies mainly in understanding how to adapt training methods to improve strengths and weaknesses that surfaced during the season. These steps will help you optimize the off-season so you can improve performance and enter the new season with confidence.

Step 1: Set Detailed Goals

Within this step, there are a few smaller steps:

1. First and foremost, identify where you need to improve. Start by doing a self-assessment of strengths and weaknesses.
2. Next, sit down with your coaches for feedback on where they feel you need improvement.
3. Finally, as legendary strength coach Dan John has said, “Keep the goal the goal.”

Commit to focusing on your goals and finding a program that will help you achieve them. Aim to have a program tailored to you and your goals, not generalized for an entire team. When training is focused on improving performance, the rest will fall into place.

Step 2: Train for Number One

While it is only natural to compare yourself to your teammates, it’s crucial that you do not fall into the mental trap of obsessing over someone else’s year. The focus is on what you can do to improve you, not what a buddy did last off-season. So many aspects of baseball are out of your control, but the beauty of the offseason is that improvement is in your hands.

Step 3: Source Your Information

The baseball industry is filled with so-called experts who claim they have the answer to all of your problems. One of the biggest challenges we face as athletes is choosing who we listen to.

Be wary of coaches you haven’t worked with who have extreme ideas on what is right and wrong when it comes to athletic performance. As you grow and develop there will inevitably be tweaks to how you hit and field. But fully changing your natural mechanics should be taken seriously and only done after consulting a coach who is familiar with you as a player.

Step 4: Stay Healthy

I had a coach who would come straight to the training room during the team stretch and scream “YOU CAN’T MAKE THE CLUB IN THE TUB!” To be fair, most of players were either battling injuries or rehabbing from a surgery, but his point was crystal clear. If you’re in the training room nursing an injury, you’re not on the field getting closer to your goals.

How can you stay healthy and injury-free? If I had the answer to that question I would be a wealthy man. There is no guarantee that taking precautionary measures in the off-season will stop you from getting bit by the injury bug, but taking proper care of your body is crucial to success.

A big part of staying healthy and getting the field time you want during the season is listening to your body. If you begin to feel worn down, pull the reins on the workouts and recover for a week. Pacing yourself is critical to season longevity, and your body will thank you in the final stretch of the season.

A Note to Pitchers: Unlike other position players, there is a cap on how much you can do without tempting injury. You cannot throw a thousand times per day. It is always in a pitcher’s best interest to back off rather than push through, a lesson I learned the hard way. This will not hinder your improvement, because the restful period gives you time to work on the less sexy part of your game. A few other guidelines for pitchers:

• Fielding Practice – Don’t give away free outs. Ask someone to hit your groundballs and work on your fielding practice. Learn how to cover first base and do it at game speed. No coach likes giving away free outs.
• Mechanical Work – A sore or tired arm should not stop you from improving your pitching. Working on your mechanics and keeping them just as sharp as if you were playing in a game is key for when you get back on the mound.
• Mental Strength – You’ve heard about the power of visualization before. Take time to reflect on your goals. Visualize yourself in situations and continue to build confidence in your abilities.

Step 5: Mental Game

There are tons of great resources at your fingertips to improve your mental game. It might sound arduous, but pick up one of these and read up.

• Mind Gym, by Gary Mach and David Casstevens
• The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle
• The Power of Being Yourself, by Joe Plumeri
• Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown, by Eric Blehm

Better Rest, Bigger Benefits

It is important to take time in the off-season to relax and recuperate. Following these steps will help you return to the field as stronger player, both mentally and physically. Stay on track with the goals you set for the off-season, and you will go into the season feeling well prepared for the challenges ahead.

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Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

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The competition is grueling, and the tendency to try to gain a competitive edge through specializing has become increasingly popular. Not surprisingly, year-long training in a single sport with few breaks equates to an amplified risk of injury. In fact, a recent ten-year study of adolescent players found that pitchers who threw over 100 innings in a year were three times more likely to be injured – and those who played for at least eight consecutive months were five times more likely to be injured.

Introducing Tommy John – Baseball Surgery de Jour

Ulnar collateral ligament reconstructive surgery, also known as “Tommy John” surgery, replaces the torn UCL inside the elbow to allow the athlete to regain his or her ability to throw. Tommy John has earned a sexy reputation – the zipper-like scar left on the player’s elbow has been known to not only return throwing capability, but create a “bionic” arm, increasing velocity post-surgery.

“Ulnar collateral ligament reconstructive surgery, also known as “Tommy John” surgery, replaces the torn UCL inside the elbow to allow the athlete to regain his or her ability to throw.”

But that benefit is the exception, not the rule. It is critical that young pitchers, parents, and coaches educate themselves on the consequences of electing Tommy John and understand just what the rehabilitation process entails.

Tommy John’s Misleading Success

Tommy John success stories filled with star-power names dominate ESPN, and the number of players going under the knife has spiked in the past three years. While it’s not entirely clear what is causing the surgical epidemic, the number of young players electing to have Tommy John pre-injury is a good indicator that it is thought of as a performance enhancing procedure. When you take a closer look at the data, a different picture emerges.

According to the American Sports Medicine Institute (ASMI) the procedure touts an 80% success rate. However, the term “surgical success” in this context can be misleading, and certainly does not equate to increased velocity or a lower ERA.² In a 2014 study, published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, only 67% of pitchers returned to an “established” status post-surgery, playing at least ten games in a season, while more than 50% of players returned to the disabled list due to an injury to their throwing arm post-surgery.³

Still think TJ will give you a performance boost? According to the renowned Dr. James Andrew, the likelihood of reaching collegiate level play decreases three-fold when surgery is administered to a youth baseball player.⁴

Unfortunately, these are not the stats that parents, coaches, and players are hearing when they watch stars like Matt Harvey of the New York Mets, twenty months post-op face the Washington Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg, who did his rehab back in 2010. For those young pitchers able to return to the game, their arm has been permanently altered and many throw at a lower velocity than pre-surgery.

“Tommy John has earned a sexy reputation – the zipper-like scar left on the player’s elbow has been known to not only return throwing capability, but create a “bionic” arm, increasing velocity post-surgery.”

If not exceeding or even meeting pre-surgical performance isn’t enough to battle, players must often undergo a revision, or repeat surgery. In fact, eleven of the 31 procedures done in 2014 on players in the Major Leagues were repeats.⁵

Now if baseball were purely a physical game, Tommy John may still be a gamble worth taking. Unfortunately, the buck doesn’t stop there. A successful post-op career, meaning the player will return to A-game, is only possible with a successful rehabilitation.

It’s Not All Fun and Games

According to Glenn Fleisig of ASMI, when things go well, like for 80% of pitchers, you could be back to playing pro baseball in twelve months, but it takes about eighteen months to be as good as you were pre-surgery.⁶ During my own rehab from Tommy John surgery I witnessed several colleagues rehab for upwards of two years before returning to the mound, and some did not return at all.

Through no fault of their own, many players are not mature enough to handle the grueling rehabilitation process. Months of painful physical therapy, monotonous days, and relearning mechanics can take an emotional toll. Pitchers who were previously throwing over ninety miles per hour must summon the will power to show up day after day to perform simple exercises, regain lost range of motion throughout the shoulder and elbow, and have a therapist manually break up their scar tissue. Trust me when I say this is not for the faint of heart. The road back to the mound is nothing if not long, and it can be filled with setbacks that test a player’s mental and emotional strength.

“During my own rehab from Tommy John surgery I witnessed several colleagues rehab for upwards of two years before returning to the mound, and some did not return at all.”

An example of one of these mental setbacks is commonly referred to as the “yips.” A simple game of catch can yield massive amounts of anxiety. During my recovery, going to the field became something I dreaded. It was hard to believe twenty years of baseball and twelve months of rehabilitation could lead me to such a dark, insecure place. More than a few cars were hit, and spiking fastballs fifteen feet from the mound became commonplace. Don’t get me wrong, rehabilitation is different for every player, but the possibility of returning to the mound with both an altered arm and mind, is a possibility not to be ignored.

Do Your Research

It is commonly understood that “knowledge is power,” and with the increased popularity of Tommy John surgery comes a vast supply of resources on the subject. I encourage all athletes, parents, and coaches to utilize them. Surgery may not provide the competitive edge that some players might hope for, but making informed decisions regarding the athlete’s health so he or she can continue to develop just might.

If nothing else, remember:

• Invest in the development process. Do not play all year round. Let your body get the rest it needs.
• Strength exercises every day keeps the doctor away. Do not skimp on strength exercises between outings and after games.
• Find a throwing program that works for you. Every arm is different, and how much off-season throwing should be done should vary by pitcher. Finding a program that allows the pitcher to maintain throwing mechanics creates a more consistent arm slot, which is critical to staying healthy.
• Give your body a chance to repair the tear naturally. With nine to eighteen months of rehab and at least three to four months without throwing a baseball, it’s worth adding another six weeks to see if your tear will heal. Yes, it’s hard. Do it anyway.
• Get a second and third opinion. Do not be afraid to get as many opinions as you need to make an educated decision on how to proceed with an injury.

More on injury and recovery:

• Common Elbow Injuries and What to Do About Them
• Standing Wall Clock: Address Elbow Pain Before It Continues
• 3 Steps to Addressing Pain: Are You Hurt or Are You Injured?
• What’s New on Breaking Muscle Today

References:

1. “Probability of Playing College and Professional Baseball”, High School Baseball Web. 

2 “Tommy John 2015 – Madson Saga shows surgery not perfect” 03/02/2015. 

3. Makhni E, Lee R, Morrow Z, et al,“Performance, Return to Competition and Reinjury after Tommy John Surgery in Major League

Baseball Pitchers: A Review of 147 Cases,” American Journal of Sports Medicine” 42 (2014):6.

4. “Tommy John FAQ”, Pitch Smart Resources, USA Baseball.

5.“ What we’ve missed about Tommy John Surgery” Last Modified 4/9/2015. 

6. “ASMI’s Glenn Fleisig talks about Tommy John Surgeries, Wearable Sensors at Sloan Conference” 03/05/2015. 

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

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