First, I think tonight I want to talk about scouting and educate some of our members about the process and what really happens, and then talk a little bit about what you as a scout look for in a player. So let’s start at the top, if you wouldn’t mind. Pretend I’m a kindergartner and don’t know much about scouting. What does a major league scouting department look like? What does the organizational chart?
Yeah, I think each organization is unique in its own way, and I know for me, I’ve worked post playing days. I’ve worked for two organizations in Tampa Bay and the Dodgers. I’ve been with the Dodgers for the last nine years. And so I’ve been very fortunate to be part of such a classy organization and successful organization. I’ve learned quite, I mean, just incredible things through the years. I think in general, most organizations you have area supervisors that are kind of like your first line of defense, and those guys typically speaking cover a couple of different states. And so each organization, again, has it set up a little differently, but you have your area guys that are responsible for those specific areas. Then the next layer is the regional crosschecker where you have a crosschecker that is oversees three or four area scouts and a region of the country.
Those guys work together very closely to be experts in that territory. And then the next layer is what you call the national crosscheck level, where you have, again, different organizations have different numbers of those guys, typically two or three typically that kind of crisscross the country, work with the regional and area supervisors to again, just you’re trying to be very thorough and do a good job of getting multiple looks at players across the country. So the national guy just bounces around all over the country. And then typically, obviously above that is your scouting director who is the boss man who kind of directs traffic and is obviously very involved in the process and the targets and where we spend most of our time as we start getting further down the stretch closer to the draft. And I know in our case with our front office and we have vice president of scouting and player development, I think one of the benefits to being with the Dodgers is we have such a large staff, so have a lot of people seeing players. And at the end of the day, it really I think has served us well. And when we get into the room in LA to sit down and try to figure out, make our final decisions on that year’s crop of players, it’s very beneficial to have the variety of looks and the depth of looks throughout the spring. So that’s kind of the hierarchy and I think of it more as that’s the way the team sets up.
Everybody has a very important role, everybody has a job to do and working together, putting your ego aside, working together to ultimately just try to get the player right in the end. And that’s ultimately what our focus is with the Dodgers.
So within that chart, where do you lie? What is your role with the Dodgers?
Yeah, so my role is basically I’m the national pitching. So I used to be somewhat of a unique role in that I would just focus on pitching and really specifically that was my only real responsibility was to go in and crosscheck pitchers, really not being too focused on position players, primarily trying to help us to separate the top pitchers in the draft. And so that’s been my role for the last nine years and it’s a great role to have me having a pitching background and that’s what I did as a player. And then getting into scouting and being able to go again across the country and really evaluate the majority of the top arms for that year’s draft. It’s exciting. You see a lot of talented players, but it’s very challenging to try to separate these guys. There’s so much armed talent across the country and at some point you have to rank ’em, you have to separate ’em, and you have to make decisions and you’re wrong way more than you’re right. And it’s just part of it, but it’s certainly a challenge every single year and it doesn’t get any easier.
Well, I’m going to kind of go off script a little bit here. You said you make some mistakes. I know in my small travel ball days, nothing compared to a major league team drafting players. I’ve definitely cut some really good guys and missed on some really good players. Is there anybody in your mind that you kind of look back at through your career of scouting that you kind of kick yourself and say, man, I really liked that guy, but maybe I didn’t put ’em in as high as I should have?
Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, I think there’s a lot of examples of that over the years because if you scout long enough, you realize that this is really hard and you miss more than you hit. And it’s just the nature of it. I think for me, one of the guys that I talk about a lot, which with our group and kind of a recent player that I felt like I didn’t gloss over but I didn’t value properly coming out of college was Zach, right-handed pitcher who has really been a big, big part of the Diamondbacks, but coming out of college, he is a really good strike thrower, maybe didn’t have off the chart stuff at that time, and he had success at North Carolina, but he wasn’t a guy that was throwing super hard or stuff didn’t necessarily grade above average across the board. And ultimately I had a report in lower than what he’s turned out to be, but I learned a lot of things from him and hopefully I don’t make that same mistake twice, but I mean he’s gone on to have a heck of a career, but that’s just part of it. You tip your cap sometimes and you have to make a decision at that point in time. And I missed on that one.
Well, I know we had a conversation about six months ago that I think was kind of surrounding Zach, and maybe we can expand on this a little bit. And a lot of times college coaches will look at high school players and they will project that high school player out. What’s that 16 year old going to be when he’s 20 or 21 when he’s on campus? And one thing that you said to me that really rung true with me is major league scouts and major league organizations need to do the same thing. And just because you’re 21 or 22 and coming into the draft, that doesn’t mean that’s as good as you’re going to get. And Zach’s a great example of that and I think that’s what puts so much guesswork in it. Sometimes you really don’t know. You can’t really tell who’s going to make that jump and who’s not. So really love that anecdote. Is there anything that you can share with the group and those listening about the Dodgers philosophy on scouting? Is there a particular thing that you guys look for in a picture, obviously what you do or even in a position player or in players as a whole?
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things with the Dodgers that, that’s my personal opinion that we’ve done such a good job since the new group came over in 2015. And it’s a real credit to Billy Gasparino, our scouting director, and I guess the culture he has set for our scouting department. But I think one of our strengths is that we’re not married to one thing. It’s not one special thing we look for or one ingredient that we always take or always walk away from or I think it’s just we’re very open-minded each year. And I think just in general, the one size doesn’t fit all mindset. And I think that’s something we do really good. And we’ll get into this. I know a little bit about just the state of major league baseball now and the game with analytics and the game has really changed over the last five years.
And I think that’s been one of our strengths is we’ve been able to kind of change with it and just go through each and every year with a open mind, go through it with this growth mindset approach, continuing to learn and not necessarily just be married to one thing. And I think in scouting you have to account for several different things. You account for what I call the player, what a skillset is on the position side, the hit run, throw defense, the tools on the pitching side, you you’re looking at a variety of different things, the stuff crossing the plate, you’re looking at arm action delivery, you’re looking at the ability to move the body, what the frame looks like, the projection on the frame, how much strength can we add, is he maxed out physically? So there’s a lot of different things you’re looking at on the what.
But then you also have to look at the, who is the person, what’s his story, why does he do this, why does he want to be great? And I think it’s you take a combination of all those factors and ultimately it helps you to line up your board. But I think again, for us, it’s just kind of taken into account all of those things and not just being focused in on one specific thing. And I think I had kind of jotted down just some notes talking about the pitching side. I mean, I think the cool thing about scouting is each individual scout kind of has their own preferences, and that’s the beauty of it. And then when you write your reports and you go through the spring and you try to line up your own pre list, and once you get in that room in LA or in all the other organizations get into their draft rooms, you kind of throw your ego out the window.
It’s not about being right necessarily because really in what we do, we don’t know if we’re right for five years after really, but it’s just putting your ego aside and trying to help the team make the best decision. And that’s ultimately, I think for us, we’re very fortunate. We’ve had a lot of the same staff in for a number of years. There’s a lot of continuity amongst our scouting staff, and so we all know each other very well. And so when we get in that room, there’s no egos, it’s let’s just make the best decision for the Dodgers and try to pick the next crop of big leaguers. And I think we’ve done a fantastic job of it. I mean, it’s documented. The players we have that have impacted the major league club from the draft has been as good as any clubs out there. But the good thing is, is we’re continuing to push forward, continuing to find that next crop. And we’re looking forward to getting in the room here in a couple days and getting ready for July 9th.
So tell me about the room a little bit, right? Are there any fun anecdotes, give our listeners an idea of what the draft room is like and what it’s about if you can.
Yeah, it’s kind of like everybody, A lot of people play fantasy football or fantasy baseball, and you got your draft board with the names. And ultimately we’re trying to line up our board in the order of preference of the players. And so we get in there a week prior to the draft and we start talking through the different draft demographics and high school position players, high school pitchers, and then college pitchers, college position players. We’ll look at different relievers or guys that can really run that are outlier runners. We have different categories. And then we just go through those players that are going to factor into the top parts of the draft initially. And we as a group vote on it and as we go through it, we’ll vote on it, we revisit, we’ll discuss things that come up, and ultimately we put our order together.
So you can imagine just a big whiteboard with your magnets up there. They’re usually magnets. You can move ’em around pretty easily with the names and come draft day we’ll have our order set. And that’s when you sit back and you just let the draft play out. I mean, this year we picked 36 as our first pick, and so 35 names are going to come off our board before our selection. And typically speaking, you just would think you kind of play the board as the names start coming off. Your highest ranked player at your pick is generally the pick, unless there’s some other circumstances involved. So obviously those high end selections are fun for us to see who you’re going to get. But every pick matters, especially now in the 20 round draft. I mean, we had some players we signed last year after the draft that are really making progress and making some noise in our organization. And so there’s a lot of good players out there. And so 20 round draft is very much abbreviated, so you just got to be prepared and hope you make the right picks.
So on your board, about how many players do you guys rank when you look up on that big draft board? How many guys are on that board?
Yeah, I don’t know the exact number to be honest with you. I don’t know the amount of players that are actually turned in, but typically speaking on what we would call our big board, usually it’s like the top a hundred or top 150 players. And then from there we have secondary boards with players that we think are going to factor into day two or day three of the draft. And then yeah, some of the draft can be strategies and things like that that organizations try to do accumulate the most talent within their draft pool. And that’s what kind of makes it fun is just trying to collect the most talent you can with the amount of money you have to spend. But yeah, typically speaking, that big board is probably, I think it’s a hundred players, it might be one 50.
So you touched on it a little bit, and I know we could probably talk for hours about this, but I’m going to put these two questions together. What are maybe two or three of the biggest impacts you’ve seen analytics have on scouting, and then what are some of the adjustments that you’ve had to make as a scout over the years as analytics play a bigger, bigger role in the game at the major league level?
It has changed quite a bit. I think things that are now part of the equation with some of the analytics weren’t part of the equation five years ago, 10 years ago for sure. And I think nowadays with most, I mean, I think all organizations have full on analytics department, and I know, again, I can really only speak to from the Dodgers perspective with what I’ve experienced, but our room and the people involved in helping us make decisions, we have our scouting department, we have our analytics department, we have our player development department, but the analytics are a big, big part of the equation. And I think it goes back to what we talked about a minute ago where we kind of take a blend of it all and we’re not just completely reliant on analytics or we’re not completely reliant on the old school scouting approach of just the eyes, but there’s so much you can quantify in today’s game with the technology that’s out there.
And I think if you didn’t pay attention to those things, you’re selling yourself short in a lot of ways. But I think probably the biggest thing that’s been, I think a real change from the past is just the, some teams are completely model driven where they have models that quantify every single aspect of a player and then however they value those different things, whether it’s tools or makeup or whatever it is that they value, and then that’s baked into an equation and then all those numbers are kind of put in and then the model spits out an order of players, and some teams rely solely on that and draft off of their, what is called the model. And so I think that’s fascinating in a lot of ways. I’m fortunate that, again, I work for an organization that factors in all of it and we look at it from all angles and ultimately make a decision.
But yeah, I mean analytics is a huge part. What I see too, just with my, I guess you’d call it my hobby with the knights, it’s amazing the young players and how much they, especially the pitchers with how much they’re wrapped up with their pitch characteristics and spin rates and vertical break, horizontal break release, height, extension approach angle, all these numbers and things that are helping players, I guess develop. But a lot of these young kids, they’re just so wrapped up in it. I kind of laugh with them sometimes and having two sons that are pitchers and they’ll say, yeah, I had good vertical break. Yeah, but you were backing up third base a lot.
I don’t care what your spin rate is, let’s get ’em out. We still have to collect outs. That’s still what we’re trying to do. But I just think it’s for the younger generation, I think these kids are very much in tune to it and rely on it. And there’s a lot of, I think, dependence on it. But I do think it serves a great purpose. And again, I’m a believer of just balancing all of that, whether you’re in player development or scouting, use it as one part of your equation and just keep going. But yeah, it’s definitely changed. It’s definitely a different game than it was 10 years ago.
Yeah, I think this is from an amateur’s view of it, but I remember really looking at last year’s draft and noticing that there was a lot less high school players drafted. And I think one of the major reasons is it’s hard for these equation driven teams to get all the data that they need on those players. It’s like the guys that are going more, instead of taking that projectable guy in the seventh round, we’d rather take a college reliever from the SEC or the ACC because we’ve got all of his metrics for three years and we can put together that case. Do you kind of see that industrywide, not necessarily with the Dodgers, but industrywide kind of a trend to taking players that there is more data on and more track record?
Yeah, I think it’s a good point. And I think some clubs, if they can’t quantify it, they don’t necessarily don’t want to deal with it. So in a case like that with high school players, like you said, sometimes the information, the other thing you have to bake into the equation, is the information accurate? Does it what it says, does it really apply? Because I think the high school player, one of the challenges in evaluating those players is the quality of competition. It’s hard for sometimes you don’t know if a guy can hit velocity, you never really faced velocity. So anyway, I just think it’s definitely, it’s something that probably, yeah, the college player you have a lot more information on. You have a lot more quantifiable data typically, usually three years of college play and you start to develop somewhat of a track record, which helps predict the future performance. But I think it’s definitely more difficult on the high school player, of course, just with limited data.
So perfect segue yet again by you, Jack, but so what are some actionable things that the high school player can do to stand out, whether that’s a pitcher or a position player? What are some things in your eyes that you tell, obviously running one of the best programs as your hobby, so we will get into a little bit more here in a second, but what are some things you tell those kids about standing out on the field?
Yeah, I mean I think for me, I’m a little old school in some of those intangibles that you try to instill in your players and things that me personally are kind of drawn to. I was fortunate to coach in college for four years, and so I kind of had the coach’s view really before I started scouting and now having kind the evaluation eye sitting in the stands and watching guys play. I just think some of the things, and it’s nothing earth shattering, but I think just the importance of your body language and your presence on the field, how you carry yourself. I think it says a lot about your character, and again, it goes back to the who, right? You want to, yeah, that guy’s got really good skillset, really good tools, but who is he? And if you watch him fail on the field, baseball’s a game of failure.
You’re going to fail more than you succeed. So how do they handle themselves in those moments? What presence do they give off in those moments? I think it’s helpful to figure out who a kid is. We preach this to our young players, even the youth kids, about attitude, effort and energy. Those are things that you can control a hundred percent of the time. And so if I go watch a kid play and he hits a four hopper to the shortstop and he just runs down the line, 75% effort and kind of peels off at first base, that’s not something I’m attracted to. Rather see players play hard and go through the bag all the way and make aggressive turns at first base and get on and off the field with a purpose. The college game and the high school game’s a lot different than professional baseball.
Major league season is a six month grind. They’re playing 162 games and then the postseason, those guys, it’s very tough on their bodies. So sometimes we always say, you really can’t teach a young player to play the game by watching the major league game because it’s just a different volume of play. So young players, I always say stand out with those things. Actually this weekend I was talking to a couple of young kids about just get on and off the field with a purpose watching these kids walk out there or even just slow jog to their position. I’m a little old school in that it drives me crazy. It really does. I think, and again, talked about this a little bit, makeup matters who you are as a person, your track record as a person, it matters whether you’re going to try to play in college or whether you’re going to pursue, be a candidate for professional baseball, who you are your makeup, what your track record is, it does matter.
It factors in to the ultimate decisions. And so just again, it’s not, like I said, nothing earth shattering, but just the hustle and the grinders and the guys that really compete. I mean, it’s easy to see those guys. They stand out, competitive guys on the field, they stick out like a sore thumb. So those are some things I’m drawn to. Those are some things that I think are very attractive for a young player. And you can stand out because you’re going to go for four, right? You’re going to go for eight, you’re going to go for 12, you’re going to go out there and give up five runs. It’s just part of it. It’s certainly not a deal breaker if you struggle, but sometimes if you don’t run a ground ball out, that could be a deal breaker for you. Sometimes there’s very small margin of separation between players. And again, like we talked about, whether you’re a college coach or a scout or making decisions or a high school coach trying to make decisions on a roster, little things, separate players. So again, I preach to our nights guys to play the game the right way. Don’t ever let somebody cross you off a list for something you can control. And I think because the game’s hard enough, it’s a tough game. And so those are just a few little tidbits.
We were talking earlier about obviously the College World Series and your players that were on the field, I guess that was two nights ago now, but one that I specifically asked you about, correct me if I got the name right, Gavin Guidry, I believe is correct. And I saw his eyes on that stage as a freshman that said, I’m going to get you out. I’m going to compete. Talk to us a little bit about him and maybe a couple of other guys that are on that team because fresh off of it that played for you when they were young and what their makeup was like.
Yeah, I mean obviously we were pulling for the Tigers because we had nine Knights alum alums on that roster, so we were obviously pulling for those kids. And yeah, Gavin Guidry is the ultimate competitor, and he’s always been that way as long as I’ve been around him, which I guess is probably four years. He thrives in those moments. He wants the ball. And of course, he’s a two-way player this year. He primarily helped LSU on the mound, but he was big for them down the stretch in those high leverage spots. And that is who he is, man. There’s no fear in that kid. I think I mentioned to you earlier, one of the coolest things I saw the other night, even though, and it was a unique opportunity to be that far ahead in a national championship game where the game is in hand, you just got to finish it, but to see him kind of look towards the dugout, he kind of smirked.
It looked almost like he was looking around a little bit like I’m about to close this thing down and national champions, but to see him do that, that’s what that kid thrives on, man. And I texted with him a few times throughout the spring and just in moments where he’d come in and close out a game, and he’s a very fiery guy, and I just said, proud of you, man, or something like that. And he just said, man, that was fun. He just enjoys those moments. So I think, again, some kids can’t wait to be in that situation and they want the pressure and they want the high leverage moments and they are prepared to handle ’em. And Gavin’s another one of our former alums that had a series and was just so fun to watch for him and his family, he had been through so much, a lot of adversity in his career at LSU was Cade Veloso kind of became an LSU legend in this World series and had some really big hits for them.
And if you kind of know his backstory, and again, you talk about the who, what a fantastic young man, great family, he had a really unfortunate injury in the first game of, I believe it was what last year, first game of the season, pre-game huddle, about to take the field. They kind of did their little hype thing and he jumped up and he ended up tearing his ACL. And so he was out for the year, had to have surgery, but to see him come back and see him fight through that for a fifth year at LSU, and to have the success he did in the moments he did this year, he had a fantastic season. It’s just rewarding to see kind of it all come together for him. But yeah, we’re proud of all those kids. I mean, it’s what an accomplishment to be part of a national champion.
And yeah, it’s one of the greatest things about what we do with the Knights is just seeing the boys successful, seeing them reach their goals, and really more so than anything, it’s the relationships. That’s what really is, this is all about. And I know with our organization it’s a longer term view and we really want to be part of these kids’ lives as they progress and get off into college baseball, into pro baseball, and just support ’em, be there for ’em to help ’em if they need it and have that relationship with them for a long time.
Absolutely. Well, got one more question for you, and this might take us a couple minutes to get through, but tell me about how Knight Nation started, how you got involved and where you guys are today as a program. Obviously most people that follow travel ball are very, know the name, but if you could just give us a little bit about the program again, how it started, how you got involved, maybe a couple of people that are really, really important to what you guys do.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Our program started in 2007. I had just finished my playing career and I think I was 31 years old at the time and I still had some school left to finish up at Tulane. I wanted to finish my degree. And so I came home, enrolled back in school. That was my main focus. Let me finish up my degree and I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to play, stay in baseball, and just had local family in my hometown just asked me if I was willing to coach a team and put together a team. And this is back in 2007, which travel ball was not even close to what it is today. There were way less teams and it just wasn’t nearly as big as with your experience in it. And we just started with one team and coached that team that summer just for fun.
Had an absolute blast, and then just one team turned into two. And we were a small program for a long time and we just started to, I guess build it a little bit at a time and started having some success and it just kind of happened. It was never a focus, it was never let’s build a big program. It was just more, I don’t really know. And I look back, I don’t really know how it happened. It just kind of did. We, from day one until this day, I can say with confidence, we’ve always tried to put the players first, and that was our approach from day one. And I’ve always looked back on it and thought if you prioritize people and you prioritize players and their wellbeing and you do what’s best for them, everything should take care of itself. And in our case, that kind of approach has allowed us to have a pretty wide reach in this travel ball industry. And there’s a lot of really successful programs out there. We’re obviously super excited to be part of Diamond Allegiance and what you guys have created and the programs you’ve brought in. And being able to learn from some of these other big programs and collaborate on ideas like the Keynes and Team Elite and some of the others that we have a tremendous respect for.
Our program today is in a really good place. We have a bunch of fantastic people involved and obviously, I mean, I can’t run this thing by myself, not even close. And especially with my real job with the Dodgers, I have to have some really good people in place to help us. And so yeah, we’ve got lot of, I guess it’s a 13 man management team that helps run our program. Got to give a quick shout out to Jimmy McCarthy, who is the day-to-Day, kind of my right hand man. And he grinds it out every single day and he’s fantastic. And Chris Poole’s been with us since 2007 when it started. So he’s been part of this organization for 17 years since it began. And there’s numerous others that have helped, obviously to build what we built through the years. So just very fortunate to be able to have impact on young people’s lives and help them through their journeys and seeing some of them go on and win a national title like some of our boys did the other night was just fantastic. It was a reminder of why we do it.