Sports

<< Previous   of   Next >>   ADVERTISEMENT   The M's week ahead: May 18-24 Today Padres at M’s Reporters can wait; Felix does his talking on the mound Monday Off day Tuesday M’s at Tigers Is there enough room in this ballpark for all the failed expectations? Wednesday M’s at Tigers Both Ichiro, Ordonez have ground to gain if they hope to compete in batting race Thursday M’s at Tigers Danger around every corner _ story of the Mariners’ season or the new Indiana Jones movie? Friday M’s at Yankees Last trip to Yankee Stadium, where the M’s are 73-95 since 1977 Saturday M’s at Yankees Hank Steinbrenner certainly isn’t the silent son   ADDITIONAL ITEMS • Seattle Mariners (External Link) • Schedule (External Link) • Stats (External Link)   CONTACT THE HERALD Report scores and results to 425-339-3470 or 1-866-6-SCORES (Call after 4:30 p.m.) E-mail information including items for Tuesday's Communities Sports Roundup and Thursday's Outdoor Calendar, to sports@heraldnet.com Kevin Brown, Sports Editor kbrown@heraldnet.com   Published: Sunday, May 18, 2008 Scouts keep on watching despite rain, cold, snow By Kirby Arnold Herald Writer Several major league scouts were sitting through another brutally cold, damp, blustery high school baseball game a few weeks ago when one of them apologized for his attire. "I know you guys have only seen me in this ski cap and ski jacket every day this spring, but I do have other clothes in my closet," he said. Such was the life of a scout in the Northwest this spring. They have the absolute pleasure of watching baseball for a living as teams prepare for the amateur draft June 5-6. But, for those who've scouted high school and college players since mid-February, the bad weather in this region has been worse than many of them can remember. There haven't been any more rainouts than usual, but the cold temperatures have lasted longer than ever, and some games were played with snow having been piled into foul territory. If the scouts are frozen to their radar guns and stopwatches, how comfortable could the players feel? Weather like that can make the task of evaluating talent and projecting the future of a kid more difficult than it already is. Scouts must look past how a kid performs on a cold-weather day and focus more on such elements as body build, mental makeup, smoothness of delivery, bat speed and how all of those might play in a few years at the professional level. If a pitcher is throwing only 85 mph on a 40-degree day but he has a solid, consistent delivery, scouts realize he probably will have better velocity when the weather warms. It also helps to have a baseline on a player before the spring season begins. Many scouts will refer back to the reports they wrote when they watched players during the summer league season. Less than three weeks remain before this year's draft and, even though scouts have been watching games almost daily since mid-February, this is perhaps the most important time of their year. There aren't as many games to watch -- the college season is winding down and high school teams are deep into their postseasons -- but they're also spending a considerable amount of their time in the homes of prospective draft picks. That will help them gauge perhaps the most important aspect of the process -- signability. As teams assemble their lists and project where they might take a player, they need to know if a player truly is interested. The Mariners, who have the 20th, 62nd and 94th overall picks in the first three rounds, can't wait until the last minute to learn that a player will choose college instead. It has happened. That's why the draft rooms are filled with scouts on their cell phones, double and triple checking their status with players within minutes of making a selection. A scout may call a player and say, "We're in the middle of the third round, and how comfortable are you if we take you there?" If the player says yes, the team takes him. If he says no -- or even maybe -- the team moves on. There can't be any guesswork; a team must know if it will be able to sign a player before the selection is made. Then there's the matter of projecting what other teams will do. That's also part of the pre-draft process. The Mariners' scouting coordinators and cross-checkers will gather in Seattle for meetings in the days before the draft. By then, they'll know who is willing to sign and who isn't, and they'll put together a list of names on their draft board. Then they hope it falls together just as they planned it on draft day. It rarely does. A team may think it knows exactly who it will get, only to have another team with an earlier pick select that player. Or, a team may find that a player it projected to go in an earlier round suddenly is available. That's why there's always Plan B and Plan C. Until then, there's still plenty of roadwork for the scouts to do. For those canvassing the Northwest, the weather has warmed in the past few days, and that helps. To a degree. One poor scout, who'd spent the spring freezing in his ski gloves, jacket and cap here in the Northwest, flew out of Seattle on the nicest day of the year to check on a player in California. The temperature there was supposed to reach 100. Kirby Arnold covers major league baseball for The Herald.

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