On Saturday I had the opportunity to head over to one of the local high schools and watch about half of a baseball game. It was just like any other baseball game except I was going to watch a specific player on the visiting team. Carson Kelly, a senior at Westview high school in the Portland, OR area, has played for Team USA’s 16 and under team as well as the 18 and under team the past few years and is rated as one of the top 50 prospects in this years draft. Now I didn’t get to see him pitch, which is what a lot of the scouts believe will be the main reason he will be an early round pick, but I did get to see him play a little defense and take a few at bats. There is no doubt that Kelly is a good ball player. His swing is quick with a lot of power behind it and his arm strength is evident with every through he made across the diamond.
Like any other prospect Kelly may end up being an even greater player as he continues to learn and grow, but he could just as easily be among the many once great prospects who never lived up to what others thought they could achieve. This got me thinking about just how hard it is to predict how good a player will be in the future.
Last season with the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes I watched as Mike Murray, an undrafted player out of Wake Forest, lead the Northwest league for most of the season in batting average, and finish the season third in the league with an average of .326. One of the two people who beat Murray in average was his teammate Joe Panik who was the San Francisco Giants first round pick in 2011. Now I’m not saying that Murray and Panik are equal on the potential prospects list, Panik is a solid defensive shortstop with speed to go with his hitting ability, but what I am saying is that Murray was passed on by each major league team in the 2010 draft because they didn’t see something that they were looking for, and yet last season he showed that prospect or not a player can still be skilled and talented even if a scout doesn’t see it.
Scouts may have the hardest and most important job in all of baseball for a major league team. It is there job to look at young men, who aren’t fully grown, are still learning the basics of the game of baseball, and try and predict who they will become three, five and even ten years down the road. A poor scouting department for a franchise can spell doom for the team for many years, where as a strong scouting department, like the Tampa Bay Rays, can create a team that can compete at the highest level.
So the next time you go out and watch a high school game, a college game or even a minor league baseball game, realize that each player on the field is there because someone saw something in them that caught their attention and warranted them an opportunity. Not every player will make the major leagues but that shouldn’t stop fans from supporting each and every player as the strive to reach a dream.