COVID-19 alters the playing field for MLB scouts
Eric Kubota can still go on his daily run outside, but he’s sprinting right down the middle of of the streets to avoid people instead of weaving in and out of crowds. He’s still compiling information on potential A’s draft prospects, but now his job has him glued to a computer screen rather than popping in and out of amateur and college ballparks around the country.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced all of us to alter our work routines, and MLB scouts are no exception. The roving crews are now off the road, disarmed of their speed guns and are forced to navigate a job reliant on face-to-face and behind-the-plate insights from the safe confines of their home. And with an MLB Draft date looming on an undetermined
July 2020 date, all 30 teams’ scouting departments are scrambling to adjust their process — with the potential for an extremely truncated draft to be decided on in 2021’s CBA negotiations looming in the back of their brains, too.
Kubota has been with the Oakland A’s for 33 seasons, working his way from the public relations department to a celebrated 16 years as the team’s director of scouting. From 2012’s implementation of the compensatory pick to the bonus pool, Kubota has overseen his fair share of draft curveballs and shakeups.
He took the time to answer a few questions about how the A’s — armed with the 26th overall pick — are preparing for the date-less draft, and beyond.
Q: What would a typical day look like for you and the team’s scouts in a non-pandemic world, and what does it look like now?
A: We’d be out at games, so that’s all taken away. A week before we got pulled off the road, I’d been at a tournament watching three college games a day. An area scout in a given day could be bouncing around and just kind of popping in their head into, three, four or five games in a day.
It’s not quite the same as being at a game, but we’re using whatever video we have. We have video from past seasons, we have video from the portion of the college season that happened this year. It’s a little harder for the high school guys. I’ve found there’s a benefit to this because I can scout college players off multiple games rather than the one game I would normally see.
Q: Are there any other benefits that you’re finding through this new process?
A: We have more time to communicate with each other. Any other year we would have our nose to the pavement, focused on what we each have to do individually. Now, we have a lot more time to just touch base and widen our perspective.
I will have conversations with college coaches during a normal spring, our scouts definitely will. But with more time, we are getting more of the coaches perspective.
Q: What are the some of the newer technologies that have been instrumental in this process?
A: I think we’re more prepared than we were 10 or 20 years ago, because we just have so much more information at our fingertips. With Rapsodo and TrackMan, all of that information that we’re getting that our analysts are evaluating helps us fill in a lot of blanks. And now that we have less information from scouts being at the games, that data is magnified.
Video services that have been collecting in-depth footage, especially on college guys, that’s really expanded in the last few years. The footage from televised events over past seasons. There’s video that comes from the colleges themselves. There’s video that MLB has taken, they have four or five camera people whose job it is to video prospects for the draft. All our area scouts take video, too.
Q: What kind of information are you, and every other team, missing out on from not having scouts at amateur and college games?
A: There’s certain nuances of the game that you can’t pick up on video. Every scout experiences the game differently, so there’s just a value to having a scout at a ballpark that I can’t oversell. Scouts pick up on the intangibles and tangible analysis in-game.
When you watch a game on TV, you’re limited to the view that you’re given. The cameras are pointed in one frame, usually from centerfield. You can only see the pitcher and catcher right before the play starts. Scouts can see what everybody else is doing on the field prior to the ball being put into play. A lot of that goes into making our evaluations, especially on defenders. It’s important to have scouts move around the ballpark to get different perspectives on pitchers and hitters.
Q: After spring training was canceled, teams were restricted for a few weeks from contact with prospects and agents. With that now lifted, how are you communicating with prospects and coaches?
A: It’s hard to have a lot of specific discussions right now because nobody knows exactly what the draft is going to look like. Our scouts are maintaining contact with players, and we are doing Zoom calls with coaches. Once we get definitive information on what the draft is going to look like, we will have those conversations again.
Now, we have more time to talk with coaches. But that’s all part the area scouts’ process, who really are the foundation of everything we do. Those relationships that they have with college coaches and high school coaches are invaluable to them.
Q: MLB is aiming to shorten the draft from 40 rounds to five. There’s been some resistance on a shortened draft from the MLB Player’s Union. Nothing is set in stone right now, but what do you think are the positives and the negatives of a shortened draft?
A: Right now, until we get a definitive answer, we’re preparing like it’s a normal draft. We’re going into it trying to stay as motivated as possible to do it as we normally would until we get instructions as to what the draft is going to look like. Then we’ll probably alter our process to a certain degree.
We’ll adapt to whatever we need to. I’ve been doing this a super long time, and the draft has gone through a lot of changes. We’ll adapt to whatever new change comes our way.