Mets Are Adding Scouts, But They Need To Do It Right

The New York Mets are beefing up their scouting staff with an eye on doing more live evaluations, and it seems fairly obvious that this is badly needed. The Mets had a lot of success with their rookie additions, but it’s clear that they did a horrible evaluation of veteran add-ons like Jorge Polanco and Marcus Semien, with both infielders failing badly for different reasons. 

But it’s also fair to look at this as a possible “me too” move until we see positive results for real, and Kyle Glaser of Baseball America offered a look at some of the scouting principles used by the Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers that could easily be applied to the Mets’ approach. 

There’s no secret formula

The Rays and Brewers both employ over 20 full-time scouts, per Glaser, but James Armstrong, the Brewers’ vice president of domestic and international scouting, noted that this can’t be approached as if it was a math problem waiting to be solved. The “formula” is about building a “ground game,” building relationships and knowing when to jump on an opportunity, and that approach isn’t exactly new. 

Hire and keep senior evaluators

Letting go of senior evaluators has been a trend in MLB since the rise of analytics departments, but the pendulum there is starting to swing back in the other direction. Rays GM Kevin Ibach mentioned the “lived approach” as a key contribution that’s impossible to replicate, but many teams don’t want to deal with the conflict that often comes with combining the two approaches. 

Commit to pro scouting

This one is huge for the Mets. Analytics departments love to look at prospects and college players, but Mets GM David Stearns talked during and after the season about how poorly the Mets evaluated the injury potential of veterans like Polanco and outfielder Luis Robert Jr. That hole in their approach came back to bit them in a big way this year. 

Have multiple scouts in key places

The Brewers have eliminated many of the distinctions between scouts and the territories they cover, and they now employ scouts who are either US domestic or international. 

Ibach took this one step further when he talked about the trade for star infielder Junior Caminero. The Rays have three scouts who live in the Dominican Republic and focus on the DSL, so they were able to get multiple looks from different scouts that gave them a higher level of certainty when they pulled the trigger on the deal.