Become a Baseball Scout

A baseball scout is a trained talent evaluator who travels exclusively to watch baseball players. Baseball scouts determine whether the players' skills and talents represent what is needed by the organization the scout is representing. A baseball scout should be aggressive, organized, passionate about baseball and willing to spend long hours on the road. If you want to become a baseball scout, follow these steps.

Steps

Learning About the Job

1. Watch baseball with a scouts eye. First, refresh your knowledge on the game of baseball if necessary. You need to have a strong understanding of the strategies and mechanics of the game. It is valuable for an associate scout to know as much as possible about playing the game of baseball so he can relate to prospects.
   • Baseball is in some ways a very technical sport, which means that baseball scouts need to have a keen eye and meticulous attention to detail. When you watch a game, practice the kind of behavior scouts do by paying attention to things like batting averages, running speeds, and pitching techniques.
   • If you find it helpful, read up, both with books and online, on the strategies and mechanics of baseball, as well as the statistics and attributes that go into determining what separates a good player from a great player.
2. Play baseball. Although there are plenty of scouts who have little experience actually playing the game, it can certainly help. Playing baseball gives you the kind of first hand experience with how the game is played and what makes a good player that you can't get from just watching. Any experience with the game from the player's perspective is going to give you a leg up when it comes to analyzing them from the other side.
   • You don't need years of semi-professional experience or a college baseball career. Look for a recreational baseball group in your city, or put one together yourself.
3. Take a course on scouting. There exist courses that anyone can take that teach the foundations of how to be a scout. They are training programs designed specifically for a aspiring scouts. Search online to find scout courses near you.
   • MLB has its own official scout school, but be aware that they only hold programs in a few states, and positions are limited.
4. Understand what it's like to be a scout. Scouting baseball isn't a particularly glamorous job. It involves constant traveling, long periods away from home, waking up early, and an exhausting amount of work. Scouts have a lot of information in their heads when they're out on the job, everything from the names of coaches and players in their area to batting averages and pitching speeds. As a scout, you'll see endless hotel rooms, high school and college games, plane flights and rental cars. Your tools are nothing more than a radar gun, a notepad, and a wealth of knowledge about the minute details of what makes a baseball player great.
5. Know the differences between scouting different leagues. The most significant difference between scouting high school players and scouting college players is that with high school players, a scout needs to be able to project their skills farther into the future. College players will have already enhanced their speed, strength, and skill, thanks to both more experience and better, more specialized coaches. That being said, high school scouting is the more important of the two, because the players you'll be watching in college will be the ones you identified as worth watching in high school.

Becoming an Associate Scout

1. Find an internship with a team. Many high up executives in the MLB were once scouts, and many started out as unpaid interns before that. Unpaid internships usually require little to no experience, which makes them an ideal first step into an organization like the MLB.
   • You can search for internships online, or by simply going into the offices of nearby teams and asking if they're looking to fill any positions.
2. Learn about the job from a baseball scout. Find a baseball scout at local baseball games. They usually hold a radar gun, which is used to measure how fast a baseball is thrown, and carry items like clipboards or binders with the logo of their professional baseball team employer on them. Approach them and discuss your aspirations.
   • Get into the habit of going to local games in leagues that scouts will be looking at, like amateur leagues, semi-professional leagues, and college baseball.
   • Avoid coming on to strong. When you try to make a connection with a baseball scout, be aware that everyone is different, and some people are not going to open to helping out an aspiring scout. You'll need to be outgoing and friendly, and know when to cut your loses.
3. Look for associate scout openings. As associate scout is an unpaid position that reports to a baseball scout. The associate scout is responsible for providing the scout with information on a regular basis regarding baseball players in a designated geographic area. Associate scouts typically work in the areas in which they live.
   • MLB its own career opportunities search engine on their official website. Check this regularly to see if any associate scout positions near you pop up.
   • Another option is to get to know scouts in your area, either by going to games and striking up conversations with them, or by making connections and networking from your internship with an organization. If you make your desire to become an associate scout clear, and you're a hard worker, you'll be noticed eventually.

Advancing Your Career

1. Work on your player evaluation skills. As an associate scout, you will need to recognize players who have the skills required for professional baseball. Pay attention to advice from your supervising scout and read books on player evaluation. Your player evaluation skills are going to improve mostly through pure practice. By seeing batter after batter, pitcher after pitcher, and catcher after catcher, you'll slowly get better at noticing minute differences between their techniques, skills, and results.
   • A scout has to know not just how to evaluate a player's current skills, but more importantly, how to see potential in player and project where their skills will end up. To do so, scouts judge position players in five basic areas, known as the five tools. A player who is great in all five tools is considered a five-tool player, and is a scout's dream. Those tools are:
     • Hitting average, which refers to how consistently a player can hit the ball and hit it accurately.
     • Hitting power, which refers to how high and far a player can hit the ball.
     • Fielding, which refers to a player's effectiveness on the field, his agility, footwork, and quick reaction time.
     • Arm strength, which refers to a player's strength when throwing a ball.
     • Speed, which refers to a player's running speed.
   • When scouting pitchers, scouts always sit behind the home plate, so they can get a good view of the plate from the batter and pitcher's perspective. They look for velocity first and command of the ball second, because usually, command can be improved through training much further than velocity can.
2. Improve your reporting skills. Associate scouts need to report how players are progressing and describe the skills of new prospects in a timely fashion. You'll need to know the rating system for players inside and out. Scouts give two numbers for each category in their reports, one for their current rating, and one for their prospective future rating. Some of the categories scouts report on include hitting power, pitching velocity, fielding ability, and running speed.
   • Scouts use a 20-80 scale to rate players on the five tools. Fifty and above is major league status. Scouts generally look for players who are above major league status in at least two of the five tools.
   • For pitchers, scouts rate the player's velocity with each of their pitches, with their fastball being the most important. That's because fastball skill is much more innate, whereas one can improve one's skill with a curveball or changeup. In addition, scout's measure a player's command of the ball, and their control. Command is their ability to put the ball where the catcher wants it. Control is their ability to consistently hit the strike zone.
3. Promote to an area scout. Show your supervising scout and the organization he works for that you've got what it takes to be a professional scout. Being good at making decisions, talking to people, digging up information, and being organized and aggressive could open up a paid position as an area scout.
   • Understand that it could take a number of years to be promoted to an area scout because the positions open sporadically. In this position, you are responsible for reviewing all amateur baseball players in a geographical region, such as Oklahoma and Kansas or Northern Florida and Georgia.
4. Progress in your career as a baseball scout. Once you officially become a scout, there is room for advancement. If you continue to refine your ability to pick bright, young baseball stars, your next promotion could be to area supervisor and eventually national cross-checker. Keys to success include your ability as a scout, your passion for the job, how well you make connections within the industry, and your ambition for advancement.

Tips

• Get to know baseball coaches in your designated area. At any level of scouting, getting to know the coach is important. Coaches provide necessary scouting information about players' skills, attitudes and conditioning.
• Becoming a scout is challenging. Most baseball scouts have connections. Many have served as managers or players in professional leagues before they became scouts. If you don't have experience with a professional baseball league, it may be harder to become a baseball scout, but not impossible.

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