Talking With: Logan White, Part I

BK: How much player scouting will you still be doing?

LW: Our plan is for me to not completely go out of the amateur side of the scouting, though we've hired Tim Hallgren (he had been the Dodgers national crosschecker,  and former scouting director for the Rangers) to replace me, I'll still be heavily involved.  It may be a little different job with a little different dynamics for him than what I had, but I'll probably see thirty to fifty of the top players in the country.  That's still a pretty good amount.  I've always been good at trying to trust the staff and listen to the guys, and we've got a real good staff.  I'm confident in their abilities.  I'll play a support role for Tim and his staff, as well. 

BK: Given your background, how important was it for you to stay involved in that process?

LW: I think it's important, because it's one of my strengths.  I don't mean to be arrogant or brag, because we still have a lot of work to do, but the process has been working fairly well.  We didn't necessarily want to change the whole dynamics of it, so I think it was important for me to stay involved.  Both from a personal level, and also with respect to the Dodgers. 

BK: When you look at basketball or football, the number of players a team drafts is so much smaller.  It's easier to evaluate the success and failure of a draft group.  Baseball, you literally have an organization full of players most of whom will never get to the major leagues.  In scouting, in terms of organizational development, what's a good "batting average?"  How do you evaluate your work in building the organization?  Is it the number of big leaguers?  Is it the quality of them?

LW: To me, I've said all along, I think if you go back into a club's history, you can directly correlate a team's draft success to how well the big league club does.  I've done a lot of studies on that, particularly with the Dodgers when I came here.  To me, you have to have high ceiling impact players coming out of a draft, but you also have to have depth.  You have to have the two.  When I did the research on it, the clubs that are successful year in and year out have success in both.  They have high ceiling players, and they also have depth.  To give you an example of the research I did, if you go back in Dodgers history, in the sixties when the draft was started they had thirty or thirty-one players that were five plus year major league regulars.  They had to have five years of major league service time, in terms of how I broke the study down.  So there were thirty or thirty one in the sixties, thirty, thirty one in the seventies, the eighties was roughly the same, but in the nineties, we tapered off quite a bit. 

Hopefully, we're trying to shoot now for better than that.  We'd like to see in a decade that we're getting forty to forty-five guys with five plus service years.  There's a lot of studies that I do pertaining to that.  You have to have them both.  You have to have a group of players that are also players you can trade, use in trades.  And sometimes the players that we think are "B Group" guys might end up our "A Group" guys.  So you never know how that goes in the draft.  Your point about it being different than basketball or football is good.  In our sport, there are so many different positions, so many different body types that play to so many types of strengths in a game.  You're talking about a skill set where you have to hit the baseball.  You can sign high school or college players, and there's a large number of players to go through.  You've really got to be good at what I call "comparative scouting."  You've got to be able to have a good staff that can tell you the player in California is better than the guy in Texas, but the guy in Ohio is the best of the group. 

BK: So when you see a guy, how do you project what he'll be in four or five years?  You'll read about high school pitchers that are drafted throwing high eighties, low nineties, but are projected to throw mid or upper nineties as they mature or mechanics are improved, for example. 

LW: One of the things that you have to look at, it starts with their body.  Their anatomical structure, and how big and physical you think they'll be.  That's part of it when you're projecting.  The other part of it is, what type of mechanics do they have?  What type of delivery?  What type of arm action?  The more physiologically sound they are, the better.  As anyone who has been an engineer or anything like that knows, if an axle has bend in it on your car, it's not going to drive very well.  So the better they are, the smoother the mechanics of a delivery, generally those guys stay healthier and those are the guys who get faster and better.  What we try to do, especially in our high draft picks, our early round pitchers, they're usually going to be guys that are pretty physical already, that are pretty hard throwers already, and they usually will have a secondary pitch and good mechanics.  Then hopefully the makeup and all that other stuff falls into place as well.  I'm not one to take a kid that's throwing 86, 87,88, in the first round and project him to throw 94, 95.  To give an example, Chad Billingsley, when we drafted him, was touching 94 in high school.  Broxton was touching 94 in high school.  They were already pretty hard throwers.

BK: I imagine they struck out a few hitters, too.

LW: That's the funny thing.  Even though it's high school level, there's probably going to be, I'm guessing, three to five hundred kids across the country at least throwing ninety miles an hour.  90-92 in high school, and you have to figure out what separates them, and that's certainly a factor.  If he's having success at the high school level and he's not striking out one an inning, or actually a lot more than one an inning in high school, those are all things you look at. 

BK: Just going back to when I played, if you're throwing 92, 93 mph in high school, you ought to be missing a lot of bats. 

LW: Exactly.  And you'll be surprised.  There will be kids who throw that hard and then they, for whatever reason, they strike out maybe one an inning.  They're having mixed success.  Generally what that tells you is their secondary pitch isn't that good, or their fastball's straight, things like that.  The two kind of go hand in hand.  What the statistics will tell you is a lot of what's happening with them physically on the mound with their stuff and everything else. 

BK: And with hitters, how do you project forward?  Guys will progress and progress, then hit the wall as the breaking balls at higher levels (AA, AAA) become sharper, breaking balls are better, etc.  What do you look for in a hitter? 

LW: The first thing we look for in a hitter is, we look at their athleticism, their size, their strength, their potential for strength.  We look at what kind of bat speed they have.  If they have a quick bat, because you have to have bat speed right off the bat. Then we look at their mechanics.  Do they have a good load?  Do they stay inside the baseball?   Or are they a guy who has a sweeping swing?  Are they a hooker (meaning a pull guy who doesn't stay inside the ball)?  Those things.  There are little things that we look for mechanically.  Little checkmarks.  It's very similar to pitching in regard to the guys, are they doing it as economically as possible?  That's what the best hitters do.  For example, Barry Bonds had as short and as quick a swing that generated as much bat speed and power as anybody. 

The other thing we're looking for is does the athlete produce?  If a kid's hitting .300 in high school, it's hard for me to think this kid's going to become a real good hitter in the big leagues, because most of your real good high school hitters are going to hit .500, or high .400s.  College hitters are going to have success, too.  I think it's very rare to find a hitter that didn't have success at an early age, that couldn't always hit, that can be made into a hitter at the major league level.

BK: So you know, I think you guys might have missed me, because I hit over .500 my senior year.

LW: (laughing) On the flip side, a lot of kids are going to hit .500 that we're not going to like.  You probably were a collapser or a lifter, or had bat hitting mechanics.

BK: I think I was a tweener.  I didn't have the major league build.  (Editor's note: It's very possible that BK was the most dominating hitter in Missouri high school history.  Picture a right handed Tony Gwynn, slightly thinner.  Soft glove in center, too.  BK)  But moving along... are their qualities in a player that excite fans or scouts that you think are overrated?

LW: Yes.  I think, and this is something I teach our young scouts, there are three things that get you beat in scouting, and that's raw power, raw speed, and raw velocity.  Raw power, how far they hit the ball, raw velocity, how hard they throw it, raw speed, how fast they run.  Well, each of those things have so many variables that have to go with it before it's going to translate into being able to be a major league player.  And I think in the scouting world, sometimes we look at a guy who throws 95 and say, "Wow!"  But we don't necessarily look at the mechanics enough, or his arm action or secondary pitches.  We might see a guy hit the ball 500 feet with an aluminum bat, but he might have a big hole in his swing and his mechanics aren't quite there.  Those are things that can be overrated.  Your good scouts, your astute scouts, are good at picking that up and not getting fooled, but those are qualities you can get fooled by. 

BK: On the flip side, are there qualities that are underrated?

LW: There's no absolutes, and nobody has every answer to a game.  I think that's for sure.  Nobody has everything figured out, but I will say this.  There are better odds and better statistics for something to work out than something else.  And I'm not sure we look at that enough.  What I mean by that is, obviously I'm looking for the ideal pitcher.  I'm looking for a Clemens.  A Randy Johnson.  Big, hard throwing guys.  But the exceptions are a Pedro Martinez or a Greg Maddux.  You don't want to miss them.  I think people sometimes get locked in, and get tunnel vision and think there's only one way to do something, instead of looking at all the parts.  It's just like when we had people looking at solely statistical data and saying that's the only way, or had people who say, "Who cares about stats?"  Well, in my opinion, they're both very important to the game.  Looking at statistics tells you a lot, but the physical also tells you a lot.  Those are certainly important things that you have to have. 

Andrew Kamenetzky:  Following up on that, is it possible to scout intangibles?  Is there even an attempt?

LW: I think there always should be an attempt.  In any decision you have to make, whether it's drafting and signing a player or a deal in the business world, you want to know all the every variable possible that you can.  Once you know all the variables, you can make better decisions.   So we constantly try to figure out all the variables about what will make a guy play or not play.  And there are so many factors, like we talked about earlier.  There's physical size, strength, the tools that we talked about.  But there's also background.  What kind of background does a person come from that will allow them mentally to be able to handle the major league level?  Is he a bright guy or not?  Is he a good student?  There are so many variables that we go through.  I call them markers, and I put a lot of stock in those.  We certainly don't have them all figured out.  Every situation's different, where you try to find and figure all those variables out, and try to find the intangibles.  Because what makes certain guys become greater than their tools?   Well, there had to be some kind of intangible that was in their makeup.  Something like that.  So we try.

BK: How personally attached and invested do you become to players you scout and sign?  How hard is it to see when they fail, and conversely, how excited do you get when they succeed?

LW:  When I first started scouting, the old scouts said "sign 'em and forget 'em."  I never took that approach.  Since I started scouting, I would stay in touch with players, I would have them at my house.  I always felt, especially in their early years when they're first getting going, it's kind of like a parent with their child.  You don't just put them on the bus and let them run to Kindergarten by themselves.  You get some information on the school, show them around, and help them in their early years.  Then by the time they get to high school, they've pretty much got it figured out.  So the early years, I think you certainly have to stay in touch and make sure you talk with them.  If you look at it from that standpoint, that you're trying to do the best thing for the player, the organization is going to win.  So I've always stayed close, I've always checked up on players and been there for them. 

To answer the other part of your question, it's very tough when they don't make it and do what you hoped.  It's certainly disappointing, for the player more than it is for me.  But I have to realistically be able to say what a player's ability is.  If I tell you Player A is going to be a certain kind of player and he doesn't pan out, and I tell you that enough times, after a while my opinion's not going to mean anything.  So I have to be cognizant that my opinion is what I'm getting paid for.  My opinion is what I build on.  So I try hard to stay consistent with my opinion, and stay realistic with it and not get personally attached or personally involved and let it sway my decision.  Then it hurts my ability to do what I do.

BK: Have you learned more in that regard from the players you've been right about or the one's you've been wrong about?

LW: I think I've learned from both.  I've certainly gained a lot of confidence because I think over the years I've made a lot of good decisions, but I've also made some decisions where maybe I didn't care from a player and tried to go back and see why I missed him, or what happened.  So I've learned from both of them.  But I think what happens is, by the time you've seen thousands and thousands of players, you build up a memory bank.  You've seen every kind of mechanic, every kind of delivery, every kind of swing, so you're video camera in your head is very sharp.  If you ask me, "Hey, what do Roger Clemens' mechanics look like?" I can pull it up in my brain visually.  So when I'm at a high school game, I can say, "Okay, how does this kid compare to Clemens, and how far does he have to go?"  I can almost stack them on top of each other.  You have to build that inventory to make comparisons.  I think that's when you make good decisions, when you have an ability to compare things.

BK: Is there somebody you thought that wasn't good enough that turned out to be a quality player?

LW: The biggest miss of my career was in my first year scouting.  There was a player at Arizona State I liked, and I had a good feeling about him.  A good gut feeling, but the other scouts around said he's too little, he doesn't do this or that, he doesn't have power, he can't play short, and whatever.  And that was Fernando Vina.  And what I learned from that was to trust my instincts.  I've never since that time let myself get talked out of a player because of what the industry thinks or what anybody else thinks.  I said from that moment, if I'm going to make a mistake, it's because I trusted myself.  So that was my biggest miss on a player.

I've had a lot of players on the flip side, where I didn't see them the way they necessarily went in the draft or by the industry, and I think over time if you have enough of those you build a confidence level in your abilities.  You might not like, maybe it was Drew Henson, or somebody at that level, even though the Yankees gave him $17 million.  So that's part of scouting.  You develop your inventory.

BK: You mentioned players you liked that others were down on.  Do you have examples of that?

LW: One player that made me feel good when he became a major league pitcher- he actually started as a catcher, and I was one of the first people to put him on the mound- was Justin Speier.  He got drafted by the Cubs in the 55th round.  I actually had put him on the mound.  We quit drafting at 50, and didn't draft him unfortunately, but Justin was one that I felt, yeah he had a chance to become a good big league pitcher, and he did.

BK: Does that sort of thing explain how you'll see first, second, and third round guys who never get anywhere, while guys who get drafted in the twenties, fifties, nineties, or whatever will sometimes develop into quality players?

LW: Yeah, I think there are so many reasons why you'll see that.  Signability is one.  Justin's was a position change.  So maybe guys who scouted him saw him as a catcher didn't think he was going to hit enough, but didn't think to put him on the mound.  And like I said, signability is a factor.  With Andy LaRoche, I'm sure other teams liked him to a point- we took him in the 39th round, in part because he was going to Rice.  So there's a reasons why some guys fall.  Sometimes though, we just flat miss them.  We missed Piazza.  You try not to let that happen too much, though.  You hope you're right on your top guys, but you hope you're hitting on some of those guys down the line.  What happens is you just flat run out of time.  People's body types change, they mature at different rates, mentally and physically.  There are so many things happening.  I think we're better at the process now than we used to be.  It's more refined.  You've got more information, with scouting and a lot of player showcases and computers and everything else. I think it's helped us from that happening as much.

BK: At least you know that if you miss a guy drafted in the 50th round, you missed him fifty times, but so did every other team, fifty times over. 

LW: There's some comfort in that.  But you're still going, "How'd I miss him?  Why'd I miss him?"  You want to why, but you're also realistic enough to know it's going to happen.  I've done a lot of draft research.  A lot of my statistical stuff that I do is based on the history of the draft.  And the thing I think people should know is that we're dealing with a finite number.  Every year, only a certain number of positions are going to be open at the major league level.  That's it, period.  Give or take, and these are round numbers, not exact, you're looking at 150 guys make the big leagues out of every draft.  And out of those 150, you're looking at, if you're lucky, thirty that become good everyday major league players or all stars, or better. 

So I know going into a draft, looking around the country, hopefully we're getting two or three of those guys who will be every day major leaguers or all stars.  And you hope you get your share of those 150.  Plus, you're dealing in large numbers.  You might have 600 players on your draft board, and other teams might have more than that.  I think knowing the draft and knowing what it produces also helps you make better decisions.  You can get into data with too many people.  If you have 2,000 guys on your draft board, for me, then you have to try to find those 150 out of those 2,000.  That's tougher than trying to find it out of a 1,000.  If your scouts are good and are getting you to the right players with the right tools, you'll do a better job.

AK: Does knowing you're looking for a needle in a haystack take some of the pressure away?

LW: I guess it does, but to be totally honest I've never really felt pressure, because I put so much pressure on myself.  I put so much pressure on myself, I've got such high expectations not only for myself but for my staff.  And I've been really fortunate. It's a great group of guys, and have done a great job.  And I get the accolades, but they really deserve a lot of them.  But we put so much pressure on ourselves, that I don't feel it. 

Be on the lookout for Part II.