Friday, March 13, 2009

A Second Opinion

If you want to know the difference between the scouting reports of a yahoo sitting in deep CF and a professional sitting right behind homeplate, look no further. Though much of what The Common Man said about Darvish was corroborated by KLaw, that his control was off and that he has a unique delivery. But KLaw's analysis of the actual pitches is interesting, and something that was impossible to discern from the lawn.

2 comments:

Ron Rollins said...

We're all a lot smarter than we get credit for.

Before the Dominican Republic / Netherlands game, I predicted the DR would lose because they would try to come and play home run derby, and put some quick runs on the board. In the sixth inning, Jim Kaat mentioned the DR was in danger of losing because they were playing home run derby.

Just because we sit in our basement doesn't mean we don't know anything. i like reading the mainstream media, but they seem to think they know more than we do because they get paid to write about it, and we just do it for fun.

But a lot of bloggers out there actually know the game. Keep on truckin'

The Common Man said...

Well, Ron, maybe you are. The Common Man probably isn't. That said, there are important differences between what The Common Man saw, and what Keith Law noticed. While we both took note of the surface characteristics of Darvish's performance, Keith was able to see past the subpar outing to see the underlying talent. That is a function, The Common Man presumes, of training and experience (which The Common Man doesn't have), with a small dash of perspective (Law was right behind the plate) thrown in. So while trained scouts like KLaw may see everything The Common Man sees, it's pretty clear that they see a lot more than that too. It would be fun to sit with a scout for a couple of innings and get a running commentary of what they are looking at and what they see as it happens. To get a scouting primer, as it were.