Note: Introducing Blaine Clemmens - Perfect Game National Scouting Coordinator!!!

 

Perfect Game is well known as baseball's largest scouting service, but that doesn't mean there is no room for improvement. There is always room to become even bigger and better.  Recently the opportunity presented itself to hire Blaine Clemmens to our already strong and large scouting department.  As you will all see, Blaine is one of the nations' top young scouts and a very good baseball writer.

 

Blaine most recently worked for another highly regarded showcase organization.  We were so impressed with his ability that it didn't take a second thought when Blaine showed interest in working for Perfect Game.

 

Blaine is originally from Illinois and now resides in San Francisco with his lovely wife (Kristy).  He played college baseball until an injury ended his career.  Blaine later coached at the JUCO level and was an assistant coach, involved in recruiting and advance scouting, at DI University of San Francisco. He also created the BC Bay Area Baseball and established the popular Bay Area World Series.  Among other baseball activities he has been an associate scout with the Philadelphia Phillies. Blaine graduated from Aurora University in 1996 and will soon have his Masters degree in Sports Management from the University of San Francisco.

 

Blaine Clemmens is a rising star who could end up in a MLB front office in the future.  In the meantime he fits the exact Perfect Game profile which includes experience, intelligence, honesty and integrity.  Many players, recruiters, scouts and parents are going to benefit greatly from Blaine Clemmens involvement with Perfect Game.

 

 

Scouting the PG WWBA World Championship

By Blaine Clemmens - PG National Scouting Coordinator

 

The WWBA Championships have so many quality players it can make your head spin... but it is a scout's fantasyland. 

 

4 days.  67 teams.  13 fields.  Dozens of top prospects.  Having the opportunity to scout one event that brings together the VERY BEST amateur prospects playing for the very best amateur teams in the nation is why hundreds of scouts from Major League Baseball, junior colleges from across the nation, four year college programs, the Baseball America staff, and of course, scouts from agencies that hope to represent many of the players in the coming years descend on Jupiter each fall.

 

Many of you may wonder how scouts go about covering an event the size of the WWBA Championships.  Where do you start?  How do you decide what games to watch?  How can you possibly see or be aware of all the top players?  How do you quickly get from one field to another?  How much information do you record?  Is the goal for every scout the same?  Is the player wearing #8 really the player reflected on the roster?  Wait a minute, there is not a #8 on the roster.  Who is #8?  Even more challenging is writing a report that can accurately portray the experience to someone who wasn't there.

 

Well, let's begin to answer some of those questions.  Each MLB club sends multiple scouts to an event like the WWBA Championships.  Some clubs send their scouting directors, their regional and national crosscheckers, as well as a number of their area supervisors, a.k.a. area scouts.  The MLB clubs are generally focused on the top players in the present draft class, in this case, the 2006 graduates.  They are working off their follow lists formulated during the past summer and fall at events like AFLAC All-American, Perfect Game National, East Coast Professional, and the Area Code Games, as well as other regional showcases and tournaments. 

 

The MLB clubs that seem to have the top scouting departments are also formulating their follow lists for the next draft class, in this case the 2007 grads.  An event like the WWBA Championships has many of the nation's top underclassmen, many of whom will be at next June's Perfect Game National and the AFLAC All-American game. 

 

As for the college programs, they don't have the same size scouting staff available as the MLB clubs, but some of the JC programs had up to four coaches in attendance.  There were a number of D2 coaches in attendance as well.  The best way for the college coaches to scout an event the size of Jupiter is to peruse the schedule and then start with the teams that have a large percentage of players that are from the same general region as the college.  Most programs focus on local players first, and then branch out from there.  The definition of local is different for each program.

 

Perfect Game has the largest scouting staff on hand.  Each game has two PG scouts recording the game action and also taking scouting notes on each player.  When a player is performing at a superior level, say hitting 90 on the gun, those scouts then get on the horn and call in one of the roving PG scouts, almost like a crosschecker situation.  The reason we are able to gather the superior collection of talent at events like PG National and AFLAC All-American is because of our staffing of events like the WWBA and BCS events.  No player is missed by us, which makes PG the most valuable scouting resource in the game and indispensable to all levels of the game.

 

PG unveiled BaseballWebTV.com in Jupiter.  The short version of what that means is that each and every game, every pitch, every at-bat was digitally recorded for broadcast at BaseballWebTV.com.  There was a daily highlight show with PG's Dave Rawnsley, there were interviews with top players, conducted by Ashley Anderson.  There were daily features about the top players at certain positions, such as the top shortstops at the event.  BaseballWebTV.com will revolutionize baseball scouting and the 2005 WWBA Championships was just the starting point. 

 

As for the 2005 WWBA Championships from one scout's perspective, the scout providing this perspective is me, Blaine Clemmens, one of the newest members of the PG staff and formerly the scouting director of another baseball organization.  This was the first big PG event I attended as an employee and frankly, the experience of scouting an event like this is why I am thrilled to work for Perfect Game. 

 

I had seen many of the top players here, but the number of big-time talents I had not seen before working for Perfect Game outnumbered those that I had seen.  My goal in Jupiter was to get in my golf cart and catch glimpses of as many top players as possible.  The complex (shared spring training home of the MLB Cardinals and Marlins) is sprawling and was crowded, though a whole lot less so with the absence of the D1 college coaches that were not allowed to attend as per NCAA rules. 

 

Zooming to and from the different games was not difficult.  What can be difficult is getting a good site line at a game and keeping it, especially behind the backstop where most of the scouts gather in view of the Perfect Game radar guns that are fixed on the backstop at each field.  For the most part scouts and coaches are aware of others and do their best to not stand in the way of each other.  However, there are plenty of them that just walk up to a game and with seemingly zero awareness or concern, stand right in front of others that were already situated at that game.  The number of parents that do the same thing was also amazing.

 

The opening night of the tournament was easy to scout, as both games were in the stadium.  The first game featured the Florida Pokers vs. the PG USA/Georgia Stars, and the second game featured the powerful East Cobb Astros (eventual co-champions with Chet Lemon's Juice) vs. Hammertime, a team made up of players from South Florida.  It was a rainy night, but the PG staff was in the press box for a pre-tourney meeting, so we were shielded from the elements. 

 

My main focus that first night was to sit with Dave Rawnsley and figure out which teams had the top players I had not seen before.  We went through each roster and highlighted some games for me to see the following day.  While I was sitting there with Dave I kept an eye on the action and caught glimpses of East Cobb lefties Josh Smoker ('07) and Jim Gilheeney ('06) dominating Hammertime, which proved to be an accurate foreshadowing of how the rest of the tournament would go for East Cobb, one dominating pitching performance after another.

 

Also on the East Cobb team were two of the nation's elite position players, centerfielder Cedric Hunter and first baseman Cody Johnson.  Both Hunter and Johnson are considered top prospects for the 2006 draft.  I had seen Hunter play as a sophomore and saw a bit of Johnson this past summer.  At this event I decided to spend a lot of time watching them (and the East Cobb team) and forming my own opinion of where they, along with some of their high profile teammates, rank among the nation's top players.

 

This story is going to get long enough as it is, without me going into scouting details about the top players.  Any of you reading this that read my stories and reports when I was with Team One know how detailed I can get, which tends to create long, long stories.  I think I will save the majority of those details for a future story.  What I really want to impress among those that read this are the sheer numbers of top prospects I was fortunate to watch play over the course of four days. 

 

The best way to do this will be to write numerous reports that focus on the top players from the top teams I saw as I moved through each day, as opposed to writing a twenty page report that would take you into the wee hours of the morning to read. 

 

Almost every game I watched had a top player I had never seen before.  Living on the West Coast I feel pretty good about my awareness of the top players out here, especially in California and Arizona.  Before heading to Jupiter I felt that I had a decent feel for many of the top players from the Southeast and Midwest from scouting the Area Code Games and one regional showcase in Atlanta last July.  However, beyond that, there are so many more players in the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic region, and Northeast that I had never seen, and in some cases, never even heard of.

 

For instance, the first game I decided to see on Friday was between the Dirtbags and the All Star Baseball Academy.  I was blown away by the Dirtbags and ended up watching at least three of their games.  Most of their players are from North Carolina, but they also had a couple from other states.  The All Star Baseball Academy was made up of players primarily hailing from Virginia, with some kids from Pennsylvania and Maryland also on the roster.

 

For me, the Dirtbags were one of the five most talented teams, both their seniors and underclassmen.  I saw Clemson-bound 6'3" lefty Ryan Morris on the mound against All Star Baseball.  He is a loose armed and projectable bodied lefty with 88-91 mph heat and a tight breaking ball to go with a good change-up.  Now, I understand some may not agree, but having seen Mark Pawelek a number of times, I don't think Morris is that far off from where Pawelek was at the same time his senior year.  Just to mention a talent like Pawelek in comparison with Morris tells you something about Morris.

 

Another player from the Dirtbags that really caught my attention was senior outfielder Dustin Ackley, an athletic and talented player heading to UNC as part of a stellar recruiting class next fall (including Dirtbag teammate SS Kyle Seager).  Ackley can flat out play and if he does end up at UNC, don't be surprised if he is a freshman All-American and in three years is a top round pick.  Someday down the road a player like Luis Gonzalez comes to mind when I think of what Ackley can become.

 

There were two underclassmen on the Dirtbags that also got my attention; OF Quincy Latimore and 6'2" RHP Greg Holt.  Latimore is an exciting player who in some ways reminds me of what I imagine a young Marquis Grissom might have been like.  Holt is a talented and quick and strong armed righty with a nasty breaking ball and a loose arm.  To a lesser degree, I also liked undersized righty Kyle Greenwalt who touched up to 91 and flashed a power breaking ball.  He could be groomed as a closer in college and have a bright future.

 

Oh yes, then there was RHP Graham Stoneburner, another Clemson-bound recruit on the Dirtbags.  Stoneburner has a clean arm stroke and an easy arm action that produces easy 88-91 mph fastballs.  He is a very athletic pitcher and can really torque the breaking ball too.  I saw him on the last day in one of the playoff games against the Atlanta Braves Scout Team.  The ACC is a power conference and the Dirtbags are doing their part to stock the top teams in that conference.

 

I had never seen Morris, Ackley, Latimore, Holt, or Greenwalt and only saw Stoneburner as a sophomore, back when he was primarily a middle infielder.  It was a blast to watch the Dirtbags.

 

For the most part I had seen the top players on All Star Baseball Academy; '07 RHP Neil Ramirez (a top junior, 88-92, lanky and loose), LHP Sean Ray, OF/SS Jason Taylor (Clemson), and INF Jeff Ussery (Georgia Tech).  Another Clemson-bound player, LHP Matt Zoltak turned my head a bit.  He is a three to four pitch lefty with good command and he hides the ball pretty well.

 

I watched most of the Dirtbags/All Star Baseball Academy game before getting in my cart and zooming off to the blue (Marlins) side of the complex to catch the end of the game between the All American Prospects and the Mid Atlantic All Stars.  Even the names can be confusing - All Star Baseball Academy, All American Prospects, Mid Atlantic All Stars, Louisiana All Star Baseball Team, Champions Baseball Academy, Baseball America...

 

The reason I headed to the blue side was because many of the powerhouse teams were going to be playing in the 10:20 AM block of games at the quad on the blue side: Ohio Warhawks, Midland Redskins, and the All American Prospects.  Each of those teams was loaded with big-time prospects and if a scout situated himself just right, he could watch all three games from one vantage point. 

 

You will have to wait until the next report to read about that the top players I saw in those games and for those teams.  If you have read this far, you probably feel a bit worn out by now.  Well, welcome to the experience of trying to scout 67 teams on 13 fields in four days.  What a job!  We are just getting started.