James Fegan of The Athletic wrote a story about the White Sox upgrading their scouting down in the minors with a data-driven approach, specifically at Class-A Kannapolis. And yes it’s only low A-Ball, but this kind of shows how far behind the White Sox have fallen in player development over the years and how much catching up they need to do.
For example, before this season players at Kannapolis would only receive the following scouting report on opposing pitchers.
So, the scouting report was pretty much stats that players could read off the scoreboard.
Overall, the story comes off positive, detailing how the White Sox are taking steps to better prepare their prospects in the minors, providing them with more tools and information to learn from.
And hey, now they’re letting players know what the opposing pitcher’s best pitch is! Baby steps, I guess.
Then, there’s this quote by Alex Destino, who played college baseball in the SEC at South Carolina from 2015-17. He was picked by the White Sox in the 2017 draft.
Via The Athletic.
Opposing scouting reports are just one way to leverage data in player development, and possibly a smaller one than pitchers having Trackman data to re-imagine their pitch usage, or hitters making swing changes that are usually resigned to instructional league or the offseason. And in this case, it may be more about catching up than breaking new ground.
“It’s near the same,” Destino said when asked to compare the level of information to that of his college days playing in the SEC. “We were given a lot of things at South Carolina, I was very fortunate playing there. The environments we played in front of were a lot different from here, but the metrics, I mean it’s kind of the same thing.”
So, there you go, the White Sox scouting department is finally catching up to SEC baseball.
You can read the entire story below.
Better late than never.
