Josh Boyd has, very simply, a great job. He writes about minor-league baseball for a living, and as a National Writer with Baseball America, he does it for the Bible of the minor-league baseball world. He’s young (31), recently married (to Michelle, last fall), and filled with tremendous enthusiasm for the game of baseball. How can you beat that?
So when we went looking for an expert to comment on the Blue Jays’ farm system, we didn’t have to look very far. And when Josh responded to our cold-call e-mail asking for his time and insight, he didn’t hesitate in agreeing. Pleasant in conversation, deeply knowledgeable about his subject matter and unafraid to offer strong opinions, Josh was great to correspond with, and we’re delighted that he agreed to become the latest person to sit down for a Batter’s Box Interview.
Josh got his start the way most minor-league experts did: a lot of hard work and dedication. He began by writing scouting reports on prospects for Torontonian Mike Mittleman’s “Extra Innings” page for STATS Inc., back when the service was on America Online. Josh remains deeply grateful for that initial break. “He gave me my first chance to write for anyone, when I pestered him with e-mails about seven years ago,” he recalls. “I had no experience, but I was an avid follower of prospects, and Mike allowed me to cover [them] on his site. I really owe a lot to him for taking that risk.”
That in turn led to writing the Angels’ major-league reports in STATS’ own Scouting Notebook -- “still one of my favourite books every year,” he says. Josh eventually created his own Website and began ranking prospects across the minor-league spectrum, back before that became the widespread practice it is today.
Then came his big break. Josh had met Jim Callis, one of BA’s most respected minor-league experts, a few years back, and Jim remembered Josh when BA needed someone to write a Phillies’ Top 30 Prospect list. “I can’t tell you how excited I was to have the chance to write for BA, which I’ve been reading since high school,” Josh recalls.
“I’ve always been interested in reading and writing about young, up-and-coming players,” he says. “I guess as a kid, it was always fun to know about the future stars before everyone else. I still have old Mazeroski magazines where I have the Farm Report section all marked up. BA helped spur my interest through the years.”
But Josh has a key advantage over many of us amateurs banging away on keyboards: he sees the players in action, and he sees them often. Living in North Carolina, a hotbed for minor-league teams, he attends two or three games a week, and circles the dates when his “target prospects” play. “I really believe this is critical to what I do, and hope that it brings a little extra to my prospect reports,” he says. Moreover, the game attendance has helped him develop a long list of contacts within baseball. “The more players I see, the easier it is to talk about them with scouts and player development people.”
Not only that, but Josh is one of the few fortunate folks who’ve attended the Major League Scouting Bureau's legendary Scout Development Program (aka “Scout School”) in Arizona. He wrote about the experience -- what he calls “absolutely one of the best I’ve been fortunate enough to participate in during my career” -- in a series of widely read articles at Baseball America last year.
What’s so great about Scout School? Pretty much everything, reports Josh. “It gives you a foundation, or builds upon your foundation, for evaluating and projecting players,” he says. “There is a wealth of experienced scouts to learn from, and the contacts and friendships I made there were worth the price of admission. If the Major League Scouting Bureau ever decides to open the school to the public, it would be a tremendous experience for hard-core fans and people who have aspirations to scout.”
One of the first lessons Josh learned, and one that he still takes into consideration when evaluating players in person, is that scouts look for “players who make the game look easy. They’re the ones who have an easier time repeating things -- be it deliveries or swings -- and they tend to have the longer careers. Athletes don’t always make the best baseball players in the world, but players who play with a ton of effort in everything they do don’t enjoy careers as long as those who play the game effortlessly.”
Josh’s many long nights at the ballyard, assessing players in person and chatting with the wise men of the game, have had a strong impact on his approach to player evaluation. “I have been heavily influenced by traditional scouts,” he acknowledges, but that doesn’t make him a Luddite. “I also have an appreciation for statistical analysis, so I’m not scared of change or opposed to new and unique philosophies.”
But when it’s suggested that the current Blue Jays regime is ahead of the curve in emphasizing skills over tools, he’s quite clear in his assessment. “I strongly believe that above-average tools will help you win championships in the long run,” he says. “I’ve been told that Pat Gillick, one of the best ever, burned the following mantra into his scouts' heads: ‘Average tools make average players make average teams.’
“Reducing risk is all good in the draft, and necessary for many teams these days,” he agrees. “But it’s going to be difficult to build a nucleus along the lines of Carlos Delgado, Vernon Wells and Roy Halladay without taking those risks. I believe the Athletics’ and Jays’ college-only draft philosophy will result in players who will get to the big leagues quicker, [but] with less payoff.”
Under Pat Gillick, Tim Wilken, Chris Buckley and others, says Josh, the Blue Jays scouting staff was geared to take the best player available. “There was more flexibility, which meant they could produce a high-end talent like Wells, Halladay or Alexis Rios out of high school, or solid baseball players with plate discipline skills like Reed Johnson or Gabe Gross from college. They were able to draft based on where the best talent is, regardless of high school or college. They also worked the draft-and-follow process as well as any club, and had a tremendous presence in Latin America. I don’t see how cutting off half of the talent pool should be considered ahead of the curve.”
That said, Josh is also quick to praise the acumen of the Jays’ current regime. For example, he notes, “Chris Buckley is still a huge part of the scouting process … it was his draft that we graded as the best in 2002. Keith Law is very intelligent and brings a different perspective to the organization. Jon Lalonde is a hard worker with very good administrative skills, from what I’ve heard. They don’t have the experience that most people around baseball have in their respective roles, but I think we’ll have to see in the next few years if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
As Josh observes, Baseball America rated the Blue Jays’ 2002 draft as the best in baseball, and followed that up with a Top Five ranking for the 2003 draft as well. Does that mean that the Jays’ organizational standing will have risen accordingly when BA’s 2004 Prospect Handbook is released? He’s not so sure.
“For us, they will still rank fifth or sixth,” Josh predicts. “They were sixth last year, and most of the prospects that earned them that ranking are still in the system. The upside of Alexis Rios, Dustin McGowan and Guillermo Quiroz as the top three -- not necessarily in that order -- measures up with most of the strong organizations’ impact prospects. They’ve added more depth than impact potential under their new draft philosophy, but Aaron Hill, Russ Adams, Josh Banks and David Bush are good prospects who will contribute.”
Josh thinks it’s difficult to determine which team had the best draft so soon after the fact. “The immediate impact [that] college players can have in the lower levels of the minors certainly helps the Jays’ last two classes look very strong right out of the chute,” he says. “I think you can make a case that they will develop a good number of big leaguers from those two drafts, but looking back to 2002, I would take the Cubs and Diamondbacks before I took the Jays, and I really like the Dodgers’ effort.”
Josh goes into more detail on some of the pitchers from 2002: “David Bush had a breakthrough season after a move to the rotation, but most scouts will still tell you that he is a middle- to back-of–the-rotation starter, if not headed back to the pen eventually [though Josh personally thinks Bush is more likely to stay in the rotation because of his command]. We liked the arms they were able to add to the system, and Chad Pleiness looked like a steal in the fifth round; we expected a better first year. Instead, it was Adam Peterson who emerged. I think this year’s crop is similar, and I don’t think 2002 will hold up as one of the best, because I don’t see a lot of late-round gems that year. In 2003, they again loaded up on pitching, but it just doesn’t stand head and shoulders above other drafts for me.”
How about 2003? Josh is reluctant to assess the pitchers from last June’s draft -- it’s early, the sample sizes are very small, and he’s particularly inclined to reserve judgment on pitchers who don’t possess overpowering stuff. But he allows that he likes what he’s seen and heard of Josh Banks, Kurt Isenberg and Jamie Vermilyea.
Josh also thinks highly of Aaron Hill, the shortstop the Jays drafted in the first round last June, though he’s unsure whether that will be his eventual position in the majors. “He does project or profile better at third than short, especially since the Blue Jays have to play half of their games on turf,” he notes. “If they played on grass, I think it might be a different story. While I believe defence is a lot more important than sabrmetricians do, I think guys can get written off unfairly before they’ve had a chance to prove themselves in the field. When you look at a shortstop like Rich Aurilia, it leads me to believe a steady, athletic player like Hill can play short.”
So what does that presage for Hill’s predecessor as first-round draft choice, Russ Adams? “He looks like a solid player, maybe even an occasional all-star, but probably a second baseman, not a shortstop,” says Josh. “Some scouts have told me that because he doesn’t have the arm for the position, he tends to rush his throws to make up for a lack of arm strength.”
Josh was surprised and interested to hear of the controversy at Batter’s Box over Adams, and the debate over whether his upside more closely resembled Chuck Knoblauch or Brent Abernathy. “I think the Knoblauch comps are fair,” he suggests. “I don’t necessarily see him as the perennial All-Star/MVP candidate that Knobby was in Minnesota. You know, a player like fellow UNC grad Brian Roberts comes to mind, as a switch-hitting middle infielder who plays the game the way it’s supposed to be played. Roberts can play short in the bigs, though, and I don’t think that Adams will be able to stay there.”
We asked Josh to play a little game of “word association” with ten other Blue Jays prospects. Here’s what we came up with.
(a) Brandon League
“Cheddar. Gets electric movement from low arm slot; just needs to learn a better feel for pitching.”
(b) DJ Hanson
“Overpowering, oft-injured and undersized.”
(c) Dave Gassner (recently lost to Minnesota as a PTBNL)
“Finesse, command, limited upside in the majors. [You have] to be so fine to succeed at that level without plus stuff.”
(d) Tyrell Godwin
“Wish he would have started his baseball career one of the first ten times he was drafted. Good athlete.”
(e) Jorge Sequea
“One of the best minor league Rule 5 picks from 2002. I see him as one of the poster boys for what statistical evaluation can bring you -- and I mean that in a good way.”
(f) Vince Perkins
“Explosive stuff, but raw. Great example of what scouts can uncover. The risk involved was low, the ceiling is high -- a heckuva pick. May be trade bait in the next couple years because of his lack of command.”
(g) John-Ford Griffin
“I expected more bat out of him when the Yankees drafted him out of FSU in 2001. The lack of power and athleticism in the outfield concerns me, and clouds his future -- where will he play? What role will he serve in the majors?”
(h) Adam Peterson
“Emerging, live arm.” What of the suggestion that Peterson could lead the Jays in saves next year? “It would be a little overzealous to say that…. That could ultimately be his role, but I don’t see a lot of rookies who can step in and succeed in that role. Of course, Aquilino Lopez did it last year, but he’s not a traditional closer and I don’t see him holding up in that role -- which isn’t what they’re trying to do with him anyway.”
(i) Jayson Werth
“Athletic and versatile, [but] he may have a tough time ever securing a full-time job. I think his swing can get long, and he may be able to be exploited by good major-league stuff. His wrist injury obviously didn’t help him, but I think he’ll find a home elsewhere at some point if he doesn’t get one with Toronto as an insurance policy. I’d like to see him make better adjustments.” Josh adds that an Eli Marrero comparison is a fair one here.
(j) Francisco Rosario
“I rated him as one of the best five pitching prospects in baseball before his injury, which might make me as high on him as anyone was. I’ve heard that he was dominant in Instructional League, throwing back into the mid-90s. Ramon Ortiz is a pretty good comparison, because Ortiz was confident with his changeup at a young age, as Rosario is. [But] Ortiz doesn’t regularly throw as hard anymore, and I project Rosario as more of a strikeout/overpowering type pitcher than Ortiz has become.”
And finally, how about the cream of the crop? We asked Josh to briefly rate the Jays’ five best prospects from among Dustin McGowan, David Bush, Alexis Rios, Gabe Gross and Guillermo Quiroz. But he threw us a slight curve and ranked the Top Eight.
“I would take Rios, McGowan and Quiroz 1, 2 and 3,” he says. “I would have Francisco Rosario in this discussion, along with Vince Perkins and possibly even Brandon League, but I would take Gross, then Bush out of those two, because I still see Gross as a starting right fielder.”
We appreciated Josh’s insights and the time he took to speak with us about his own position and the Blue Jays’ minor-league system overall. And although modesty almost prevented us, in the end we also asked him to assess Batter’s Box’s own Farm Reports, and were pretty darn happy when Josh described them as “tremendous; good insight and analysis.” That’s about as nice a Christmas present as this Bauxite needs this year. Once again, our thanks to Josh Boyd of Baseball America.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20031217113416999