What baseball scouts look for in pitchers

What Baseball Scouts Look for in Pitchers

By Jon Doyle, MA, CSCS

If you're a pitcher trying to successfully make it to the next level, whether that next level is college or the pros, you need to know what baseball scouts look for in pitchers. After all, being able to impress and win over scouts is what is going to land you that scholarship or that professional contract down the road. Many pitchers fail to see what scouts are really interested in, and then end up getting bypassed and looked over even though they have the potential to succeed. Here's a quick overview of what scouts are really looking for in pitchers.

The most obvious place to start with this list is the raw physical tools that you have to work with. This is what is most easily recognizable, and it's what draws most people attention even though there are other factors at play. Therefore the number 1 element that people think about is your velocity, and interrelated to that your arm strength. After all, it's not just about how hard you can pitch, it's also about how long you can pitch that hard, how healthy you can remain while doing so and what your likelihood of adding even more velocity is.

Of course accuracy is also extremely important. Any scout will be wowed when you're tossing 98 MPH, but if you can't hit your target then what's the point? A ton of velocity without any control is only going to get you so far in the sport. Showing accuracy and hitting your spots is incredibly important, and it also shows that you will be able to deal with hitters at the next level who will tear apart that stuff when it crosses the center of the plate, or who will gladly lay off your juice when it's two feet above the strike zone.

Those are the physical tools what baseball scouts look for in pitchers. Amongst other things, they figure that your pitching form and technique can be tweaked and improved. Your repertoire of pitches can also be expanded. But arm strength and accuracy are two things that you need at every step of the way.

What baseball scouts look for in pitchers - Intelligence

As much as any activity in any other sport, pitching relies on your intelligence and your mental makeup as well. Therefore scouts are going to be evaluating what you're made out of up there a great deal. A huge piece of the puzzle is going to be your overall composure. You need to be able to cope with stress on the field, whether that's a call that goes against you, a mistake that you made and need to come back from, a fielder making an error, runners on base and on down the line.

You need to be able to keep your cool, and rebound from things that haven't gone your way. You need to be able to pitch yourself out of tough situations and jams, whether you got yourself into them or something else went against you. Pitchers that can only be counted on when things are going perfectly are pitchers that scouts and managers don't want to rely upon.

What baseball scouts look for in pitchers - "Balls"

Of course, most great pitchers have that little something extra too. You can call it fieriness, a desire to compete and win, a competitive nature or even just "balls". Whatever you call it, great pitchers, like most great athletes, have it in bunches.

If you're up there and you don't want to face their best hitter, or you want to avoid the tough situations, you probably don't have what it takes to advance to higher levels of the game. You need to show that you want to be thrown in the fire, you want to go after their best guy, you trust your best pitches and so forth. It's an important element and while so many of the great ones seem to have that ingrained in their nature, it's something that can be worked on as you progress as well.

As you can see, there's much more to your game in the eyes of scouts than just how hard you can throw - although that's important too. You need to develop your full game, and a huge piece of that is your mental approach, including your composure, patience, competitiveness and desire to win and your ability to cope with tough situations. Work on the above physical and mental areas and you'll be sure to impress the next scout that sees you at work.