I wrapped up my General Manager and Scouting course early Sunday morning and would be remiss if I didn’t shout out to my teachers, Dan Evans and Hank Jones, and my classmates. The instructors encouraged interaction, let us go off-topic and explore. In addition to the content delivered in the twice-weekly chats and the assignments, the dynamic between my classmates made it a Grade A experience.

Jump to 1 year as a scout page

So to Paul Williams (our chat MVP), Jon Carson, Daniel Cho, Alicia Crandell, Edgar Arismendi, Beni Cromwell, Carlos Fernandez, Chris Fessler, Jeff Laue, Santy Prada, Guillermo Quinones, Luis Alejandro, Ben Rockwell, and Andrew Smith, thank you and see you in Dallas in December. I loved reading your work and hearing your questions.

I’ve done the SMWW analysis class and it was a vastly different vibe. I was a “classmate” of new Royals manager Mike Matheny but with one chat a week, and the great guest speakers the teacher, Ari Kaplan, brought in, there was very little live interaction. Some of that was due to SMWW since hanging the platform for live chats to Zoom, and that experience is much improved.

So now that I’ve written a half-dozen scouting reports, analyzed pay hikes for arbitration-eligible players this past winter, did only three informational interviews instead of the six I had hoped to, researched trades and players and wrote an analysis of the SoftBank Hawks for my final paper, what’s next?

Chapter 2

Starting today, I am officially scouting. I will be taking notes as often as possible from the high school spring invitational tournament, the pro preseason, youtube video of players who are newsworthy, and writing reports as often as possible. If any of you have seen these players and want to share your opinions, constructive criticism or even utter disbelief, my e-mail is guidedogjapan@yahoo.com please write and be critical.

Since the day I stopped becoming a rabid fan — I think the vaccination process involved accidentally breaking a plate glass window at my rental in college over the result of a San Francisco Giants loss in the final week of the 1982 regular season — I haven’t been more excited for the season to start. The normal dread that comes with the thought of downloading rosters and player codes needed to build another season of my database has been outweighed by a thirst for more and different knowledge.