My course is half over, and I’ve been dawdling about reaching out to people for interviews, so that’s my priority for today.
We need to do a minimum of two informational interviews for the course. In my analytics course, I made the mistake of not reading the syllabus before the start of the class, resulting in a lot of wasted time. I began reaching out the other day, starting with a scouting director for an NPB team I met a year ago.
Jump to 1 year as a scout page
Still, I need to break out of my comfort zone, which is casually contacting people I randomly run into in the course of writing about baseball. There is no plan or direction, but to be a scout in Japan will require building relationships with people all over the country and that means pursuing people I have no access to.
Assignment 1: Position Player Report
Our first scouting report assignment was to write about a position player. I picked Ryo Ota because he had a superb year in NPB’s Western League after being the Orix Buffaloes’ top draft pick out of powerhouse Tenri H.S.
I found a lot of youtube video of him from his school days, and a little from his pro debut and spring training BP.
Our scouting instructor, Hank Jones, wanted a physical comparison to an MLB player, but Ota isn’t like anyone I could find. He doesn’t look like Robinson Cano, although they are listed as the same height and weight, he sure does field like him.
