Juan Soto made a surprise visit to an Amazin’ Mets Foundation event at the Mets Academy in the Dominican Republic, offering new equipment to over 40 local baseball and softball teams. Soto spent time meeting with and taking pictures with boys and girls from these teams, making an impact in the community he’s from. Soto’s love for his home country runs deep, and he’s stated in the past he hopes to represent them in the World Baseball Classic in the future.

Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images

Latest Mets News

Mets reliever Adbert Alzolay will be joining the Leones del Caracas of the Venezuelan Winter League later this month. Alzolay missed the entire 2025 season and was a dominant closer with the Cubs as recently as 2023.

Fitch Ratings, a credit rating agency, upgraded their rating for Citi Field’s PILOT and rental bonds from “BBB” to “A-” suggesting a high credit quality.

Latest MLB News

Munetaka Murakami, one of the premier bats in Nippon Professional Baseball, was posted on Friday for MLB free agency. The 25-year-old slugger will have until 5:00 p.m. ET on December 22 to choose a team to sign with.

The Rockies officially announced that they hired Paul DePodesta as their president of baseball operations.

MLB Trade Rumors posted their free agency predictions for this offseason.

Latest on MMO

Mathias Altman-Kurosaki profiles reliever Brad Keller as a potential free agent target for the Mets.

On This Date in Mets History

2010: Speaking of Paul DePodesta, he was hired by Sandy Alderson and the Mets as the vice president of player development and scouting on this day 15 years ago.

Born on This Date: Edgardo Alfonzo (1973), Shane Halter (1969), José Offerman (1968), Ed Kranepool (1944).

The post Morning Briefing: Juan Soto Gives Back to Dominican Community appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

For over thirty years, Jim Reeves has been traveling the Pacific Northwest as an area scout, responsible for roughly 2,000,000 square miles, to help the New York Mets find the next crop of potential major league talent.

The role of an area scout involves getting to know the programs, schools, coaches, and players in their respective territories, and traveling to various games and showcases in order to assess and analyze potential draft picks for their organization.

Scouts are continuously juggling the current crop of ballplayers who are eligible for the nearest draft while keeping tabs on younger players they’ve come across in their travels for future evaluation and reports.

For Reeves, a sixteenth-round pick by the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1977 June Amateur Draft, blending professional experience in pro ball with gut instinct and an altruistic nature has led to several significant signings over the last dozen years.

Reeves was the signing scout for Brandon Nimmo (2011), Michael Conforto (2014), and David Peterson (2017), who have all contributed to the Mets and brought their own unique set of skills to the club.

After thirty-plus years of long travel, time away from family, and scouting countless players, Reeves has decided to retire.

The Mets celebrated his decades-long service with the organization on September 4th, when they had him throw out the first pitch prior to the start of their game against the Washington Nationals.

In a touching moment, Peterson caught the pitch from Reeves, and Nimmo came out of the dugout to greet and hug the scout who first gave him what all hopeful young players yearn for: an opportunity.

I had the privilege of speaking with Reeves towards the end of the regular season, where he discussed how he initially got into scouting, learning on the job, and his evaluation process for Nimmo, Conforto, and Peterson.

MMO: You were selected by the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1977 MLB Draft out of Southern Illinois University. How long after your professional playing career ended did you get into scouting?

Reeves: I played in 1977, 1978, 1979, and into 1980. I realized that my baseball career was going to be coming to an end, like a lot of minor league players.

I finished college and moved to Chicago to start a career. I was working for a big telephone company and really enjoyed it, but something was missing.

After about five years, I stumbled upon a place that was a big indoor baseball facility. I would go in there and hang out a bit and met some people.

I ended up giving lessons to younger kids. I met a lot of people, met some coaches, and it turns out a good buddy of mine got a job as a head coach at a junior college there, so I started helping him out. I believe that was around 1985 that I started helping him.

I met some baseball scouts in the area and realized that baseball is in my blood pretty deeply. I started helping my buddy out as I was working full-time; I had three jobs at the time. But I loved baseball and found a way to kind of get back into it with coaching.

Then, through some of my contacts with pro baseball, I kind of started helping out the Mets part-time. There were guys like Todd Hundley, Dan Wilson, and a few other guys [that I helped scout]. I found that really interesting, so I started to get more involved with scouting and coaching.

The guy that was out here for the Mets, Marv Scott, retired and was responsible for Wally Backman, Doug Sisk, and several other players. They offered me a full-time position out here in 1990, and the wife and I said, “Why not? Let’s give it a shot.”

MMO: So your scouting career started with a part-time role?

Reeves: Yes. Most of the scouting was done in the spring and summer. Because I was helping out the junior college team, I was able to see a lot of the junior college teams in the area.

I would go see some high school games on occasion, and help Phil Favia, who was the full-time scout in the Chicago area for the Mets.

I was helping out here and there and evaluating some players; I really had no idea what I was doing, it was more gut instinct than anything. I’d go back and remember watching guys who I played with that I felt had major league potential. It was a big learning experience for me.

MMO: Except for those early years in Chicago, have you always been a scout based in the Pacific Northwest?

Reeves: Yeah, other than those two to three years back in the Chicago area.

My wife and I moved out here, and it’s funny, I thought to move out there, and I’ll get some education as to how to scout for a professional team full-time, and then we’ll probably end up moving back to the Midwest to be closer to our families. We got out here and moved to the Portland area, and it’s a big area, you have Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Western Canada, and Alaska. Obviously, there are not a lot of players in some of those remote areas, but nonetheless, it was a big area and a lot of travel.

We got out here, and my wife loved it; I loved it, We raised our kids out here, and we eventually stayed. I had a couple of opportunities to move down to L.A. or Phoenix, but for Joan (his wife), it just wasn’t what she really wanted to do at the time.

It worked out great, we love it in the Northwest, and it’s a wonderful place to raise a family. A lot of driving and travel is tougher out here in some respects, but we love it.

MMO: You mentioned having to learn on the job as an area scout. What were some of those responsibilities you needed to adapt and adjust to?

Reeves: When you’re getting out there and are responsible for a particular area, it’s up to you to go out and find the players.

The first few years I had to learn my territory; you have to learn where the players come from. It’s mostly the I-5 corridor, which runs from Southern Oregon up Portland and through Seattle and to Vancouver, B.C. That’s where the majority of the population is out here.

You have to learn where the best high school players come from, and of course, back in 1990, it was a lot different than it is today because there weren’t the showcases, you really had to dig! You had to watch the older scouts and where they went and what they were doing and try to figure out a pattern or how they were working the areas. That took a couple of years but I had some really good mentors in the game and those guys helped me out.

You also need to learn how to write reports on players. You’ve got to break them down, break their tools down, assign grades to those tools but then also talk about their strengths and weaknesses, and then an overall summation as to what you think this player is going to be five-to-six years down the road. If he’s going to be a big-league player, what type of player is he going to be at the major league-level? What is he going to bring to that major-league team that’s going to help them win?

So, when you put it like that, when you’re a young scout, that’s tough! You have to feel good about your opinions and you have to go with it and stick to your guns on players.

There were a lot of mistakes made those first few years, no doubt, but I think that happens with every scout. Now we have a lot of analytics and data that help back up those decisions. Back in those days, we didn’t have that, so you were pretty much putting your own reputation and opinions out there. It was a little different back in those days, but it was fun.

I was surrounded by a lot of good scouts, not only here in the Northwest, but within the organization with the Mets. Everybody helped everybody else out. There were those older guys in the area and guys out here in the Northwest that were tough to read at times and couldn’t get information out of. It’s like a big poker game but that was the fun part and I’ve always enjoyed that, trying to figure things out and the psychology of scouting.

I don’t know if we have that as much today, at the higher levels they do, but that’s kind of what made it fun and interesting for me.

MMO: In regards to the amount of data and analytics utilized with all thirty clubs today, are there certain differences you’ve noticed with your job when it pertains to the use of analytics compared to when you first started?

Reeves: That’s a tough question. There’s just a lot of data and analytics that people are relying on.

It’s hard to say, Mathew. I didn’t get into it as much as I know a lot of guys in the office did. They have access to all of that stuff; I really didn’t have a lot of access to it. I didn’t let that bother me, I just did my own thing and pretty much scouted the player themselves and left the analytics to everyone else. Even to this day, I don’t know exactly everything that went into those guys making the decisions that they did.

I think it’s a good thing; the more information you can gather on players, the better. I think in the end, we’re dealing with human beings, and everybody is a little bit different. These are 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21-year-old kids, and nobody knows for sure how they’re going to react when they get into pro ball. I’m glad I’m not doing that end of it! [Laughs.] That’s a little bit over my head, to be honest with you.

I was never a big computer person. Everything was pretty much gut reaction, watching the player, and just getting to know the player and forming those bonds and finding out what makes them tick and if they have the makeup and desire to be able to move onto that next level. And not only move onto that next level but be able to pull out what makes them as good as they can be.

MMO: Besides the athletic tools you were looking for, what other traits would you try to identify when scouting players?

Reeves: I think the most important thing about a young player is I want to see them compete almost every time they go out there. That’s the one thing that I think separates the players.

There have been many, many players over the years I’ve watched, and you just watch them go out on the field and you can tell that they’re competing. Sometimes instincts can improve obviously, but just watch a kid play.

A lot of times, I’d put myself in the shoes of a hitter if I’m watching a pitcher. I’d put myself in the batter’s box and think, Can this guy get me out? Will this guy intimidate me? Doing that with all the different players, if possible, as a scout, I felt that it always helped me because I used to play. I was involved with it, and I knew what these guys were thinking when they were in the box or on the mound and what pitch they were going to throw. Things like that and just seeing if they’re playing the game the right way, and just their attitude.

A guy like [Brandon] Nimmo, man, he was fearless out there. He wasn’t the greatest player at the time in high school, and he knew it, but he also knew he was going to get better. Talking to these kids and knowing that they’re going to do everything they can to make themselves as good as they can be, that’s really, really important.

I’ve talked to kids along the way who felt they were really good and were just going to go out there and be better than everybody else without putting in the effort. Those guys weren’t the ones we wanted.

There are a lot of things that come with it, depending on what position you play, but I looked at the guys who were dedicated to what they were doing and just had a lot of fun doing what they were doing.

Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports

MMO: You were the signing scout for three big names in recent memory in Brandon Nimmo, Michael Conforto, and David Peterson. Can you talk about your recollection of scouting each one? Let’s start with Nimmo.

Reeves: He was drafted in 2011, so he was the first guy to come along. A bit of a funny story, he has an older brother who was probably five-to-six years older than Brandon. I believe his name is Bryce. He wasn’t as big as Brandon, was a centerfielder, a left-left guy, and I had gotten word that there was a good player over in Wyoming. I called his coach and got all the details and flew over.

It was early May, and with American Legion Baseball there was a little tournament going on, and they were matching up with a big right-handed pitcher out of Montana who was going to Stanford. I thought this would be a good chance to see this guy (Bryce) that I had been hearing about, so I flew over, and there was maybe a dozen or so scouts there from the area.

It was cold; it was like twenty-five degrees and snowing, so it wasn’t a very pleasant day in Casper, Wyoming, and the wind just howls there! We’re watching the game, and there’s nobody in the stands and this family comes and sits right behind me.

We start talking, and it turns out it was the Nimmos; it was mom, dad, and Brandon. And Brandon was probably 12 years old. We struck up a conversation, and I told him I was there to see their other son. Their son was a really good player, but he was going to the University of Nebraska.

I got to know them a little bit, and a few years later the head coach called me and said, “This Brandon Nimmo kid is starting to fill out and get a bit bigger and is a pretty good ballplayer.” I got to know him a little bit, and I saw him, I believe, after his sophomore year in high school, and at different tournaments. They would always come over and play in Idaho or Oregon or some summer tournaments. I just got to see him, and I had a little flag there saying, hey, I better keep an eye on this kid, he looks pretty athletic.

I saw him in the summer after his junior year, and he’s really coming along. His instincts were improved; he was a centerfielder then, and I just liked the way he swung the bat. He was aggressive, sprayed the ball all over, could run; all the tools that we look for. It was still hard at that time to put the whole thing together; I think he was going to the University of Arkansas, so he had a good scholarship waiting for him.

Fortunately, he got to play in some showcases, and I think he played in the Under Armour tournament in Chicago at Wrigley Field. Some guys saw him out there and we agreed that this guy has some ability. That’s what you do, you keep following guys and watching them and see how they progress. And that was the thing with Brandon, every time I saw him he added a little something to his game.

I know a lot was made of him only playing American Legion and there was no high school [ball], but if you go to Montana and Wyoming, there’s no way they can play baseball in the springtime in those areas. They had a really good Legion program, and they started working out around February-March, as soon as basketball was over. They weren’t outside a lot but they had a nice indoor facility and the coach would take them down to Arizona for a little spring training and play some high school teams. That spring that’s what I did, I saw him play in Arizona a couple of times and then I saw him in the fall before that in Arizona as well.

He was on the map and on our radar, and one thing led to another, and our guys saw him in the springtime. Chad MacDonald and [Paul] DePodesta saw him and liked him. He just kind of fell in our laps, and I was a little surprised, to be honest with you, that we would take a guy from Wyoming, but players come from everywhere.

I have to hand it to the guys in the front office and scouting department; everybody that saw him had good reports on him. Those decisions aren’t made by just an area scout. I just said what I had to say about him as far as his abilities and let them know that this kid wants it really bad; he’s got great makeup, a great family that supports him, and then we got him.

He went to the minor leagues and showed everybody he could do it. And even to this day, you look at Brandon over the last year or two, and he’s improved his outfield play, his ability to hit left-handers, and that’s what makes these guys good major leaguers is they continue to improve on their weaknesses.

Brandon was the type of guy where it was easy once I got into his makeup and realized I had nothing to worry about with this kid. I mean, he’s just going to work his tail off.

It’s when you get those phone calls about this guy is in trouble or he’s not doing his work, those are the phone calls you don’t want to get.

MMO: How about Conforto?

Reeves: Michael was easy pretty much. He went to high school in the Seattle area, and I think I saw him when he was fifteen or so.

He was playing at a higher level than most of his classmates, and you could just see it, man. He had the ability to hit. He was a shortstop at the time, obviously, I didn’t think he was going to be a shortstop, but you just loved the way he swung the bat.

He had big, strong shoulders when he was sixteen and had some juice in his bat, and could do a lot of things. But when he got into his senior year of high school, they made it pretty clear that he was going to college, and he went to Oregon State. We followed him, and I kept my eye on him, and he just flourished in college.

[He] got with Pat Casey in Oregon State, and when he was younger he had more of an uppercut swing. Pat got a hold of him and tried to level his swing out, which really helped, and did great work with him there. It helped make him into the player that he is.

Michael has a great family and great genes – both his parents were athletes – so that was an easy one for me. I was a left-handed hitter myself and I just loved his swing, I thought it was a beautiful swing.

I also felt that Michael came a long way with his defense too. He was a corner outfielder, and I know I read some things where people didn’t like his defense, but I thought it was more than adequate. He was taught well at Oregon State, and I wasn’t worried about his defense at all.

Honestly, I never thought he’d be a center fielder, and I know he got some time with us in center, but I think it was just because it was what they needed at the time.

Michael was a pleasure, he was humble, and the makeup was just off the charts. You knew this guy would do everything he could to make himself into a player.

Credit: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

MMO: And Peterson?

Reeves: David was a Colorado kid, so I never saw him when he was young. I think he was possibly a high pick coming out of high school, but he broke his lower leg in basketball, so pro ball didn’t work out for him at the time.

He came to the University of Oregon, and I remember seeing him in his freshman year and thinking, Holy cow, look at the size of this guy! It’s like when you see a guy for the first time and the hair on the back of your neck stands up a little bit and you go, oh, I really like what I see here. It’s just one of those instinctual things the first time you see a player.

I really liked what I saw in the fall. He’s a big guy that’s athletic, and he needed to get his body in shape, and I think he knew that maybe coming off that leg injury. And he did.

I got great reports from his coaches on his makeup and that he works harder than anybody else on the field. I think in his freshman year he might’ve led the team in wins out of Oregon, and he really just opened some eyes for a lot of people.

I got to know him and knew that this kid was intense; he wanted to win and was a competitor. I keep going back to that, and the same way with Michael. When the game was on the line you wanted them in those spots, and David was like that. He was a winner, a competitor, and again, he kind of fell into our laps with the 20th pick. At the time, we didn’t think there was anybody else better in the draft, and we took the shot with Petey, and he’s turned out to be a very fine major league pitcher.

I think with just about any other club in Major League Baseball, he’d be a front-line starter. He’s been doing a great job, and I think he’s about to break out.

MMO: I interviewed Jon Updike – the scout who signed Pete Alonso and Matt Allan – for Mets Merized a few years back, and he told me that watching the players he signed move up the ranks and make it to the majors made him feel like a proud parent. Is that how you viewed it as well?

Reeves: Absolutely! Not only with the guys, you get in the draft, but with guys that you got to know along the way that other teams have drafted. You spend a lot of time with these guys.

I’ll be honest, I’m probably a bit more partial to hitters, just because I was a hitter. We would do things in the Northwest and in the Portland area, and for many years on Sunday nights we’d get various indoor places and there’d be about four-to-six scouts and we’d invite players: high school, junior college, college, anybody wanting to come in and hit for a few hours. They’d hit for free and just hang out. We’d throw batting practice and talk with them and get to know them a bit, and find out how much they knew about hitting. We also had some pitchers, and it was just a fun time.

You get to know these kids and really care about them. Some scouts over the years have said you don’t want to get too close to these guys, but I wasn’t that way. I felt like I wanted to help these kids if I could a little bit in coaching them. And coaching them wasn’t really a scout’s job and I understand that. It’s hard to keep your opinions to yourself sometimes if you see that a kid is not getting his bat loaded or is dropping his hands. It’s tough to bite your tongue and not say anything.

But you get to know these kids and their families, and you watch these guys play, and you feel like you’re one of their coaches. You want to see them succeed and excel and get to be where they want to be.

I agree with Jon; it’s like they are your own kids. Being a baseball player myself at one time, you feel like you’re teammates with these kids. I think we’re losing some of that, but that’s the way I grew up doing it in scouting, and I felt like I had an edge sometimes against other organizations because I knew these players pretty well.

MMO: You were honored for your years of service and got to throw out the first pitch at Citi Field in early September. What was that experience like and to have Peterson and Nimmo on hand?

Reeves: It was awesome! I can’t tell you enough, especially all the people who were there with the Mets: Sandy [Alderson] and Marc Tramuta. Tommy Tanous wasn’t there but I talked to him a little bit [prior].

The Mets have been great to me and this was a special honor. To be able to take my wife back to New York and be a part of it was just awesome. It’s a great way to go out, and I’ve enjoyed all the years I’ve been with the Mets.

It’s good to see them winning now. I’m still overwhelmed by it! A lot of teams don’t do this type of stuff anymore. I had some older buddies, who are long gone now, where some clubs had done this. But those types of things had died out but for the Mets to do this was really special. I don’t have enough words to express how I feel.

MMO: Thanks for your time and insight, Jim! Congratulations on a well-deserved retirement.

Reeves: Thank you, Mathew.

Follow Jim Reeves on Twitter, @jreevesnym

The post MMO Exclusive: Area Scout, Jim Reeves appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

This is part two of the interview, Jon Updike talked about Pete Alonso and Matthew Allan on Monday here.

Former Mets’ area scouting supervisor Jon Updike believes in paying it forward.

As a former 28th-round pick by the Seattle Mariners in the 1993 MLB Draft, Updike reflects fondly on the scout, John Ramey, who took the chance on him as a reliever and offered Updike all he could ask for: an opportunity.

After his professional playing career was over, in which he spent time with the Mariners, Milwaukee Brewers and Texas Rangers organizations, Updike transitioned into a college baseball coach in Florida. The connections and relationships Updike built in Florida led him back to professional baseball, where the New York Mets hired him as their area scouting supervisor in North and Central Florida in 2014.

Updike’s new career offered him the chance to afford opportunities to young players, just as Ramey had done more than two decades prior for him.

The life of a scout includes logging a ton of miles on the road while traveling from game to game, building relationships with coaches, players and families, and doing extensive scouting work on why a particular player should merit an organization to sign him.

While scouting can often be a thankless job, remaining in the background while the talent they scouted and signed hopes to see their dreams imagined, Updike’s name was often mentioned throughout the 2019 season.

That’s because one of the players he signed back in 2016 burst onto the scene, surpassing Aaron Judge for the single-season rookie home run record while becoming the sixth Met to win Rookie of the Year: Pete Alonso.

Part of Updike’s job as a scout was to not only identify tools and projections but also assess a player’s work ethic and makeup. Those traits stood out for Updike when he was scouting Alonso, as he saw a player that not only had the talent but also the composure to handle the large media market that is New York.

In last year’s draft, Updike was responsible for signing Matt Allan out of Seminole High School in Sanford, Florida, in the third round. The right-handed pitcher was considered to be a potential first-round talent on many draft boards, but fell with concerns of his asking price along with his commitment to the University of Florida.

The Mets restructured their draft and were able to save money from their draft pool by signing college seniors in rounds four through ten for below-slot bonuses to help meet Allan’s demands.

This past November, SNY’s Andy Martino reported that Updike left the organization to begin his next chapter as President of Digital Scouting and Player Development Solutions for BaseballCloud, a software company that offers technical, data-driven solutions for players and clubs.

BaseballCloud digests in-game metrics from multiple technologies and accessories and is then presented in a way that’s easy to understand in order to track progress and areas for a player to work on.

BaseballCloud was designed for players and coaches as an easy-to-read development tool that allows users to store and track their data and progress. That tracking of progress is what Updike refers to as player mapping. The analysis BaseballCloud provides allows players and coaches to view their data with 3D visualizations and graphics that are easy to grasp and utilize for a player’s development.

The hope is that BaseballCloud allows for more impact on the development of amateur players, getting them more accustomed to the data and metrics while consistently tracking their progress using their revolutionary software.

Updike’s new occupation incorporates his extensive scouting background with analytics to provide custom visualization tools that transform how data is used at the amateur levels.

While he’s no longer affiliated with a specific Major League organization, Updike now has the chance to impact even more young athletes hoping for the chance to one day make it professionally.

He hopes the software will help propel amateur players to reach even more of their potentials while providing them with all he could ask for in his own professional playing career, and what he afforded to many players in the Mets organization: an opportunity.

I had the privilege of speaking with Updike this past December, where he talked about his life as a scout and new role with BaseballCloud.

MMO: Can you talk about the scouting process in terms of building a relationship with the player and what you did to further identify whether he was someone worth signing? How would you build that rapport?

Updike: Through their practices and events you scout them at. You go over reports with them, and then the players you target, you start to do a deep dive on. You build a true relationship with the player to where you’re in their house. They finish a game, and they come to you and ask you, not from a scouting perspective, is there something that you see that can help me? You build that type of relationship with the player because you become the trusted voice.

I think when you’re doing your job well is when you’ve got players that sign with other organizations and they still call you because they trust your opinion. What we had with Sandy Alderson and Paul DePodesta when they were with us, and everyone talked about the Moneyball model. Part of the Moneyball model was, at least the way I looked at it, this isn’t scouting. It’s player acquisition. You spend several years developing an idea of what a player is. Now we’ve decided that we’re going to spend more time and money to acquire this player.

Just think about it like a pie chart; a third of the player would be an area look, a third of the player would be the national look and a third of the player would be statistical analytics. That’s Moneyball. If I like the player and the national guys like the player, but maybe the analytics department doesn’t like him, if I’ve got two-thirds of the puzzle. I can override what the analytics guys say. If I like the guy and the analytics guys like him, we can maybe override the national. Having two-thirds of the pie allows you to acquire the player, a beautiful model. It worked for a long time and was proven.

A few years ago, I noticed in our game and in the draft room how that changed. Another piece of the puzzle was added. It became a quarter area, a quarter national, a quarter statistical analytics – because even at the high school level we have much more robust, cleaner more accurate statistics – but the new piece that was added that didn’t exist was metrics. In-game metrics gathered from Trackman, Flightscope, swing sensors or biomechanical data.

We have that information, and when you think about it, you’re making a purchase. You’ve got to have as much information as possible to allow ownership to say, Yeah, let’s write the check. It just can’t be somebody’s gut. It can’t just be my opinion. It’s got to be a very large amount of information, and we filter that down to one, two, three options. You choose the best available option that’s going to help you in the long run.

The beautiful thing about Matt Allan (Mets’ third-round pick in 2019) is how everything really came together. Matt is an example of what the future is going to be at the collegiate level. We have a long history with the college player, usually two to three years of scouting on the high school end and then a minimum of three years at the collegiate level. We’ve got five or six years’s worth of traditional scouting work done on this kid. Now the national showcase tournaments, through larger scouting events, and even with private workouts, we’re able to gain data. We’re also able to have clean statistical analytics, so now we’ve got a larger body of work from high school to college so that we can look for predictors and look for trends.

For a high school player like Matt, you don’t have as much. Matt was in a situation where he threw at a high school that had in-game capture. Every pitch that kid threw the entire season, there are metrics on. It makes the decision a lot easier; it’s like taking a knife to a gunfight.

Matt was an incredible player, and Central Florida and the state of Florida are the epicenter of baseball. You have volume of scouts, you have volume of national decision-makers, you have multiple major league clubs that have facilities there. So in the traditional aspect of scouting, it was easy from that standpoint from the industry to just see him and scout him. But the additive part of it is the statistical analytic aspect, and the selling part was the metrics.

If you’ve got the complete pie for a player, even if their demands are higher from a financial standpoint, now you’re going apples to apples, and that was really one of the first times that’s existed. That’s why Perfect Game All-American Classic, USA Baseball, East Coast Pro and Area Games are important events. It’s not just because they’re all in one spot and it’s easy to scout them. It’s because that’s where the metrics are. And traditionally, that would be the last time you got metrics on a player.

Our narrative at BaseballCloud, and what we’re finding out through our data scientists, is a player physically and skills-wise changes every ninety days. I want a collection of data by a player a minimum of every ninety days; that way I can create a fingerprint and a map for that player. It allows me to predict where this player will be in the future.

What we’re trying to do is implement that system into amateur baseball so that there’s a way to be able to collect data. Analytics is the buzz, well guess what? Analytics has been here; we need volume of analytics, we need volume of people to run the machines. More technology, more problems; let’s put it that way.

The other part of it is you have to use the machines in order to figure out how to even apply the information. We’re at a great time in our game because of the growth of technology. But because a piece of technology exists doesn’t mean that the technology is going to be viable or provide answers. You have to vet it, trust it, understand it; what does this information mean?

Baseball has some really big challenges coming down the pipeline as technology grows in our game. It’s easy at the big league level; I can run regressions, and I can do wonderful things. Baseball Savant is a beautiful tool, and I love it. But I can’t do that at the amateur level because major league data is the cleanest data on the planet. It doesn’t exist in college really.

We make the assumptions that we have all the same data in college. Roughly ten percent of college baseball has clean data. At the amateur level and high school level, it’s bits and pieces. Think of it this way: the importance of the Cape Cod League. I love the Cape Cod League and going there; it’s a tremendous piece of amateur baseball historically and for the players’ experience.

The true value of the Cape Cod League is there’s Trackman on every field. End of story. Let’s say there’s a player up there from a conference that doesn’t have in-game capture. When you go to the draft board, if that player doesn’t have metrics and some type of metrics, he’s not going to be selected. He’s not going to be selected in the first ten rounds.

What we recognized and understood is that the demands from the professional game are going to trickle down to the collegiate game. As we work with universities to help grow technologies, in-game capture, ways of digesting that and helping schools to create analytics departments and helping coaches adjust, even with my title of digital scouting, that’s what it’s going to become. It allows you to vet the players.

Major League clubs have budgets; a scouting department has a budget, and it’s not super robust. Everybody has to work within parameters. At the collegiate level, and again, people will look at stories like Alabama football having helicopters and things like that. That doesn’t happen at the college level.

When I was a college coach, I had roughly $1,200 a year budgeted for recruiting, and that was coming out of my own pocket. That’s the reality. Social media and using technology to be able to identify players, see metrics and vet players allows you to target and not have a huge budget. It allows you to spend your money more wisely, and that’s really what it’s all about. It’s not really about trying to make the game smarter; it’s about making better decisions and saving money.

Our products provide a solution that allows users to absorb information and apply it to their teams from a development standpoint. In Major League Baseball, the analytics are there first for evaluation, player acquisition and valuation of the player. That’s what this was invented for.

Now we’re in this – it’s not a revolution, it’s an evolution – how do we take this information and digest it so that the players are able to understand it themselves, put themselves in a better position to perform better, play better and win? At the major league level, it’s about making money and winning a World Series. At the collegiate level, they have to win their conference; they’re trying to go to Omaha. They’re trying to get a ring. That’s what it’s about at the end of the day.

Players aren’t getting paid, so our goal and what we’re assisting with is skipping that five-six year period of learning a lot of the metrics out there for player evaluation; you don’t need that at the college level. How do we go directly to development for those guys and supercharge their programs and help them become more efficient and how they can utilize their time better?

We’ve seen examples at universities because they have restrictions. It’s not like you can practice for ten hours a day. The NCAA has rules and windows that they can practice and have to document hours. That means that you have to become more efficient and have to create individualized player plans. You have to have technology in order to execute that because they can’t have a robust staff of 15 guys. This allows them to maximize their time but also to help good players get better, educate them so that the player does move on because it’s still a small percentage of players that move on to professional baseball.

We get to work with all the different manufacturers that create technology. I get to vet it and play with it and understand it even before the major league clubs do. What I’m trying to find is what is this going to look like from a playing perspective. What is this going to look like on field? How is this going to apply in practice? How do I take a coach that says I’ve got 20 years of coaching experience and has never used this and shape this into his daily routines and coaching philosophies?

There have been some books written, and I have some friends that have written some books, and they talk about old school versus new school. It’s one school. Our game evolves. At one point in our game, there wasn’t spring training. The idea of training to get better was just playing the game until Branch Rickey changed the game. And he did; he created a system for development. It took a while for adaptation, but now that’s where our minor league systems come from. There’s been evolution as time has gone on, and this is just another evolution in our game.

The one thing that you can do with technology, and I use this to identify because I’m a maker of lists and bucketing, is you have the advanced and the ones who are the later adapters. Like the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria. On the Niña, from a professional perspective, that would be the obvious ones like the Astros, Dodgers, Cubs; early adopters of technology. You’re on the first boat, and there are advantages to it. You get the lay of the land, but the risk is this: you can take an arrow to the throat.

The largest grouping that you have is that second boat. They’re going to adapt, but they don’t want to be wrong. They’re going to wait; technology changes. That’s where the vast majority of universities are at, and even major league clubs are at; they’re in that middle road.

Then you have that last boat – kind of the land of the lost – where they’re just trying not to crash into the rocks. The beauty of technology is this: There are specific major league clubs right now that can buy their way back from the last boat to the front boat. There are teams that are purchasing and using technology for the first time, and they think it’s for one reason, and there are teams that have technology for four or five years and have gone through the learning curve and are using it for completely different, more advanced reasons.

There’s a reason why clubs have spent millions of dollars on high-speed film. Is it because I want to watch a major league pitcher because it’s easier and smoother to watch the video so that I can make my own objective decisions on his mechanics? While one club thinks we just have cleaner video and it’s much nicer to watch, another one has an AI machine learning with some of the most advanced technology on the planet. And for me, being able to see behind the curtain and work with the technologies and manufacturers and understand just not what they can be, because we’re still in the fourth inning of this. Nobody has this figured out yet.

Just like an amateur player changes every ninety days, technology changes every ninety days. When I see a piece of technology that can be applied in our game, it’s just like scouting a player. If you look at it and go, This is what it is now, and it’s not anything great, you’re lost. What can this be? What happens when they make this improvement, or what could this be? A great example of that is swing sensors.

Six-seven years ago, when they were first introduced on the market, it came from golf; the majority of this technology all comes from golf. I was so excited because I wanted to impress DePodesta. I wanted to introduce this because I had these workouts in January where I’d invite the top 25 players in the Southeast to come in and do kind of a day in the life of a Met. Introduce the player to it, which is huge in building more rapport and understanding the player.

But at the same time, it allowed us to say, Let’s see if we can grab some metrics from this. I spent all this time working with the manufacturer, got the sensors and we slapped them on the kid’s bats. And I’ll tell ya, the shit didn’t work. [Laughs.] It didn’t work, and it had nothing to do with us; the technology wasn’t ready yet. You expected it, and that’s the way people are: as you buy technology, you think this thing is going to do everything.

Well, three or four years later, technology gets better; it changes. Now we’re using swing sensors in games at the professional level from A-ball down. Kids have swing sensors in the knobs of their wooden bats. They drop the sensor in the hole, and the good thing with it is when they first started to do it, nobody really knew what the metrics meant.

I did this huge study on being able to match swing sensor metrics to in-game data. What it provided me was the truth that there are predictors that there might be one slice of the DNA of that swing. What I learned from that study was that I can take the swing sensor and use it with the 14-year-old player who might be 5’11” and 140 pounds, and he’s nowhere near what his physical potential is going to be. So the eyeball test won’t work.

But you know what? This kid has one singular trait that is elite. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to take this player and put him in this bucket, and I’m going to follow this player because he has an elite trait. That’s how technology can help impact the game. And for us, a huge part of this is being able to take that technology and make it more accessible at the amateur game so that we can ID players better, help with their development and find the right fit for the player.

We have a specific product that we’ve introduced where we’ve taken our product for the college market and just done one simple tweak to it: it’s in Spanish. Now we can go to the Dominican Republic, and we’re marketing to the clubs in the Dominican Summer League. The idea behind it is the industry is spending more money in Latin America on players than we are in the draft.

Dave Roberts made a comment last year that, to me, was incredible. He said that the biggest impact the Dodgers made on their organization was when they gave their minor league players full access to the data that they give their players at the major league level. It allows for [a] better transition to the major league level; there wasn’t that wall there for them.

In the Dominican, it’s not here, so they have less access and teams have made huge investments in their economies and personnel at the academies. But again, you’re talking about kids that are out of school. It’s not the same social system we’ve got, and the priority is their daily training and repetitions. Those kids are taking hundreds of swings and hundreds of ground balls a day.

Their priority is not getting into Stanford; their priority is using baseball as a way to better their lives. When they’re about to transfer over to a complex in the States and they get off the island, now it’s not just the language barrier, social barrier, and coming to the United States and all the obstacles that they already have to deal with. Now, with the change in our game from a data standpoint, they’re behind the eight ball.

Our idea was, let’s recreate a very simple interface and take away the stuff that doesn’t matter or won’t be used for player evaluation and deal with only the metrics that matter to be able to teach the players this is what this is, this is what this means and this is how you can use it to get better.

We’ve had a tremendous response from the major league clubs on it. Initially, everybody has their portals and how they control their information, but they didn’t build them for development. They built them for evaluation and scouting. You can’t give the keys of the kingdom to a sixteen-year-old. But what we can do is take the in-game information the same way we do with the colleges and at the amateur level and provide them a very simple user interface.

A lot of the questions the clubs would have, and from an education standpoint, that’s what I spend my time on. What is this going to look like? How is it going to look for a pitching coach in Santo Domingo to be able to connect it with a sixteen-year-old and explain to him his vertical break? How is that going to happen? What is that going to look like?

MMO: It’s exciting that in a sense players are no longer bound by a natural ceiling anymore. We’ve seen players in their late twenties and early thirties improve (Rich Hill, J.D. Martinez, Justin Turner) by altering their approaches using analytics.

Updike: How about this: What if you had it before? One example is launch angle. You’ll hear people just ramble on about launch angle. What we’ve done is we’ve simplified this: damage.

I know the numbers at the professional level: 95, 10. Ninety-five miles per hour exit speed with a ten-degree grade of launch means you did damage. If it’s above that, you did damage. If it’s below, you didn’t. Well, because we’re the largest holder of amateur data on the planet, I’m able to run regressions at different levels of the game, whether it’s high school or college. We break it down granularly, too.

For Division I Power Five baseball, we can go to a coach and say, Forget the term launch angle. Let’s think about damage or no damage. Ninety-five, ten. Now when you’re in your practices and have your Trackman on the scoreboard and engaging your players in it, now it becomes a competition rather than just taking hacks during BP. The players are able to see in real-time on the field if they did damage or not. Now we’ve integrated the technology to where it becomes part of their feel aspect to it as well. It becomes not just technology, but holistic, and it’s easier to understand.

We’ve created a graph for when teams log into our software; the first thing they see and the narrative that we’ve pushed is it’s a battle for exit velocity. Did your team do damage, and did your defense and pitching win the battle of exit velocity against? All you’re trying to do is spread that. The larger the difference of the folds between it, the more successful your club’s going to be. The more that it’s average or equal, you probably have a middle-of-the-road club. If your exit velocity against is higher than your exit velocities from your offense, you’re not going to win.

It’s the 40/40/20 rule in our game: you win forty percent, lose forty percent, but that twenty percent is the difference between a first-place and last-place team. Well, that twenty percent is dictated by that battle for exit velocity. And now, all the different coaches that have different philosophies and backgrounds have a starting point of how statistics and analytics impacted our game but can adapt their existing coaching philosophy to that and blend it.

MMO: Can you describe a day in the life of a scout?

Updike: I’m going to tell you flat out: the Mets were a tremendous organization to work for, tremendous people to work with. My term personally – and I’ve got my Updike-isms – it was sort of a Montessori approach so that I could find my own way.

You have your area; there’s a lot of pre-planning that goes into it because we’ve got to figure out schedules, weather, national scouts that are coming in to get views on players, collection of videos, metrics, along with traditional scouting.

A day for me, let’s say I’ve got a 1:00 p.m. junior college game in Tampa. I’d wake up in Apopka, Florida, and I’d get up at six, and I’d drive two hours and get there three hours before the game. My goal is to be at the ballpark before the players get there so I can interact with the coaches.

For the player I’m targeting, I want to see what he does when he rolls into the park. What does he do when he gets out of his car? Is this guy prepared? Is he still asleep? If I’m going there to figure out if this guy can play, I’m not doing my job. I’m there because I know he can play; what I’m trying to figure out is who is this person and how is he going to adapt to us.

There’s this romanticized view of scouting, but the truth is its player acquisition. Does he fit into our system? Does he fit our values system? Is this a player that’s going to supersede the expectations, under-promise, and over-deliver?

I’d go to Tampa and get there early, watch him go through his work. Watch the game, finish the game, jump in the car and then I’ve got a high school game at 2 or 3 p.m. in Orlando. High school is a little bit different because there’s not as much early work and preparation. But same thing, get there as quickly as I can to learn as much about the player pre-game. Once I finish that one, I grab another coffee [Laughs], make some calls in the car and then I’ve got another game in Jacksonville that night. Same routine.

I would start the year with a list of roughly 120 players, and at the end, I traditionally turn in a lot of players because I like players. I’m not there to eliminate; I want as much volume as I can. My job is to set up the kid. The crosschecker’s job is to knock them down; their job is to find holes. If the kid is still standing, we’ve got the chance to acquire the player. It’s really as simple as that.

But rolling 50,000 miles on a vehicle would not be out of the question, along with a lot of really bad food. I survive on tobacco products and caffeine the entire time. [Laughs.]

We’re driven by this, not because we want a check. The money doesn’t equal the work; I do it because I want to be part of something larger than myself. But even more, some dude gave me the opportunity to play the game; some dude did the same thing that I did. John Ramey was a scout that drafted me, and this one human being had belief in me. This one individual changed the game for me and gave me the opportunity. I never really had to do anything but baseball since, and I appreciate that.

The reason I wanted to be a coach, and in particular a junior college coach, is my junior college coach, Tim Hill. I make this comment all the time that if it wasn’t for Hill, I’d be dead or in jail. He changed my life in a way that no individual ever did, he was a leader of men. You don’t realize it when you’re 23, but I’ll tell you what: when you have the opportunity to interact and impact lives, that’s where it comes from.

Most of the guys that are in the scouting industry have similar backgrounds, and that’s changed because of the industry. But you had something that affected you, and it drives you every day. It’s not that I’ve got to make a check or I’m going to get fired; I’ve never felt that way. If I did, I wouldn’t have done that job. I did it because I wanted to win, I wanted a World Series ring and I wanted to see guys have success.

The Jordan Humphreys‘ of the world, who’s now on the Mets’ 40-man roster, I selected him in the 18th round [in 2015]. I went to go see him in high school with my son, and nobody scouted this guy. Went to go see him one day, he was 84 and touched 86 mph. Not even close velocity-wise to what we were looking for. But he did one thing that was amazing to me: he had elite command. He could throw the ball wherever he wanted.

This kid from Crystal River, Florida, that nobody paid attention to, and two years later he’s in our top-30 prospects. We signed him for $150,000, and I had to fight for the extra $50K. And now this kid, who maybe three or four clubs turned in with reports, he’s on our 40-man. That’s what it’s about. We gave him the opportunity, and he made the most of it. Now, he’s in control of his destiny.

The opportunity is what’s important, and that’s the satisfaction that comes in it. I seem to be doing a lot of interviews, and from a scouting perspective, you don’t hear that a lot. There are not a lot of scouts that are in the media. There’s not a lot of thanks that come in our job. But the thanks come from when you see a kid progress and get better and have opportunities and take advantage of them. The way he has, the way Allan will in the future and Garrison Bryant for Brooklyn this year.

MMO: You brought up how most teams didn’t even scout Humphreys. Can you talk about your process for gathering information on players?

Updike: Networking and your contacts. For me, being a junior college coach in Florida, I had to deal with everybody because my competition is everybody. I’ve got a kid that commits to the University of Florida. Great, that means he’s on my list because something may happen. He might go there for a year and then comes to JC. Stuff happens.

You build your network of high school coaches, summer coaches, hell, Little League coaches and you listen. Our industry is so dependent on the circuit. If a kid fell off the circuit, clubs aren’t going to write the check for them.

Take Garrison Bryant, for example, who was in Brooklyn in 2019 and was the best damn starter we had there. I was actually going to go see another pitcher in our organization that I drafted, and they had matched up. I’m sitting there watching the kid that I’m supposed to be seeing that day, and then this kid rolls out there and he’s 6’3″, 185 pounds, had a good breaking ball and threw a ton of strikes. I’m like, this guy’s really interesting. Who is this kid?

I was the only scout at this game. Christian James was the one I was there to see, who not a lot of clubs were on. Then I saw Bryant, so I start working behind the scenes. I’m asking people, and they’re like, “Oh yeah, the quarterback. His mom is over there.”

I go over and start having a conversation with his mother. Not introducing myself as the Mets, but just asking some questions. The conversation starts, and the game ends up with both kids pitching really well, and I introduced myself to Garrison.

He was a quarterback at Clearwater High School and had a lot of success. They moved from the New England area to Florida specifically for him to play football. For Garrison, he committed to play college football, but he also knew with concussions – which he had a few – that he was probably going to be redshirted his first year so he could physically get better.

The more I looked at it, I just thought to myself, Here’s a big, strong athlete, and the only time he played baseball was during the high school season. He really didn’t play summer ball, fall ball or on the circuit because he had to spend seven months of the year pursuing football.

As we continued our conversations, I’d go in and I’d go to his house and talk with him on the phone a lot. It was, Here’s an idea for you, I believe in you. I believe that you can be a major league pitcher. If you have the opportunity to start your professional career, we can provide you incredible training and opportunity to get better. After three or four years, if this doesn’t work out, we’re paying for your education. You’ll be 22, a physical machine. If baseball doesn’t work out, you’ll be able to get whatever university you want to go to enroll, have your education paid for and play collegiate football. Hard to say no, and he said yes.

I’ll tell you what: he took his lumps his first couple of years; he had to do Kingsport twice because he was behind in his development. Then this year, he goes to Brooklyn and was a superstar. That’s the fun part of this.

I remember on day three of the draft, they made a board and called it Updike Day, because I would have these guys that nobody knew of, and we would sign them for the minimum amount of money, which doesn’t happen these days anymore. And then after two years, they went in our top 30. It was looking for that aspect of it; we’ve got to be masters of the obvious, but what the Mets did a great job of was allowing me to go through my process and my craziness and go after what I really loved, which was that outlier. What happens if this kid gets an opportunity? Is this the type of kid that’s going to make the most of this? Sometimes it doesn’t work out.

As an organization, we had more tenth-round ranked prospects than all major league teams combined. From a scouting perspective, the first ten rounds of the draft are because of the crosscheckers and the front office; the eleventh round on are for the area guys, that’s where you make your name. The Mets did a great job of understanding that, and they had a history of doing that well. Steve Barningham, who was my first crosschecker and actually brought me into the Mets organization, was something that he had always stressed to me. That was a wonderful aspect of it.

MMO: It also must be so rewarding for you.

Updike: I was in Miami for Pete’s first home run. I was able to sit behind home plate, and it was satisfying. But I knew what this kid was going to accomplish.

When we shored up the 40-man roster, I was actually driving through Iowa, and Humphreys called me. And first, it’s like being a dad; my heart drops from my stomach. I answered the phone, and you could hear it in his voice, and he said, “I did it; I made the 40-man. They put me on the 40-man roster!”

I had to pull over to the side, and I’m tearing up right now! Understanding where that guy came from, what he’s done and what he’s had to go through.

We have a 23-year-old, a kid the same age as someone coming out of college, that nobody knew and really identified and clubs passed on fifteen times. And if we didn’t take him, there’s a good chance no one would’ve taken him in the draft! And he’s on our 40-man roster; that’s amazing. That’s the beauty of our game.

He wasn’t a PG All-American; he wasn’t on the cover of Baseball America. But he’s on the 40-man roster. He has the chance to impact the major league club, and that’s what it’s all about.

MMO: Thanks so much for your time, Jon. Best of luck with BaseballCloud!

Updike: I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Reminder that you can read part one of this interview here.

The post MMO Exclusive: Jon Updike Talks Life of a Scout appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Former Mets’ area scouting supervisor Jon Updike believes in paying it forward.

As a former 28th-round pick by the Seattle Mariners in the 1993 MLB Draft, Updike reflects fondly on the scout, John Ramey, who took the chance on him as a reliever and offered Updike all he could ask for: an opportunity.

After his professional playing career was over, in which he spent time with the Mariners, Milwaukee Brewers and Texas Rangers organizations, Updike transitioned into a college baseball coach in Florida. The connections and relationships Updike built in Florida led him back to professional baseball, where the New York Mets hired him as their area scouting supervisor in North and Central Florida in 2014.

Updike’s new career offered him the chance to afford opportunities to young players, just as Ramey had done more than two decades prior for him.

The life of a scout includes logging a ton of miles on the road while traveling from game to game, building relationships with coaches, players and families, and doing extensive scouting work on why a particular player should merit an organization to sign him.

While scouting can often be a thankless job, remaining in the background while the talent they scouted and signed hopes to see their dreams imagined, Updike’s name was often mentioned throughout the 2019 season.

That’s because one of the players he signed back in 2016 burst onto the scene, surpassing Aaron Judge for the single-season rookie home run record while becoming the sixth Met to win Rookie of the Year: Pete Alonso.

Part of Updike’s job as a scout was to not only identify tools and projections but also assess a player’s work ethic and makeup. Those traits stood out for Updike when he was scouting Alonso, as he saw a player that not only had the talent but also the composure to handle the large media market that is New York.

In last year’s draft, Updike was responsible for signing Matt Allan out of Seminole High School in Sanford, Florida, in the third round. The right-handed pitcher was considered to be a potential first-round talent on many draft boards, but fell with concerns of his asking price along with his commitment to the University of Florida.

The Mets restructured their draft and were able to save money from their draft pool by signing college seniors in rounds four through ten for below-slot bonuses to help meet Allan’s demands.

This past November, SNY’s Andy Martino reported that Updike left the organization to begin his next chapter as President of Digital Scouting and Player Development Solutions for BaseballCloud, a software company that offers technical, data-driven solutions for players and clubs.

BaseballCloud digests in-game metrics from multiple technologies and accessories and is then presented in a way that’s easy to understand in order to track progress and areas for a player to work on.

BaseballCloud was designed for players and coaches as an easy-to-read development tool that allows users to store and track their data and progress. That tracking of progress is what Updike refers to as player mapping. The analysis BaseballCloud provides allows players and coaches to view their data with 3D visualizations and graphics that are easy to grasp and utilize for a player’s development.

The hope is that BaseballCloud allows for more impact on the development of amateur players, getting them more accustomed to the data and metrics while consistently tracking their progress using their revolutionary software.

Updike’s new occupation incorporates his extensive scouting background with analytics to provide custom visualization tools that transform how data is used at the amateur levels.

While he’s no longer affiliated with a specific Major League organization, Updike now has the chance to impact even more young athletes hoping for the chance to one day make it professionally.

He hopes the software will help propel amateur players to reach even more of their potentials while providing them with all he could ask for in his own professional playing career, and what he afforded to many players in the Mets organization: an opportunity.

I had the privilege of speaking with Updike this past December, where he talked about his life as a scout and new role with BaseballCloud. This interview has been split into two parts given its length.

MMO: Can you talk about BaseballCloud and your role with the company?

Updike: I’m the president of Digital Scouting and Player Development Solutions. What that really means is we’re basically a software company; we digest the in-game capture, which would be at the professional level Trackman, FlightScope and Yakkertech. We’re working right now with Hawkeye and the accessory technologies like bat sensors, biometric sensors and camera vision.

We’re the people that can blend the technology, and we’re working at creating solutions to what the tech or the metrics means from a player development and player identification value standpoint.

MMO: Your background is in scouting, and fans have long heard about the old guard vs. new guard when it comes to baseball decisions. Have you been interested in and utilized analytics in your work for some time now?

Updike: Yeah. I have a playing background, and I’ve kind of touched on everything as a player and coach. It’s part of our game in scouting and player acquisition.

I think sometimes the narrative and impression of our game is every major league club has an analytics and R&D department. But there are 30 clubs, and there’s still a first-place and last-place club. Just because you have it doesn’t mean it’s going to make you good. You have to understand the information, digest it, understand just not how to apply it but how to use it to get players better.

We’re the largest provider of software solutions to Division I programs. I come from a scouting standpoint and understand where they’re at from a player’s standpoint because we were scouting the players. But what are the universities doing from a technology standpoint? Major League Baseball uses the technology first in an evaluative process so that you can value and evaluate the player. But it’s also from a player acquisition standpoint; it’s financial. That’s why a lot of technology exists, so they can make better financial decisions.

That’s not the main goal at the collegiate level. The main goal is to develop better players. It’s also a smaller group of players that they have to deal with, so you’re able to grow a player to your coaching and technological philosophy over a four-year period, which is a really unique study.

We have some schools that we partnered with, and it’s amazing. I’m a scout, so I like to group things and I’m a maker of lists. It’s like the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria. There are clubs that are on the first boat, and the advantage of being there is you get off and you’ve got the lay of the land. You get to pick what you want, and you’re the leader. But along with that comes the risk of errors.

The majority, and what we’re seeing in professional baseball, is that second group. They’re going to adapt, and we’re seeing it with a lot of the hirings on the player development end. It’s not that they want pushback or they don’t want to do it, but it’s got to be a good financial decision, but secondary to that is they don’t want to be wrong.

The truth is we’re still in the third inning. The machines are incredible, but they’re adapting in proving accuracy issues. There are questions to what a lot of the information means, because now we’re going from game metrics to biometrics, and quite honestly, we’re not doctors. With the new technology, it’s going to be this plethora of information, and once again, how are you going to use it? Is it going to be evaluative? Or is it going to be used for developmental purposes?

Our main goal is to aid in steering it toward development and maximizing that aspect of it. But the same thing, as technology becomes more affordable and there are more machines out there to gather information on players, our job and our software at BaseballCloud digests it all. What we’re able to do is track a player, not just for a singular at-bat, but track a player over time.

We see a time where a seven-year-old goes and buys his first bat because there’ll be swing sensors in every bat probably within the next three years. The player registers, and from the time he’s seven, every league and tournament he plays in, all of that info that we’re able to capture on that player feeds into one place. It creates the story of that player and allows for interaction, which for us, is a unique approach for growth. It’s the mapping of the player and their story.

MMO: How did you become a scout with the Mets?

Updike: I was a junior college coach in Florida, and junior college baseball in Florida is the best in the country. They have tremendous players, and a lot of the programs have produced many major league players as most Division I schools or more.

I had several major league players: Dee Gordon, Mike Clevinger and Brett Oberholtzer. We had tremendous players that we were able to work with.

For me and my playing career, I ended up playing at a junior college in Florida, and it was a wonderful route to go. There are a lot of networks that we have at that level because you’re dealing a tremendous amount with professional clubs and also dealing with universities. It was just a natural fit.

The opportunity came from the Mets, and I had seen a million kids, and you’re on the road a lot traveling and scouting. It’s a lot of sacrifice from that standpoint, and I needed to be at a point where my kids were old enough for me to be able to be away. The Mets were wonderful in the area that I had, and I did get home every night. And that meant a lot. So we decided to go that route.

MMO: You signed Pete Alonso back in 2016. Can you talk about what you saw from Alonso early on, and just the overall process of scouting him?

Updike: Pete’s a tremendous story. At the end of the day, from a scouting perspective, our job is to scout and evaluate tools. With Pete, he has an eighty tool. When we scout amateur players, the first thing we’re looking at are tools. He has a double plus tool with power.

You identify tools, and everybody understood that the kid could hit the ball a country mile, but what type of individual is this going to be? What type of work ethic does he have? How easily is he going to be able to adapt? Specifically, in our case, where the Mets have to take into consideration that this kid’s going to play on the largest stage in the world and in one of the craziest media markets. Is he going to be able to handle it?

Throughout the history of the Mets organization, there have been some guys who haven’t been able to handle it. That’s where the makeup aspect becomes so important. And even for us in the scouting process, obviously, we have checks and balances of how we identify the players. At the end of the day, we have to be the experts in the industry on that player to pull the trigger and make those kinds of commitments for a player that’s taken in that spot. Matt Allan kind of shadows that as well.

Matthew Allan/Photo by Ed Delany, MMO

MMO: Can you talk about scouting and eventually signing Matt Allan? With Allan being advised by Scott Boras, and with leverage of going to school if he didn’t get his target bonus, why were you so sure Allan was going to sign?

Updike: He moved from California to Florida and came on the scene. Guys who play in Florida have the highest density of talent in the country. From Tampa to Orlando up to Jacksonville, that’s what my job was: to understand everything that happened in that area.

With Matt, he’s a tremendous athlete. As he progressed, there’s something that you see that grabs your attention.

Once again, it takes a village to acquire a player. A good friend of mine and former Met, John Hendricks, was a pitching coach at Wake Forest and had a relationship with this kid. John had a relationship with him because he worked with USA Baseball and was able to be in the dugout with him as a pitching coach, and we would share information.

I was able to spend time with Matt and express to him not just that you’re a good kid and we’re scouting you and some of the base things. It was really pitching the idea of what we were capable of doing from the development of pitchers, our history of it, guys we have at the big league level and the players that we’ve acquired through the draft and the minors that are superseding expectations.

This is what pitchers will be in the future from the high school perspective. There wasn’t a deep development or a lot of projection with it; he already had full understanding. He was our level of comparison; we’re not scouting the pitchers from Division I programs, the top guys in the country. I look at their work ethic, their plan, their mapping; I always think of it as player mapping. Where they’re at, where they’re going to get to, how they’re going to get there. What’s the route that they can take to the big leagues, and what are the challenges that they’re going to face?

A lot of things that have to be introduced, such as arm care, nutrition, throwing patterns, workloads that they have. This kid is a machine. He was on a level beyond where a lot of the college pitchers were as far as self-awareness and ability to work. Quite honestly, because of that quality plan and dedication, he was ahead of the college kids and some professional pitchers as far as awareness and commitment to the plan.

With Matt, and obviously with Orlando being such a high-density area, a kid that grows up in Central Florida, a better player will have exposure to guys that have won Cy Young Awards and being able to work out with them. The place that Matt’s working out right now, you’re in there, and there’s the Mariners’ top pitching prospect working out with him. You have roughly 15 professional pitchers that roll in at nine in the morning and are grinding it out, getting their offseason work in.

It’s a mindset and he has it. That was the thing that was super appealing to me. A kid that has that level of commitment that early in his life and can express his plan, not eye-washed but truly that you can tell this kid lives this.

From a pitching standpoint, the draft in professional baseball offers protection. It offers some financial protection. Many don’t realize that we pay for their college education, all of it. Even with me going back to the nineties, it’s how I got my education. I got done playing, and now what the hell am I going to do? Well, part of my signing bonus was college. It allowed me to be a college coach and a scout and continue my life. It wasn’t you’re out of the minor leagues two years now, you need to go hang the drywall. The perception is not the reality.

When you really think about it at the college level, the NCAA only allows 11.7 scholarships at the Power Five schools. Every kid that plays college baseball is paying to play college baseball; there are no free rides. If you throw a baseball for a living, you’re going to have an injury at some point. Professional baseball offers better protection for those guys, and Matt realizes that.

My belief is that not a lot of things really have to line up. He has that type of talent, work ethic and stuff to be an impact player. With that kind of player, it’s also appealing because you’re seeing now under the new models of finances in the way baseball is, it provides multiple paydays. We’re seeing great examples of that where guys are getting a quarter of billion-dollar contracts. There’s your appeal. I want to get there because I’m capable of doing this.

Matt is an elite talent that somewhere down the road could put himself in that position. It’s not just, Hey, I want to be a pro player. Matt has the goal of wanting to be the best pitcher on the planet. And maybe he’s not going to come out and state things like that, but you can tell through their presence, work and ability. That’s what set me off.

You can tell. You do this long enough, you can tell through their eyes. Are you excited, or are you scared? This kid’s excited.

Follow Jon Updike on Twitter, @Updikej33

Learn more about BaseballCloud here. Part Two of this interview will be available later this week.

The post MMO Exclusive: Former Mets Scout Jon Updike Talks Alonso, Allan appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Every so often you might peruse through the Mets minor league statistics, see who’s on a hitting streak, latest pitching highlights, or how the teams are faring in the standings. I for one love to go on MiLB.com and dissect some minor league numbers, as all of us try to predict who might have a future with our beloved ball club.

Which makes me wonder, why do some players that clearly have commendable stats to be given a chance to prove their worth, not get the call-ups? Why are some players perennially stuck in a baseball limbo if you will, between Double A and Triple A? Especially when said players have distinguished their abilities not just in one season, but over several productive years.

A name I’ve been hearing about for some time now is Thomas Javier Rivera, or T.J. Rivera for short. Rivera was undrafted out of Troy University in Alabama in 2011, and a week later signed on with the Mets as a free agent. It’s surprising no one took a chance on Rivera in the draft, in the three years he played college ball at Wallace Community College and Troy University, Rivera put up a combined slash line of .320/.368/.466, good for an OPS of .834. He only struck out 51 times in 631 at-bats, and in his senior year at Troy, he had 24 walks compared to 14 strikeouts.

Since his time in the Mets farm system, Rivera has been a jack-of-all-trades, playing all over the infield throughout the various minor league levels. His best statistical position appears to be second base, where he owns a lifetime fielding percentage of .975. He’s not the fleetest of infielders, yet he can hold his own quite well wherever he’s placed. Binghamton Mets hitting coach Luis Natera spoke about Rivera’s fielding prowess last season.

“He’s a steady fielder,” Natera said. “He’s not a Gold Glover, but he’s steady, can turn a double play. He has average range, he just needs to be a little quicker.”

What’s appealing about Rivera besides his versatility in the field is his bat, and penchant for getting on base. Here’s Rivera’s OBP the last four seasons in the minors:

2015 –  .364

2014 –  .388

2013 –   .348

2012 –   .372

Rivera’s minor league OBP is .366, which is rather impressive when comparing to current members of the Mets infield. Wilmer Flores for example had a minor league OBP of .334. Ruben Tejada had a .338 OBP. Newly acquired Neil Walker’s was .323. Only Lucas Duda (.380) and David Wright (.391) had higher minor league career OBP than Rivera.

The 2014 and 2015 seasons were two of his best statistical years. Splitting time between St. Lucie and Binghamton in ’14, Rivera compiled a slash line of .349/.388/.446, with an OPS of .834. He also knocked in 75 runs, and scored 70 times. In ’15, Rivera split time with Binghamton and Las Vegas, where his stat line was .325/.364/.449, with an OPS of .814. Rivera’s RBI total was down from the previous year at 48, but he still scored 63 runs.

Clearly his offensive abilities has stayed very consistent year in and year out. Last year, when speaking to the NY Post, ex-Mets vice-president of player development and scouting Paul DePodesta had this to say about Rivera’s offense.

“He’s just a really good baseball player who has excellent barrel control,” said DePodesta. “He centers up more baseballs than most anybody in the minor leagues.”

Unfortunately for Rivera it doesn’t seem like he’ll get a chance with the Mets. He’s moved down the totem pole of backup infielders, with guys like Matt Reynolds, Dilson Herrera, Gavin Cecchini, and Ruben Tejada holding precedent over him. And now with Flores being the super utility guy on the team, Rivera might need a change of scenery to get a shot at the big leagues.

Rivera should hope for a chance at the big leagues soon, even if that’s not with the Mets. When he played with Binghamton last year, he was 1.6 years older than the average Double A player. Rivera turned 27 when the Mets opened their World Series bid against the Kansas City Royals on October 27^th.

Rivera understands that his chances are growing smaller with the rise of infield prospects the Mets have along with the exciting middle-infield talent at lower levels such as Amed Rosario, Luis Carpio, Milton Ramos, Luis Guillorme, and Gregory Guerrero. Here’s what Rivera said last year on how he’s had to prove himself every year, especially considering he went undrafted.

“I figured it was going to be a little harder for me to move up the rankings. I knew that coming in, so I was expecting I had to prove myself over and over.”

Rivera seems to have a positive attitude while he goes about doing what he does best, hitting for a high average and getting on base. He was invited to spring training as a non-roster invitee for the first time this year, which has to raise his hopes up some. If nothing else, he provides added insurance for the Mets in the minor leagues, and hopes to make an impression, whether that’s with the only team he has been apart of, or with another. The Spring offers a chance for him to showcase his talents to a plethora of scouts in attendance, with hopes of maybe someday exhibiting those gaudy on-base numbers in the Major Leagues.

The post Where’s The Love For T.J. Rivera? appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

According to the New York Post’s Joel Sherman, Paul DePodesta will be leaving the Mets front office to join the Cleveland Browns as chief strategy officer.

In his new role, DePodesta will be essentially running the football side of the franchise, reporting directly to owner Jimmy Haslam. According to ESPN’s Chris Mortensen, DePodesta will be independent of newly-hired executive vice president of football operations Sashi Brown. DePodesta will presumably be tasked with bringing some of his analytics experience to the Browns front office.

DePodesta has been with the Mets since the hiring of Sandy Alderson before the 2011 season. During his five years, he has run the scouting and player development side of the organization, helping to develop players like Zack Wheeler, Noah Syndergaard, Travis d’Arnaud, and Matt Harvey.

DePodesta had a rocky two-year tenure as general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2004 and 2005, his only experience as head of a professional sports team. In 2004, he guided the team to its first division title since 1988, but was gone after a 71-win season in 2005. DePodesta has also worked for the Cleveland Indians, Oakland Athletics, and San Diego Padres.

This would not be the first time DePodesta has ventured outside of baseball. He has worked for the Baltimore Stallions of the Canadian Football League and the Baltimore Bandits of the American Hockey League. He also played both football and baseball while studying economics at Harvard University.

DePodesta’s departure could have long-term ramifications for the Mets’ front office. DePodesta was the presumed heir to Sandy Alderson as general manager. He has been a close aide to Alderson throughout the Mets’ rebuilding process and made major changes on the player development side.

“Paul completely reorganized the Mets scouting and player development functions and had an extraordinary impact in both areas, but he was also very directly involved in our trade and free agent acquisitions,” Alderson said in a statement, “His commitment to excellence and his passion for innovation will be missed by the Mets and all of Baseball.”

Jeff Wilpon also released a statement, saying: “Working with Sandy, Paul put into process a new approach toward player development throughout our organization. Ownership and all of us at the Mets thank Paul for his tireless efforts. We look forward to seeing Paul’s continued success with the Browns.”

DePodesta certainly left a big mark on the organization and baseball as a whole. He now leaves the Mets with some big shoes to fill.

The post Paul DePodesta Leaving Mets To Run Cleveland Browns appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

(Updated 11/16)

With Daniel Murphy having played his last game with the New York Mets, it appears the team is “very serious” about Dilson Herrera being the starting second baseman next season, according to Adam Rubin of ESPN New York.

Rubin adds that the plan this offseason for the Mets is to find a backup infielder who can cover second base, but that Herrera has the everyday job.

VP of Player Development Paul DePodesta gave Rubin a quick assessment of Herrera while at the GM Meetings in Boca Raton.

“He always hit,” DePodesta said. “He’s got excellent bat speed. He’s shown some control of the strike zone. For a smaller guy, he does a lot of damage. And he also plays with a lot of life. This is a guy with a lot of energy, both offensively and defensively. I think it rubs off on his teammates.”

DePodesta stopped short of anointing Herrera the Opening Day second baseman. “It’s still a long way from now until April, and we don’t know all the different opportunities that may present themselves between now and then. It’s certainly an option for us.”

Last week, Sandy Alderson called Herrera “a viable alternative” to replace Murphy, and that it’s very likely they will open the season with a middle-infield combination of Wilmer Flores, Ruben Tejada and the 21-year old Herrera.

The Mets have regarded Herrera as their second baseman of the future ever since he was acquired in 2013 from the Pirates in a deal that sent Marlon Byrd and John Buck to Pittsburgh for Herrera and reliever Vic Black.

Herrera, batted .327 with a .382 OBP and .511 slugging in 364 plate appearances with Triple-A Las Vegas last season. He collected 23 doubles, 11 home runs, 50 RBI, 60 runs scored, and 13 stolen bases as the youngest player in the Pacific Coast League.

While he’s been a little overwhelmed at times in his two cups of coffee in the majors, he has shown some flashes of power hitting six home runs in 149 at-bats, and his short compact swing has drawn the praise of his manager at Las Vegas, Wally Backman.

“For Dilson, it’s just a matter of working in all aspects of the game. He shows lots and lots of promise. Just the energy he brings to the game, the way he plays the game, the nice swing. He’s just a kid still. I know other people have said it — and I believe it, too — I think the kid, at some point in time, can be an All-Star.”

It looks like Herrera will get a full shot next season, so not sure about the rumors that Mets are making a strong push for Ben Zobrist or any other everyday alternatives out there.

The post Mets “Very Serious” About Dilson Herrera As Their Second Baseman Next Season appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Mets minor league pitcher Seth Lugo has gone unnoticed for most of his career, but he is now starting to gain more recognition due to an impressive start to the 2015 season.

In 19.2 innings for Double-A Binghamton, Lugo is 2-0 with a stellar 1.37 ERA.

During his last outing on Tuesday, Lugo allowed just one run and five hits in 6.2 innings.

“He certainly has major league potential,” Paul DePodesta, the Mets VP of player development and amateur scouting, said.

“He’s certainly showing right now he has the stuff to start. I think he has the repertoire to do it.” (Mike Vorkunov, NJ.com)

As the Mets 34th round pick in 2011, Lugo overcame a lot adversity to make it this far.

Lugo did not even expect to get selected, but he caught the attention of Mets’ scout Jimmy Nelson.

Nelson eventually convinced amateur scout Tommy Jackson to invite Lugo to a workout two weeks before the draft.

“When I say I didn’t see him till late, that’s what I meant,” Jackson said. “I didn’t see him till late. It was late, late. Sure enough, he’s telling the truth. We got him out of that workout.”

Lugo also underwent a major surgery in 2012  to repair displaced vertebra in his spine, which cost him the entire season.

In his first year back on the mound in 2013, Lugo flashed a lot of potential with a  2.53 ERA and 1.13 WHIP while pitching for Single-A Savannah and Single-A Brooklyn.

“When he came back from rehab he kind of came back a different animal,” Jackson said. “He really was focused.”

“I think to some degree we’re all a little – I think he’s exceeded expectations,” Jackson said.

“He exceeded the general expectations of any other 34th round draft pick.”

The post Prospect Pulse: Seth Lugo Exceeding Expectations appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

MiLB.com recently published an article ranking the Mets organizational all-stars by position The article included analysis from the Mets Vice President of Player Development, Paul DePodesta.  Here is what he had to say about the Mets top prospects.

Kevin Plawecki: “We were really pleased with the year he had,” said Paul DePodesta, the club’s vice president of player development, said. “Spent the first half of the year in Double-A and didn’t really miss a beat, then went up to Triple-A and continued to perform very well. For a guy that was drafted just in 2012, we’re extremely pleased with how quickly he’s made it through the system. He’s continued to make progress offensively and defensively. Offensively, we’re starting to see some of the power that we always believed was there. Defensively, he’s a strong receiver and his throwing is starting to get better. ”

Dilson Herrera: “I’d say he exceeded our expectations,” he said. “We were excited about him when we traded for him the year before — thought he had a good chance to go to Double-A at some point during the course of 2014, but I don’t think any of us imagined he’d be as productive as he was when he got to Double-A and then be able to make the jump all the way to the big leagues. It was a huge year for him and he had a great, great year. We have very high hopes for him.”

Matt Reynolds: “He went to our offseason training program and he also did some things with his swing to make it shorter and more compact last winter,” DePodesta said of Reynolds, who turned 24 on Wednesday. “It was a combination of all those factors. He certainly showed he can handle the pitching out there and had a tremendous year for us.”

Brandon Nimmo: “I think, given his age and plate discipline, we felt like he had a real foundation for success, and as he continued to move through our system and sort of gained strength, he was going to take off,” DePodesta said. “That’s exactly what happened this year. I think the most encouraging thing about this year was that, not only did he have a big year and continued that successm, he not only maintained his plate discipline, it actually got better. While his power went up, his strikeout rate went down.

Marcos Molina: “He’s a guy we obviously like an awful lot,” DePodesta said. “We felt like he was going to throw hard one day. He’s an incredibly good athlete and has a good feel for the baseball. He attacks with his fastball. Over the last two years, his fastball has continued to jump in velocity. This year he made big strides in understanding his own stuff and how to limit damage and went out and had a good year. I think he has a chance to be a top-of-the-rotation guy — mid-90s fastball, secondary stuff is solid now. Very excited about him.”

Steven Matz: “I think the two things for me that stand out are one — he’s very mature for his age in terms of his work ethic, his competitiveness. Talk about a guy who rises to the occasion — every big game this guy is just nails. What turned out to be the championship game at Double-A, he’s got a no-hitter going. When it’s on the line, he gets that much better. The second thing is he can really pitch with his fastball. Guys just don’t square it up. That foundation with attacking guys with the fastball — that’s going to serve him well in the big leagues and why I think he’s awfully close to the big leagues.”

Akeel Morris: “The stuff was there, plus fastball, plus-plus changeup — it’s devastating,” DePodesta said. “It’s hard to pick up, it’s a 15-mile per hour differential. In previous years he didn’t have a lot of experience — we just wanted to give him mound time. I think his hits against… they were like video game numbers.”

Hat tip to MMO reader Bo Beck for the link.

The post Paul DePodesta Weighs In On Several Mets Prospects appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Omar Minaya, VP of Baseball Operations for San Diego Padres on Draft Day.

Erik Boland of Newsday is reporting that the New York Yankees are considering adding former Mets general manager Omar Minaya in a high ranking front office position.

According to Boland, Yankees GM Brian Cashman is very close with Minaya who is currently serving as the senior vice president of baseball operations for the San Diego Padres.

It’s not clear what role Minaya would fill, but Boland points out he could replace VP of baseball operations Mark Newman who recently retired.

Of course, he could also take on a role similar to that of Paul DePodesta with the Mets as a VP in charge of scouting and player development.

Minaya was the GM of the Mets from 2005 until he was fired in 2010. He’s been the focus of media attention in the past 18 months after the emergence of All Stars Matt Harvey and Daniel Murphy, and most recently Jacob deGrom, Jenrry Mejia, Jeurys Familia, Juan Lagares, Wilmer Flores and Lucas Duda, many of whom now form the new core of Sandy Alderson’s Mets. 

While with the Mets, the team had four winning seasons in six, and won a 2006 NL East Title, coming within one out of the World Series.

The post Yankees Considering Omar Minaya For High Ranking Front Office Position appeared first on Metsmerized Online.