This is the portion of the summer when scouts across Major League Baseball return to their roots, switching from studying other big-league teams for potential trades to scouring through each others' systems. They're untucking their Hawaiian shirts, radar guns and binoculars in tow, and laying eyes on as many prospects as possible, often riding a single system all the way up from Class A to the bigs.
I ran into one such scout this week, a man I've known and trusted for many years, and he'd just completed such all the way up the Pirates' system for his American League employer.
He wasn't about to share his body of work with me -- and I won't share his identity with you, for equally obvious reasons -- but he did offer a few thoughts that fans of the local franchise might find worthwhile, and here are a handful:
• Oneil Cruz should stay at shortstop. This was spoken with pound-the-table firmness. Yeah, Cruz is 6-7 and looks like a redwood out there, but he strikingly "gets under the ball," per the scout, something I'd noticed myself this spring in Bradenton. The scout's stance is that Cruz's power bat and bullet arm could make for a spectacular asset in Pittsburgh if he can stay where he is rather than tailing conventional wisdom and being shifted to right field or first base.
• There's too much positional shifting through all affiliates. I've heard this from others, as well. There's such an emphasis on versatility, including at the top level by Derek Shelton, that prospects can spend so much energy learning to apply alternating skill sets in the field, which any and all advanced analytics will attest aren't nearly as important as what they do at the plate. The Pirates, the scout insisted, would be better served letting their kids focus first on hitting.
• The general talent pool at Class A Greensboro, which is viewed by many inside and outside the organization as the linchpin of the future, is "ordinary," per the scout. There was no elaboration on this, and I'm not sure what to make of it myself considering that's where highly regarded second baseman Nick Gonzales, shortstop Liover Peguero, starting pitcher Quinn Priester and now-injured No. 1 overall pick Henry Davis have been.
• In stark contrast, the scout liked what he saw with Class AA Altoona, where the current lineup is crushing all comers. The slugger who stood out, unsurprisingly, was Mason Martin, whose 21 home runs accompany a .254/.333/.529 slash line and might, per the scout, offset his unsightly 135 strikeouts in 342 at-bats. The pop in the bat, he said, is real and can play at higher levels.
• The system's "better, for sure," he broadly concluded, affirming the Pirates' recent rise into most services' top five systems, but again without taking it too far and without elaborating.
Don't take any of this, please, for more than what it is: All 30 teams have multiple people in this role, plus all of their statistical analysts back home. Each scout's one piece -- an important one, but still one -- of the data bank that gets built. And each comes, naturally, with inherent biases, backgrounds, etc. But I thought it'd been neat to get one glance from one outside perspective.
MORE PIRATES
• While director of sports medicine Todd Tomczyk avoided declaring his season over earlier this week, it sure looks doubtful that Davis will be able to get back into games before Greensboro’s season wraps on Sept. 19. An oblique injury shouldn’t keep him away from any instructional leagues, though, and if the goal was to give him a taste of professional ball this season, then it was accomplished. -- Alex Stumpf at PNC Park
• One last note on the Gregory Polanco waivers saga: He was actually placed on waivers while playing right field against the Cardinals last Sunday, which is why news broke shortly after the game completed. Don’t read into that though, because it’s just a paperwork move. Waivers needs to be filed to the league by a certain time, and since the Pirates were playing a getaway day game, he just so happened to be on the field while also being dangled to all the other teams. Of course, nothing came from this because no team wanted to take on the remaining $2+ million in his salary and $3 million buyout for next season. -- Stumpf
• With the bullpen being drastically shaken up following the trade deadline, Duane Underwood Jr. has started to be used in more of a leverage role again, especially as a bridge to the backend relievers. So far, he’s done well, allowing just one earned run over his last eight appearances, totaling 15 ⅓ innings. While his 4.19 ERA on the year is hardly sparkling, it drops to 3.26 if you omit his July, a month where his mechanics fell out of sync and he was hit hard. He was given a week to tighten things up with pitching coach Oscar Marin and bullpen coach Justin Meccage, not being used in a game, and the results have definitely improved. “It was more about getting back to being a better athlete,” Underwood was telling me. “One of my better attributes is being an athlete. Just being quick, being fast and being explosive… It’s cleaned up a lot of things mechanically that I had troubles with in the past.” -- Stumpf
STEELERS
• Dwayne Haskins let something slip Wednesday that was interesting and a bit of a shot at his previous coaches, Jay Gruden and Ron Rivera. Haskins was asked what the difference is between Pittsburgh and Washington, where he played for both Gruden and Rivera. "Coach (Mike) Tomlin does a great job of giving a scouting report of who you are playing that week. I never really had that before," Haskins said. "As far as being able to know who is the senior analysis coach, who is the defensive coordinator, who is the DB coach, what does he like to do, what techniques do the corners play. We get that all before we even come in to practice that week. That is cool to have a great jump start of what you are looking at and what you are seeing." Some hopped on the first part of that statement as Haskins saying other teams didn't do scouting reports. What he actually meant was that perhaps the other coaching staffs with which he has worked didn't go into the detail the same way the Steelers do. So, maybe that's where the difference lies. But it certainly raised some eyebrows. It also flies in the face of the complaint some Steelers fans have about Mike Tomlin not having his team prepared to play. -- Dale Lolley in Charlotte, N.C.
• T.J. Watt has quietly started to ramp up his work on the side -- not that he hasn't been working already. But since the team returned to the UPMC-Rooney Sports Complex, he's doing even more running than before and he's been wearing the GPS monitor that measures how many steps he's run. Even if a contract doesn't get completed soon -- and it could be done as early as this weekend -- there is an expectation that he will return to practice on a regular basis next week. The Steelers will practice Monday through Wednesday before Tomlin gives players off the long holiday weekend. -- Lolley
• The Steelers began working on calling plays with a silent count during practice last week at Heinz Field and will continue to do so. But the true test will be Sept. 12 in Buffalo when the Steelers will face the Bills in a completely full Highmark Stadium. Tomlin knows this, but he also knows Thursday night's game isn't a good test run for that. Tomlin said Tuesday he hoped for a hostile environment in Charlotte. But being a realist, he also knew that was unlikely. When asked about that as he walked away from the podium, Tomlin turned around and said, "That place is probably going to be half full with people who moved down there from here," he said. He then added, "We'll probably see some Kordell (Stewart) jerseys in the stadium." They certainly won't see many of those in Buffalo. -- Lolley
• It wouldn't surprise me to see a player traded by the Steelers this weekend. Who is the most likely candidate? Veteran punter Jordan Berry. Berry has had a good preseason and his contract, one year with a base salary of $990,000 isn't awful. Tampa Bay (Bradley Pinion), Green Bay (JK Scott) and Las Vegas (Corliss Waitman) are all teams with either unproven punters -- in the case of Waitman, who couldn't beat out Berry in Pittsburgh last season -- or middling veterans. Berry was 15th in the league in net and gross average in 2020, while also tying for 10th in punts placed inside the opposing 20 with 23. The latter stat is actually good considering he didn't punt the first five games of last season after being released by the Steelers. Some have suggest Eric Ebron could be traded, but there's a very big reason that won't happen. Ebron counts $4.6 million against the team's salary cap if he's on the roster. If he's not on the roster, he counts $7.38 million in dead money. So it would cost the Steelers nearly $3 million more against their cap to not have Ebron on the roster. -- Lolley
• Antoine Brooks being waived/injured earlier this week caught plenty of people by surprise. But it probably shouldn't have necessarily done so. Brooks had missed the past two weeks because of injury, then returned on Tuesday, only to, according to sources, leave again on the hot, humid day. The Steelers just weren't going to wait for him. They can bring him back at some point once he's healthy. But Tomlin often praises players for their conditioning. And suffering a hamstring injury and then pulling yourself out of practice with a job on the line was not a good look for Brooks. And the Steelers weren't about to place him on injured reserve or hold a roster spot for him. Players placed on injured reserve in the preseason have to stay there all season. And to get a player on IR once the season begins to be able to bring them back at some point, the player has to be on the initial 53-man roster, meaning another player would have had to have been exposed to waivers. -- Lolley
Dave Molinari is on vacation.
