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Post by burythehammer on May 14, 2016 15:27:12 GMT -5
Nobody was unaware of Ockimey's existence, yet we had him much higher than people who had merely watched him hit. Again, you don't know this. It's a huge assumption. How do you know Ockimey wouldn't have been taken with the very next pick if we hadn't taken him? "Well because BA didn't rank him and they reflect the industry", the only problem with that is none of us knew the Red Sox liked him either until they drafted him.
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nomar
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Post by nomar on May 14, 2016 16:32:01 GMT -5
Assumption city
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radiohix
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Post by radiohix on May 14, 2016 16:36:50 GMT -5
He'll make a nice piece of trade come the deadline. *duck tomatoes*
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Post by Chris Hatfield on May 14, 2016 17:34:48 GMT -5
I dunno, Denney, Cody Kukuk, Drake Britton, even Michael Kopech. Again: I can believe that makeup is important to the front office, but every time a player outperforms expectations, I don't think it's fair to attribute it to makeup or psychology or neuroscouting or any other secret mojo. Cody Koback, Miguel Pena, hell, even guys who were just dicks like Jason Place. Also, I think to just say "BA had a guy here and the Sox valued him here so therefore they were out on a limb on him" assumes a LOT about the rankings that are done by publications. For one thing, it assumes that there IS a consensus, which I really don't think there would be outside of the top 10 or so. It also assumes that the publications are getting good and complete information from their scout sources, which I also sincerely doubt. If you're the scout who's on some lesser known kid like Ockimey, and you know you've got a gem, and you also know that there are only like 3 or 4 other teams talking to him, if that, is there ANY chance you're telling JJ Cooper or whoever at BA about him? Hell no. That's just scouting, man. Daniel Nava became a major leaguer without getting a sniff out of college. Consensus first-round picks never even sniff the majors sometimes, and nationally ranked "Top 200" guys don't even reach Double-A. This isn't like every team has a spreadsheet of every draft-eligible player in the country that they can sort by "OVERALL" and just pick the next-best rated guy like it's a video game. Sometimes you hit on Mauricio Dubon or Josh Ockimey. Sometimes you miss on guys who were ranked highly by baseball publications as well. And sometimes you should have seen it coming and sometimes not. That's the game. Let's just all agree that this is an instance of good scouting by the Red Sox, but let's also not pretend that we have any idea what in particular led them to him, "neuroscouting" or makeup or otherwise (and let's stop it with pretending that Betts was someone they weren't interested in at all until they ran him through that battery of tests - interviews with his signing scout point out that his athleticism caught his eye more than anything).
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 14, 2016 21:29:03 GMT -5
There's a difference between "Jed Hoyer told me once that they care a lot about makeup" and "we know for a fact that this font office places the most emphasis on psychology and makeup" that I'm not sure you're appreciating. There's an even bigger difference between "Jed Hoyer told me once that they care a lot about makeup" and "When I got hired by Theo, Josh Byrnes, and Jed Hoyer, Theo asked about my background in psychology (which had been in my C.V.), and at his request he heard my full rap about the possible U-shaped relationship between cognitive flexibility and baseball success, and its probable relationship to serotonin levels, and we then talked about eventually testing these ideas and incorporating them and the rest of my brain chemsitry / personality theory into their psych evaluations, and subsequenetly Jed talked a ton about how much they valued makeup, and went into detail about what they looked for, in numerous phone conversations" that I'm sure you're not appreciating. I'm not sure why you thought your version was the basis for my assertion rather trhan something like the actual version. And no, I don't know how much other teams value makeup, but as a guy who had recently taken 18 psych courses at Harvard and was more interested in the topic than I was in baseball (and still am) I couldn't imagine a team placing a greater emphasis on it, while acting like they'd discovered the keys to the kingdom.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 14, 2016 21:41:40 GMT -5
Nobody was unaware of Ockimey's existence, yet we had him much higher than people who had merely watched him hit. Again, you don't know this. It's a huge assumption. How do you know Ockimey wouldn't have been taken with the very next pick if we hadn't taken him? "Well because BA didn't rank him and they reflect the industry", the only problem with that is none of us knew the Red Sox liked him either until they drafted him. If you read what I wrote, of course I know this, because I'm just rephrasing a pure fact in order to underline my point. I had been talking about the fact that no industry outsiders (which describes BA, Perfect Game, and every other online draft board) had ranked Ockimey in the top 200, and then I refer to "people who had merely watched him hit." As in, those people. Scouts who cannot talk to the kid and his family or give him a psych test of any sort (and who are unlikely to try to get that info second-hand for players well down their list). See? The media and online scouting systems had him ranked much lower than we did. They are the ones who had only watched him hit. Fact.
And obviously there would be other teams onto Ockimey for the same reasons. That's why you pick him in the 5th round instead of where he was projected (7th to 10th, I'd guess). The assertion here is not that BA reflects the industry, but that their rankings for players beyond the first few rounds largely reflect just skills and tools and ignore makeup unless its extreme and/or obvious. That nobody outside of the industry knew the Sox were high on Ockimey until we picked him supports this way of reading things rather than undermines it.
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Post by quintanariffic on May 14, 2016 21:46:41 GMT -5
There's a difference between "Jed Hoyer told me once that they care a lot about makeup" and "we know for a fact that this font office places the most emphasis on psychology and makeup" that I'm not sure you're appreciating. There's an even bigger difference between "Jed Hoyer told me once that they care a lot about makeup" and "When I got hired by Theo, Josh Byrnes, and Jed Hoyer, Theo asked about my background in psychology (which had been in my C.V.), and at his request he heard my full rap about the possible U-shaped relationship between cognitive flexibility and baseball success, and its probable relationship to serotonin levels, and we then talked about eventually testing these ideas and incorporating them and the rest of my brain chemsitry / personality theory into their psych evaluations, and subsequenetly Jed talked a ton about how much they valued makeup, and went into detail about what they looked for, in numerous phone conversations" that I'm sure you're not appreciating. I'm not sure why you thought your version was the basis for my assertion rather trhan something like the actual version. And no, I don't know how much other teams value makeup, but as a guy who had recently taken 18 psych courses at Harvard and was more interested in the topic than I was in baseball (and still am) I couldn't imagine a team placing a greater emphasis on it, while acting like they'd discovered the keys to the kingdom. My God. I've never seen someone go so far out their way in an attempt to impres faceless message board people. Could you possibly be more needy?
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 14, 2016 21:54:33 GMT -5
I dunno, Denney, Cody Kukuk, Drake Britton, even Michael Kopech. Again: I can believe that makeup is important to the front office, but every time a player outperforms expectations, I don't think it's fair to attribute it to makeup or psychology or neuroscouting or any other secret mojo. Cody Koback, Miguel Pena, hell, even guys who were just dicks like Jason Place. Also, I think to just say "BA had a guy here and the Sox valued him here so therefore they were out on a limb on him" assumes a LOT about the rankings that are done by publications. For one thing, it assumes that there IS a consensus, which I really don't think there would be outside of the top 10 or so. It also assumes that the publications are getting good and complete information from their scout sources, which I also sincerely doubt. If you're the scout who's on some lesser known kid like Ockimey, and you know you've got a gem, and you also know that there are only like 3 or 4 other teams talking to him, if that, is there ANY chance you're telling JJ Cooper or whoever at BA about him? Hell no. That's just scouting, man. Daniel Nava became a major leaguer without getting a sniff out of college. Consensus first-round picks never even sniff the majors sometimes, and nationally ranked "Top 200" guys don't even reach Double-A. This isn't like every team has a spreadsheet of every draft-eligible player in the country that they can sort by "OVERALL" and just pick the next-best rated guy like it's a video game. Sometimes you hit on Mauricio Dubon or Josh Ockimey. Sometimes you miss on guys who were ranked highly by baseball publications as well. And sometimes you should have seen it coming and sometimes not. That's the game. Let's just all agree that this is an instance of good scouting by the Red Sox, but let's also not pretend that we have any idea what in particular led them to him, "neuroscouting" or makeup or otherwise (and let's stop it with pretending that Betts was someone they weren't interested in at all until they ran him through that battery of tests - interviews with his signing scout point out that his athleticism caught his eye more than anything). The only quibble I have with this is the assumption that "scout sources" are the predominant source for information, at least by BA. Their regional reports certainly read as if they've seen the guys play. And everyone is trying to supplant them. And everyone who thinks they can scout can start a blog and hope to get hired (maybe first by BP or FG, later by a team), and if you love baseball and have free time, why not do that? I think that, pro scouts aside, there are probably fifty pairs of eyes watching amateur baseball for every pair that was watching in 1988 when BA started. You can't keep anyone secret. If you know something extra about a kid, it's not something you can see that everyone else can see as well. And I apologize if I'm overselling the role of the psych stuff. We all know how insanely closely bunched guys get on these draft boards. A guy like Ockimey still needs (say) eighth-round tools to even get a look-see. Given the bunching, it doesn't take a hugely positive psych eval to bump a guy like that up to the fifth round, where everyone will say, Who? Why? Just a nice, positive, intriguing one. The point I'm making is that this little extra bit of info pays off immensely if it turns out to be the reason you draft Betts in the 5th round as opposed to someone else grabbing him in the 7th when you wanted him in the 8th. It's not the whole story or even most of the story -- it's the marginal edge that makes the key difference. It's like the extra pitch that turns the mid-rotation guy into an ace. How much credit do you give the extra pitch? From one POV, not that much, but from another, it's most of the story.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 14, 2016 22:00:30 GMT -5
There's an even bigger difference between "Jed Hoyer told me once that they care a lot about makeup" and "When I got hired by Theo, Josh Byrnes, and Jed Hoyer, Theo asked about my background in psychology (which had been in my C.V.), and at his request he heard my full rap about the possible U-shaped relationship between cognitive flexibility and baseball success, and its probable relationship to serotonin levels, and we then talked about eventually testing these ideas and incorporating them and the rest of my brain chemsitry / personality theory into their psych evaluations, and subsequenetly Jed talked a ton about how much they valued makeup, and went into detail about what they looked for, in numerous phone conversations" that I'm sure you're not appreciating. I'm not sure why you thought your version was the basis for my assertion rather trhan something like the actual version. And no, I don't know how much other teams value makeup, but as a guy who had recently taken 18 psych courses at Harvard and was more interested in the topic than I was in baseball (and still am) I couldn't imagine a team placing a greater emphasis on it, while acting like they'd discovered the keys to the kingdom. My God. I've never seen someone go so far out their way in an attempt to impres faceless message board people. Could you possibly be more needy? Sure, that's why I waited 11 years before talking about it! I told the story because we are debating the truth of the situation, and I'm in possession of the evidence. I think it's cool when people know the truth, especially when the truth itself is cool. If I'd been more forthcoming about the basis of my claims, there actually wouldn't be the debate. I actually do have a problem with interactions with "faceless message board people," and it's that I don't care enough about what they think of me. If I think someone is clueless (a handful or two of people here), I actually don't care at all what they think. Especially if they think I'm a dick, or arrogant, or whatever other misapprehension they might have. (I do try to not accidentally sound arrogant when I'm not feeling that way, which is actually all the time, believe it or not). I care what my friends think about me. In fact, I actually don't much care whether anonymous people think I care or not. I'd put myself very, very low in the need for outside approval, so low that I deleted a good piece of evidence for that, that I posted initially. "[James] Joyce... an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized." Tom Stoppard, Travesties.
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Post by deepjohn on May 14, 2016 23:33:47 GMT -5
My God. I've never seen someone go so far out their way in an attempt to impres faceless message board people. Could you possibly be more needy? Sure, that's why I waited 11 years before talking about it! I told the story because we are debating the truth of the situation, and I'm in possession of the evidence. I think it's cool when people know the truth, especially when the truth itself is cool. If I'd been more forthcoming about the basis of my claims, there actually wouldn't be the debate. I actually do have a problem with interactions with "faceless message board people," and it's that I don't care enough about what they think of me. If I think someone is clueless (a handful or two of people here), I actually don't care at all what they think. Especially if they think I'm a dick, or arrogant, or whatever other misapprehension they might have. (I do try to not accidentally sound arrogant when I'm not feeling that way, which is actually all the time, believe it or not). I care what my friends think about me. In fact, I actually don't much care whether anonymous people think I care or not. I'd put myself very, very low in the need for outside approval, so low that I deleted a good piece of evidence for that, that I posted initially. "[James] Joyce... an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized." Tom Stoppard, Travesties. IMHO, I find the narrative really interesting. If you wrote a book on it, I'd buy it. It's seems like Money Ball for the Mind. Nice work!
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Post by burythehammer on May 15, 2016 4:30:21 GMT -5
The point I'm making is that this little extra bit of info pays off immensely if it turns out to be the reason you draft Betts in the 5th round as opposed to someone else grabbing him in the 7th when you wanted him in the 8th. It's not the whole story or even most of the story -- it's the marginal edge that makes the key difference. It's like the extra pitch that turns the mid-rotation guy into an ace. How much credit do you give the extra pitch? From one POV, not that much, but from another, it's most of the story. Key word being IF. If you had said that from the beginning I wouldn't have even responded, much less disagreed. I don't disagree with anything else you say here. The problem I have is when you draw a line straight from A to F without B, C, D, or E, and then act like it's ridiculous to believe otherwise. Which, I've learned, is kinda your thing (And for the record, I don't think you're a dick or overly arrogant at all, it's nothing personal). And I ignore it if I can so as not to derail every thread the way this one has been. So for everyone else's sake, I'll try to do that better, since I don't imagine you plan on changing any time soon.
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Post by brianthetaoist on May 15, 2016 8:37:40 GMT -5
I'm interested in what the Sox do with neuro-scouting or whatever you want to call it. The way brains process information and the relationship of that processing with the kinetic acts of swinging a bat, tracking fly balls, etc, etc, are interesting, and I'd be more surprised to find that there *wasn't* useful information to be had than that there was. It's a highly variable process, and football teams have studied that kind of stuff with quarterbacks for years. Tom Brady, I'd guess, scores very highly on certain tests of information processing, for instance. If I had a day to sit down with the people who do this work for the Sox, I'd be in heaven, would be fascinating.
But there's really no way of going from that general acceptance of the idea to a conclusion that Ockimey was a product of that. But, whatever, I don't care. If it's generally known that the Sox use some form of it in their evaluation (and I think it is), it's a little like trying to say a specific storm was a product of climate change. In a sense, none of them are, but in a more accurate sense, *all* of them are.
But Eric feels some personal connection to the efforts by the Sox to look for it, that's cool.
edit to add: also, unrelated to that point, devising tests to tease out how brains process visual information and translate that to action has basically nothing to do with traditional ideas of "makeup." You can be the quickest visual processor on the planet and still be a complete ass. "Fast brain" and "reasonably functional moral compass" ain't the same thing.
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Post by jmei on May 15, 2016 8:59:51 GMT -5
There's a difference between "Jed Hoyer told me once that they care a lot about makeup" and "we know for a fact that this font office places the most emphasis on psychology and makeup" that I'm not sure you're appreciating. There's an even bigger difference between "Jed Hoyer told me once that they care a lot about makeup" and "When I got hired by Theo, Josh Byrnes, and Jed Hoyer, Theo asked about my background in psychology (which had been in my C.V.), and at his request he heard my full rap about the possible U-shaped relationship between cognitive flexibility and baseball success, and its probable relationship to serotonin levels, and we then talked about eventually testing these ideas and incorporating them and the rest of my brain chemsitry / personality theory into their psych evaluations, and subsequenetly Jed talked a ton about how much they valued makeup, and went into detail about what they looked for, in numerous phone conversations" that I'm sure you're not appreciating. I'm not sure why you thought your version was the basis for my assertion rather trhan something like the actual version. And no, I don't know how much other teams value makeup, but as a guy who had recently taken 18 psych courses at Harvard and was more interested in the topic than I was in baseball (and still am) I couldn't imagine a team placing a greater emphasis on it, while acting like they'd discovered the keys to the kingdom. I read your original post ("the one thing we know for a fact they place the greatest emphasis on: psychology and makeup.") to suggest that they they placed more emphasis on makeup than they did scouting, which is what I violently reacted to. It seems you meant it in the sense that they valued psychology more than the other 29 teams, which-- I mean, maybe, but without any comparative sense of other front offices, it's guesswork. For one thing, Theo and Jed now work for the Cubs and, by the time Ockimey was drafted, it was the Cherington/Hazen front office, and it's very possible that they valued makeup differently. Plus, while it's a nice story, I still read it as "the pre-2005 front office seemed interested in makeup and told me they valued it a lot." If anything, it dilutes your point-- of course they're going to tell the guy who's interested in psychology that they really value psychological makeup. How much they actually did in their evaluations is something you really don't know for a fact. If you had qualified that assertion, I and others would have been fine with it, but yes, we're going to react negatively when you stretch the truth.
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Post by jmei on May 15, 2016 9:10:46 GMT -5
Again, you don't know this. It's a huge assumption. How do you know Ockimey wouldn't have been taken with the very next pick if we hadn't taken him? "Well because BA didn't rank him and they reflect the industry", the only problem with that is none of us knew the Red Sox liked him either until they drafted him. If you read what I wrote, of course I know this, because I'm just rephrasing a pure fact in order to underline my point. I had been talking about the fact that no industry outsiders (which describes BA, Perfect Game, and every other online draft board) had ranked Ockimey in the top 200, and then I refer to "people who had merely watched him hit." As in, those people. Scouts who cannot talk to the kid and his family or give him a psych test of any sort (and who are unlikely to try to get that info second-hand for players well down their list). See? The media and online scouting systems had him ranked much lower than we did. They are the ones who had only watched him hit. Fact.
And obviously there would be other teams onto Ockimey for the same reasons. That's why you pick him in the 5th round instead of where he was projected (7th to 10th, I'd guess). The assertion here is not that BA reflects the industry, but that their rankings for players beyond the first few rounds largely reflect just skills and tools and ignore makeup unless its extreme and/or obvious. That nobody outside of the industry knew the Sox were high on Ockimey until we picked him supports this way of reading things rather than undermines it. You're still making the implied assumption that, if two sets of scouts see a guy often enough, they're going to walk away with the same (or a similar enough) opinion of him. That's not always the case. It is a regular occurrence that we see scouting reports differ on a guy by a full grade or two. That will especially be true when you're evaluating a teenager against inconsistent competition and trying to project his future development. Every year, there are dozens of instances where Perfect Game is much higher on a guy than BA (on the order of magnitude of hundreds of spots in their rankings) or vice versa, solely on the basis of the traditional scouting reports. The fact that PG/BA were not on a guy does not mean you can assume that the difference was something that wouldn't be on a traditional scouting report (e.g., makeup or neuroscouting). It's possible, if not likely, that the Red Sox just liked his traditional tools better.
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ianrs
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Post by ianrs on May 16, 2016 13:36:52 GMT -5
Regardless of any fancy brain scouting tools, Ockimey was named to BA's latest hot sheet for the second time this season. Josh Norris: It seems like Ock will be ready for Salem this season, likely sooner rather than later. Does Longhi start splitting time in RF again?
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Post by sox fan in nc on May 17, 2016 9:43:39 GMT -5
Was thinking Longhi could go to Portland. He is only 20, but hitting .300 but not much pop for a 1B/corner OF. Salem does not give up much HR especially early in season. Rainel Rosario (OF) in Portland is 27 & hitting .250 so maybe Longhi could supplant him.
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Post by greatscottcooper on May 17, 2016 10:26:03 GMT -5
I don't see the urgency to promote either right now. I can see a Longhi to Portland and Ockimey to Salem move mid summer. It's really great to see a guy like Ockimey step it up. In a system that was said to have very little depth after the big 4 guys like Ockimey are sure making that picture look brighter.
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Post by honestlyabe on May 17, 2016 10:28:55 GMT -5
looking forward to Doc Ock and the Winning Cultures
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Post by okin15 on May 17, 2016 10:39:45 GMT -5
Ock is still raw. I'd hold off on a promotion till at least mid-season. Could also be more like a cup of coffee guy instead.
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Post by bosox81 on May 17, 2016 10:41:19 GMT -5
He is succeeding with an ugly batting stance. The best way to help him realize he needs to fix his mechanics is to let him struggle against tougher competition.
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Post by jimed14 on May 17, 2016 12:51:30 GMT -5
When you're walking more than 20% of the time, you aren't learning much, just that pitchers are too afraid to pitch to you at a low A.
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Post by telson13 on May 17, 2016 14:23:22 GMT -5
Ockimey and Moncada tied for the minor league lead in walks with 30.
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radiohix
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Post by radiohix on May 28, 2016 8:33:14 GMT -5
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Post by Chris Hatfield on May 28, 2016 15:06:14 GMT -5
Regardless of any fancy brain scouting tools, Ockimey was named to BA's latest hot sheet for the second time this season. Josh Norris: It seems like Ock will be ready for Salem this season, likely sooner rather than later. Does Longhi start splitting time in RF again? He got a game out there on the 19th but hasn't played there since.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 29, 2016 20:15:32 GMT -5
The point I'm making is that this little extra bit of info pays off immensely if it turns out to be the reason you draft Betts in the 5th round as opposed to someone else grabbing him in the 7th when you wanted him in the 8th. It's not the whole story or even most of the story -- it's the marginal edge that makes the key difference. It's like the extra pitch that turns the mid-rotation guy into an ace. How much credit do you give the extra pitch? From one POV, not that much, but from another, it's most of the story. Key word being IF. If you had said that from the beginning I wouldn't have even responded, much less disagreed. I don't disagree with anything else you say here. The problem I have is when you draw a line straight from A to F without B, C, D, or E, and then act like it's ridiculous to believe otherwise. Which, I've learned, is kinda your thing (And for the record, I don't think you're a dick or overly arrogant at all, it's nothing personal). And I ignore it if I can so as not to derail every thread the way this one has been. So for everyone else's sake, I'll try to do that better, since I don't imagine you plan on changing any time soon. When I do that, it's usually because I think that B through E are universally recognized truths! When, of course, they are in fact either not universally known or not even agreed upon. Furthermore, as I know I've said somewhere recently, I put out what I think are credible hypotheses but phrase them as if they were true, a purely rhetorical device that everyone would understand if it had a tone of voice attached to it. I can certainly try to make the written version of my insights into potential explanations better match the actual set of beliefs in my brain. It may help if people get that I'm almost always messing around with a potential explanation. The way to get the best feedback on one of those is to state it forcefully, but I'm beginning to get that actually causing concussions is not a good idea. I'm interested in what the Sox do with neuro-scouting or whatever you want to call it. The way brains process information and the relationship of that processing with the kinetic acts of swinging a bat, tracking fly balls, etc, etc, are interesting, and I'd be more surprised to find that there *wasn't* useful information to be had than that there was. It's a highly variable process, and football teams have studied that kind of stuff with quarterbacks for years. Tom Brady, I'd guess, scores very highly on certain tests of information processing, for instance. If I had a day to sit down with the people who do this work for the Sox, I'd be in heaven, would be fascinating. But there's really no way of going from that general acceptance of the idea to a conclusion that Ockimey was a product of that. But, whatever, I don't care. If it's generally known that the Sox use some form of it in their evaluation (and I think it is), it's a little like trying to say a specific storm was a product of climate change. In a sense, none of them are, but in a more accurate sense, *all* of them are.But Eric feels some personal connection to the efforts by the Sox to look for it, that's cool. edit to add: also, unrelated to that point, devising tests to tease out how brains process visual information and translate that to action has basically nothing to do with traditional ideas of "makeup." You can be the quickest visual processor on the planet and still be a complete ass. "Fast brain" and "reasonably functional moral compass" ain't the same thing. Perfect analogy. There's an even bigger difference between "Jed Hoyer told me once that they care a lot about makeup" and "When I got hired by Theo, Josh Byrnes, and Jed Hoyer, Theo asked about my background in psychology (which had been in my C.V.), and at his request he heard my full rap about the possible U-shaped relationship between cognitive flexibility and baseball success, and its probable relationship to serotonin levels, and we then talked about eventually testing these ideas and incorporating them and the rest of my brain chemsitry / personality theory into their psych evaluations, and subsequenetly Jed talked a ton about how much they valued makeup, and went into detail about what they looked for, in numerous phone conversations" that I'm sure you're not appreciating. I'm not sure why you thought your version was the basis for my assertion rather trhan something like the actual version. And no, I don't know how much other teams value makeup, but as a guy who had recently taken 18 psych courses at Harvard and was more interested in the topic than I was in baseball (and still am) I couldn't imagine a team placing a greater emphasis on it, while acting like they'd discovered the keys to the kingdom. I read your original post ("the one thing we know for a fact they place the greatest emphasis on: psychology and makeup.") to suggest that they they placed more emphasis on makeup than they did scouting, which is what I violently reacted to. It seems you meant it in the sense that they valued psychology more than the other 29 teams, which-- I mean, maybe, but without any comparative sense of other front offices, it's guesswork. For one thing, Theo and Jed now work for the Cubs and, by the time Ockimey was drafted, it was the Cherington/Hazen front office, and it's very possible that they valued makeup differently. Plus, while it's a nice story, I still read it as "the pre-2005 front office seemed interested in makeup and told me they valued it a lot." If anything, it dilutes your point-- of course they're going to tell the guy who's interested in psychology that they really value psychological makeup. How much they actually did in their evaluations is something you really don't know for a fact. If you had qualified that assertion, I and others would have been fine with it, but yes, we're going to react negatively when you stretch the truth. What I actually think is true is that no team places a greater emphasis on psychology and makeup, relative to everything else, than the Sox. I'm sure the Cubs match us. Other teams may as well, but I bet they're behind the curve in developing testing instruments. Your last paragraph is weak. Because when they told me for the first time that they were interested in psych, it was as an explanation for why the job interview (which was actually a formality, since JWH had recruited me) was about to turn into a 20 minute discussion of the topic, where all of my ideas on it were solicited and briefly discussed, and they told me a bit about what they do (including that they had their own custom Q&A test). If they were actually not hugely into it, then their behavior was strange and they were doing an amazing job of faking it. I was in the room, and I later had the conversations with Jed. According to Jed, they felt they had struck gold with Pedroia because they had judged his make-up to be other-worldly and nobody else got that. Was he really saying that just to coddle my interest in the topic? C'mon. I do not know for certain that Cherington was as much on board with this as Theo, but it sure as heck fits all the evidence. Cherington continued the tremendous job of amateur scouting that he had done under Theo. Do you really think that he changed his emphasis and methodology but still continued with the same results? This is skepticism elevated to silliness. If you read what I wrote, of course I know this, because I'm just rephrasing a pure fact in order to underline my point. I had been talking about the fact that no industry outsiders (which describes BA, Perfect Game, and every other online draft board) had ranked Ockimey in the top 200, and then I refer to "people who had merely watched him hit." As in, those people. Scouts who cannot talk to the kid and his family or give him a psych test of any sort (and who are unlikely to try to get that info second-hand for players well down their list). See? The media and online scouting systems had him ranked much lower than we did. They are the ones who had only watched him hit. Fact.
And obviously there would be other teams onto Ockimey for the same reasons. That's why you pick him in the 5th round instead of where he was projected (7th to 10th, I'd guess). The assertion here is not that BA reflects the industry, but that their rankings for players beyond the first few rounds largely reflect just skills and tools and ignore makeup unless its extreme and/or obvious. That nobody outside of the industry knew the Sox were high on Ockimey until we picked him supports this way of reading things rather than undermines it. You're still making the implied assumption that, if two sets of scouts see a guy often enough, they're going to walk away with the same (or a similar enough) opinion of him. That's not always the case. It is a regular occurrence that we see scouting reports differ on a guy by a full grade or two. That will especially be true when you're evaluating a teenager against inconsistent competition and trying to project his future development. Every year, there are dozens of instances where Perfect Game is much higher on a guy than BA (on the order of magnitude of hundreds of spots in their rankings) or vice versa, solely on the basis of the traditional scouting reports. The fact that PG/BA were not on a guy does not mean you can assume that the difference was something that wouldn't be on a traditional scouting report (e.g., makeup or neuroscouting). It's possible, if not likely, that the Red Sox just liked his traditional tools better. Those are very good points about not putting too much into the rankings. It is indeed possible that the Sox liked his tools better. Maybe even likely. But inserting the word "just" is an obvious and complete logical fail. -- We are fairly certain the Sox do neuroscouting. -- One of the things neuroscouting is designed to do is measure innate pitch-recognition ability. -- As a pro, Ockimey has shown an improvement in pitch-recognition that heads off somewhere beyond the extraordinary in the direction of brain-bursting. You assert that it is likelier than not that neuroscouting played no role in drafting him 5th. In that case, he would have had to test out more or less average in pitch-recognition, and, by sheer random chance, turn out to be off-the-scale great at it. No, that's obviously unlikely. Given his now-known abilities and whatever the error of the test is (it's surely not small, but it can't be too great or it wouldn't be useful), it's very likely that he tested well enough for the results to have influenced the draft decision to at least some extent. That was actually my original point, but it seems to have been lost.
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