Baseball Prospectus

It's all been crap out there, until my pal Rocky Lane dropped off a doorstop of a book, the Baseball Prospectus 2005. Two inches thick and just loaded with incomprehensible statistics, it has fabulous, hilarious and even some negative descriptions for the players of MLB.

I flipped it open randomly, and facing me on page 15 was the writeup for Sergio Santos, prospect of both the DBacks and the Pickled Pecklers.

We admit we're not scouts. Having spoken with a number of real scouts, we can say they're good at spotting things. They're trained. They're professionals. We can argue about what role scouting is going to play in an organization, but no one at BP is a scout. And yet unlike Diamondbacks' scouts, it's almost impossible for us to watch Serio Santos and believe that he's ever going to be able to play a passable shortstop. There's no economy of motion, no instincts. You know how Gabe Kapler looks when he's playing defense? Kind of like Arnold Schwarzenegger in one of the Conan movies, with a kind of hypermechanical, MC Escher quality to his movement. Kapler can get by with that in the outfield, but Santos, in the infield, looks like a complete disaster. But that only goes to his ability to play shortstop. He's got a nice bat, puts a lot of energy into his swing, and held his own in Double-A at the age of 21. He's got a chance to be a good one if he can find somewhere else to play. It's bad enough we have to watch Derek Jeter play shortstop. Lord, save us from Santos.

Now that's writing! Better than Alex Patton's wonderful old books (bring 'em back, Alex, you're a shell of your former self) because the oauther is willing to take serious time like that while being completely negative. It sounds like....me!

Baseball Prospectus 2005. A winner.