Scouts know the names, but it's tough to project the future

I was wrong, but I wasn't alone.

Most of the baseball scouts also were wrong.

The biggest mistake I ever made in evaluating high school baseball talent in this area came in my first year at the Herald.

Nice career start.

I looked at a 5-foot-7, 155-pound left-handed pitcher who wore glasses, and I saw no future beyond high school. I didn't even think he was the best pitcher on his Arlington High School team as a senior.

Twelve years later Fred "Fritz" Peterson, now packing a solid 205 pounds on his 6-foot frame, won 20 games for the New York Yankees. He pitched 11 years in the majors and played in the All-Star Game.

Peterson grew and matured as a pitcher at Northern Illinois University, finally got his chance, and delivered with a nice career and 131 major-league wins.

The statistic that impressed me the most was walking only 426 batters in 2,218 innings. He walked only 40 in 247 innings in his 20-win summer.

Peterson never had the kind of fastball to make up for a lack of control. Because he wasn't very big in high school, he worked on getting his breaking ball over the plate.

Eventually, Peterson came up with five pitches, including a screwball and a slider. He also never had serious arm problems, and being a lefty didn't hurt his chances.

Nobody predicted all this when he was a rather nondescript high school pitcher, who admitted to me when he came back to Arlington High School one day as a New York Yankee, "I looked at that picture in the foyer, of the little guy with glasses, and this is all kind of hard to believe."

Win some, lose many.

That's the story of the baseball scout's life because it's so difficult to evaluate talent and project how that talent eventually will translate to the professional level.

Evaluating pitching potential is a very gray area for scouting.

Greg Maddux, who's headed to the Hall of Fame as a pitcher, weighed only 150 pounds in high school. Bill Clark, a longtime scout, said when Maddux was 17 or 18 years old, "his face made him look like he was 15. You knew he had some room to grow."

Does this mean that pitchers who don't shave in high school have a bigger upside?

When a talented baseball player becomes 12 years old, for example, he is growing out of Little League and overmatches the dimensions of the field.

The good players can dominate at that age because it's almost like the senior year in high school for older players. They've been playing since T-ball days at those shorter distances.

If a 12-year-old infielder can backhand a ball and throw a bullet to first base, you should write down his name.

I'd like to see if the ball is still carrying when it reaches first base. It's not a good sign if it's dying.

How well does a young infielder go to the right or left?

Yes, speed is important in a 12-year-old pitcher, but how about delivery, arm action and body control? Now toss in projected size and maturity.

Catchers need arm strength and good delivery time and a body build that can handle the position.

Young outfielders certainly are helped with good leg speed and strong arms, particularly from right field to third and right to home.

Does the ball get there on the fly or at least one bounce?

Does the young player have broad shoulders, big hips and a thick chest? Or does he have small bone structure that probably won't handle much more growth?

When you see scouts at local baseball games, including our own legendary former coach Al Otto, I hope you appreciate the enormous challenge of their job.

The uncertain nature of predicting future success makes the scout's job extremely difficult. The easy part may be knowing where to look.

In today's high-tech and sophisticated scouting world, there aren't many sleepers out there. Everybody seems to know about the kids with the exciting potential.

It wasn't always that way.

Only one scout even talked to future Yankee Fritz Peterson in high school, and as Peterson said, "That was only for a couple of minutes."