This is a pretty straightforward look at how the Sox scouting departments (professional, amateur and international) changed from 2006 to 2007. The listings are taken straight from the Media Guides. After the two large table with the full groups, I’ll break down the changes.

2006 Scouting Department



2007 Scouting Department



Professional Scouts



The “in” group includes a couple ex-players in Nipper and Disarcina. I’m not sure how much it matters in their new jobs as professional scouts, but I’ve only found record of Bane and Klipstein as area scouts. I have a record of Bane signing players for Toronto from 2000-2003. The only notable player is 1st rd pick Aaron Hill. Klipstein was signing players for the Pirates from 1993-2000. His notable signing is pitcher Chris Young.

In the “out” group Murray Cook is a longtime scout and former GM who came over with the Marlins group and has rejoined Dave Dombrowski in Detroit. Rajsich signed Lester when he worked as an area scout in the pacific northwest before he moved into professional scouting in 2003. I think Levangie is still with the organization, but he’s not listed.

Crosscheckers and Area Scouts

The Sox retained their five crosscheckers from 2006 and promoted Darryl Milne from an area scout based in Colorado to the new position of Pitching Crosschecker. I’m going to do a separate post on the crosscheckers.



These moves are generally in the direction towards a younger less experienced group of area scouts. The Media Guide doesn’t give any biographical information on the scouts. It does have pictures though and the ratio of youthful scouts to stereotypical old school types is quite striking. Even some of the crosscheckers (Haas, Finley, Rikard) look quite young. It’s possible that the current Sox staff is one of the younger ones in baseball.

Here’s a quick look at the scouts who left. Brian Johnson worked for the Brewers from (at least) 1998-2005. His most notable signing is JJ Hardy. He was only with the Sox for one year. Roebuck worked for the Reds from 1982-1989, then moved to the Pirates from 1990-1996 and had been with the Sox since 1999. His most notable signing was Jason Kendall way back in 1992. The best Sox prospect he signed was Phil Dumatrait. I’ll put up a full signing table for Zona later, but he worked for the Sox for 15 years and his two best signs were Trot Nixon and Adam Everett. I don’t have any record of Larry Owens. Generally the outgoing group was very experienced. How much that experience matters is an open question. Do we really care that Roebuck signed Kendall fifteen years ago?

The only in coming scout that I have a record of is Gustavson. He worked for the Priates from 1998-2006. His notable players are Nate McLouth, John Van Benschoten, Bryan Bullington and Brian Bixler. It’s not a hugely impressive group.

I beleive this is the first scouting jobs for Gutierrez and Guzzo. When the Sox announced the hiring of Edgar Perez they stated that he had been with the Indians for the last seven years. The BA Directories list someone else as the Indians Puerto Rican scout. Teams generally don’t have two full time scouts in Puerto Rico so Perez might have been a part time scout. Certainly the other scout was credited with the Indians recent signings.

To the extent that a signing track record and experience means anything (and it may not mean much), I thought it would be interesting to look at the area scouts and try to speculate on where the Sox might be strong or somewhat less strong. I’ll split the areas loosely into four tiers.

Tier 1

California – Blair Henry, Dan Madsen, Jim Woodward
Texas – Jim Robinson
Florida – Laz Gutierrez and Anthony Turco

Robinson is the only holdover scout from the Duquette administration. He’s signed a number of solid to very good prospects – Fossum, Ford, Shoppach, Buchholz, Cox. He really needs Buchholz or Cox to breakout and establish themselves in the majors, but his track record is solid.

I think this is Henry’s first scouting job. He (and John Henry’s money) are credited with signing Lars Anderson. Madsen was been with the Sox since 2003. Again, this might be his first job. He is credited with signing Pedroia and Masterson. Woodward has a relatively long track record. He was with the Mets from (at least) 1988-1995. He was with the Padres in the early 2000s before moving to the Sox in 2002. His only notable player is Fernando Vina. With the Sox he has signed Alverez and Scott Blue.

Both Turco and Gutierrez are very young and likely in their first jobs. Between the two of them I only have record of one player signed – Josh Papelbon by Turco.

Texas looks to be the strongest of these three states. And certainly the Sox have used a number of high picks on players from Texas. It’s hard to get a read on California – the experienced scout doesn’t have much of a track record and the two younger scouts just don’t have track records. Gutierrez and Turco may turn out to be great scouts, but for now Florida appears to be undermanned.

Tier 2

Georgia – Rob English
Carolinas – Quincy Boyd
Rest of South – Danny Watkins

I’ve already talked about English. He has a long track record, but not an overly impressive one at this point. Boyd was the Mets Midwestern scout from 1998 until he joined the Sox last year also covering the Midwest. He’s been moved to the Carolinas to replace Jeff Zona. His only notable signing is Piazza. Anthony Piazza. He’s another young guy with a real thin track record. Does it matter that he also doesn’t have experience and contacts in the Carolinas? That was probably much more of an issue twenty years ago, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to be a little more connected to the area. Watkins previously worked for the Astros in the early 2000s. His only notable signing with Houston was Chris Burke. He’s been with the Sox since 2005 and Caleb Clay is the best player he signed.

I guess you have to give English the benefit of the doubt and assume the Sox are at least solid in Georgia. It’s hard to make a strong case for Boyd and Watkins covering the rest of the south.

Let’s take a more detailed look at the Carolinas where Boyd replaced Zona. Here’s Boyd’s signing table:



Gold stars if you’ve heard of any of these guys, but all are also mid to low round picks. You wouldn’t really expect much.

Here’s Zona’s signing table:



Obviously just in terms of experience and career length that’s a huge difference. Nixon, Everett and hopefully Bard were all strong 1st round picks. Meredith may be a nice mid round pick. Otoh, Corey Jenkins was a prototypical 1st rd HS fooball, tools goof OF and John Curtice was a terrible pick, a guy who had no chance to stay healthy.

Would you be any more or less confident in a player scouted and signed by Boyd instead of Zona?

Tier 3

Pacific Northwest – John Booher
OH, rust belt – Duane Gustavson
Kansas, plains – Ernie Jacobs
Rocky Mountain, Arizona – Jon Lukens

Booher is an ex-Marlins scout. His only notable player is Ellsbury who also happens to be the only player picked higher than the 8th round in my records. I already touched on Gustavson’s mediocre record. Jacobs is a Duquette holdover. He signed Freddy Sanchez and more recently Kris Johnson and Ty Weeden. He hasn’t signed many high round picks. Lukens is another very young scout. The last couple of years he’s been in Florida where Jeff Corsaletti is his only semi-notable signing. He’s been moved to the Rocky mountain region to replace Darryl Milne who was elevated to a crosschecker position. Again, like Boyd this is a scout moving territories if that matters. He’s also young and doesn’t have much of a track record. I’m surprised to see that the Sox have combined Arizona with the Rocky Mountain area. In previous years it had been covered by the southern California scouts, you may have noticed the California based Madsen signed Pedroia out of Arizona and last year it was covered by a dedicated scout in Brian Johnson who has a decent track record of success. Arizona is really a Tier 2 state so it’s odd that it’s been tacked onto a bigger and less important region and given to a young and inexperienced scout.

From this tier, I’d say the Sox are strongest in the Pacific Northwest and plains area, but you have to question their Arizona coverage.

Tier 4

Northeast – Ray Fagnant
Mid-Atlantic – Tony Guzzo
Midwest – Josh Luggins
Puerto Rico – Edgar Perez

Fagnant was hired in 1993 by Wayne Britton as part of the scouting department overhaul that occurred during the last year of Gorman’s tenure and the first of Duquette’s. His notable signings include Brian Rose, Carl Pavano, Rick Asadoorian, Brad Baker, Manny Delcarmen and Craig Hansen. That’s a lot more promise and potential than production, but probably not a bad track record from the generally unproductive northeast. Guzzo, Loggins and Perez are all very young and/or inexperienced scouts. I guess you’d say Fagnant is a strength and everything else is basically an unknown.

International



Elvio Jimenez is the last of the Duquette international scouts. Jimemez claim to fame is that he co-signed most of the Dodgers Dominican prospects from the late 1980s including one Pedro Martinez. Jovel Jimenez and Silva were part of the mass migration from the Marlins in the spring of 2002. From that original group of fifteen scouts only four – Jesus Alou, Jon Deeeble, Pablo Lantigua and Ernesto Gomez – remain. Three of the scouts the Sox hired in 2006 didn’t return for a second year. In terms of official signings none made an impact although it seems likely that Gary Chen was involved in the scouting for the Sox small group of Taiwanese players even though only Deeble was credited as the signing scout.

I’m unfamiliar with all of the new scouts except Ricardo Petit. Petit comes to the Sox from the Padres where he’s been at least since 2000. There are a number of scouts who worked for the Padres in the early 2000s who followed Epstein (and Shipley et al) to Boston. I don’t have a record of Petit signing even any marginal prospects which isn’t too surprising. The Padres have been awful internationally outside of an impressive run in Puerto Rico in the early 1980s and a couple recent Mexican pitchers. Their production from the Dominican and Venezuela is practically non-existent.

One thing to note about the international department is that it has now been almost completely revamped in the last two years. There are just the four Marlins holdovers and then a couple scouts hired in 2005 (or in John Dipuglia’s case moved from the domestic department) and everybody else has been hired in the last two years.

The Sox have not been successful internationally under since the ownership change. However, the extent of the turnover is so great that it makes sense to think of the period starting in 2006 as something of a blank slate. Unfortunately, the lag time between signing latin teenagers and developing them into productive major leaguers is so long that it will be years before we know if this new department will be any more productive than their predecessors.

There is one last thing I should note about the international department. In my long post about the Sox international scouting history from a few months back I speculated that perhaps some of the departmental turmoil from 2005 had to do with the Sox pulling back the scope of the department. That made sense – many of the scouts who left were from smaller countries besides the Dominican and Venezuela and the new scouts in the 2006 Media Guide where listed without their home countries. As it turns out many of those scouts were stationed outside of the big two countries. Jose Cabrera is the Sox first scout in Mexico since Lee Sigman was fired as part of the ownership transfer and the Sox replaced the departing scouts in Panama, Colombia and Curacao in addition to adding a couple Asian scouts. The department does seem to have an expansive footprint. Of the Latin countries who send few players into pro ball the only one without a designated scout seems to be Nicaragua due to the departure of Silva.