SSBuckeye posted:My son pitched in the 17u WWBA tournament recently. He's had a good summer and has generated some interest and scouts now watch when he pitches. Nothing serious and no contact through his travel coach that we were aware of. In this performance, he has an off the charts awful outing against a solid, but not outstanding, team. He didn't even get out of the second inning. In the second inning, there were two bunts that were thrown into right field, a couple of hits that ordinarily would have been routine outs that made it through a drawn-in infield. Plus a fly ball that was mis-played for a single. Throw in a few untimely walks, and he ended up giving up a TON of runs and was replaced.
What happened next, you ask? A school we didn't even know was there reached out to his coach and said he loved what he saw. His point to the coach was that he goes to games to watch failure. And when he sees it, he looks for the reaction of the kid. And my son went to the dugout and was the first kid greeting players as they came off the field and remained very vocal in support of his team throughout the game. He asked my son (via his travel coach) to call him the next day. His message was you sucked yesterday, but I saw what I needed to see. We're recruiting you and I need you to call me every week from here on out.
And now you know the rest of the story......
This is outstanding and a perfect example of what a LOT of pitching coaches look for, just as hitting coaches look for negative body language after a player strikesbout or makes an error.
I understand parents get upset when a player has a bad game while coaches and scouts are watching. But they are not expecting you to have a perfect game and coaches who have a true interest will either continue to watch or have someone watch for them. Also they rely on their own methods (radar gun or stopwatch) to draw their own conclusions. Not charting correctly at a tournament doesn't make PG "Fake News ".
No wonder Jerry doesn't post here anymore.
Great post Tom.