Jeremy Booth

THE SCOUTING CLASSROOM Stories Behind the Report THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RAW POWER AND GAME POWER Why hitting a baseball 450 feet doesn’t guarantee 25 Major League home runs. In 20 years scouting for the Angels and Brewers, I saw plenty of amateur hitters put on a show during batting practice. Balls flying over the scoreboard. Scouts looking up from their notebooks. Coaches talking about how far the kid could hit one. But when the game started, I had a different question. Can he get to that power against pitching that’s trying to get him out? That’s the difference between raw power and game power. RAW POWER: WHAT’S IN THE TANK? Raw power is the strength and bat speed a hitter can generate when he squares up a baseball. We can evaluate it in batting practice, where the hitter knows what’s coming and can let the barrel work. Distance matters. Exit velocity matters. The ease with which the ball leaves the bat matters. But batting practice removes much of the decision-making that defines a real at-bat. A player might show 70 raw power and still struggle to produce home runs in games. GAME POWER: CAN HE ACCESS IT? Game power is how effectively a hitter brings that raw strength into competition. He has to recognize the pitch, make a decision, get the barrel to the right place and do it on time. Now add a pitcher who changes speeds, works both sides of the plate and attacks a weakness. A hitter can possess tremendous strength and still be late on velocity or chase the breaking ball that keeps him from getting his best swing off. That’s why the hit tool and power tool are connected, but they’re not the same grade. WHAT I WATCHED I wasn’t counting only the balls that cleared the fence. I wanted to know how the hitter got there. Was the power to all fields or strictly pull-side? Did it show up against quality velocity? Could he drive a pitch on the outer half? Was he getting the ball in the air with authority, or selling out with a long, uphill swing? And when the pitcher made an adjustment, could the hitter make one back? A 400-foot home run on a hanging breaking ball told me something. A hard line drive to the opposite-field gap against a well-located fastball could tell me just as much about future game power. A SCOUTING EXAMPLE Imagine two amateur hitters. Both show 60 raw power in batting practice. The first hits towering pull-side shots, but his swing gets long in games. He expands the zone and rarely gets to his strength against better pitching. The second doesn’t win the batting practice contest. But he recognizes pitches early, controls the strike zone and consistently drives mistakes without abandoning his approach. Same raw power grade. Very different game-power projection. That distinction can change where a player belongs on a draft board. GRADES = WORDS WORDS = GRADES If I put a future 60 on a player’s game power, my report needed to explain how he would get to it. Not simply that he could hit the ball a long way. I’d describe the bat speed, contact quality, launch characteristics, pitch selection and adjustments that supported the grade. And I’d acknowledge the risks that might keep the raw power from translating. THE LESSON Batting practice shows what a hitter can do when he knows what’s coming. The game reveals what he can do when he doesn’t. Raw power gets your attention. Game power earns your conviction. “Fans remember how far the ball traveled. Scouts need to understand how often the hitter can make it happen.” #BehindTheRadarGun 🔎