Back to the Cincinnati Reds Newsfeed

Doc's Morning Line: Figuring out MLB pitching prospects is always a shot in the dark

Nobody knows. When you get right down to it, that’s the truth.

You have your radar guns and your endless piles of numbers. You might even sit in a rickety bleacher behind home plate at some godforsaken baseball palace in the middle of Nebraska. Buy the kid a cheeseburger afterward and try to determine his “makeup.’’ But you don’t really know. Nobody does.

MLB organizations spend millions scouting and signing pitchers. They subsidize “academies’’ in the Dominican Republic. The Reds have three part-time scouts in Australia, mate.

Cincinnati Reds:With win over the Diamondbacks, the Cincinnati Reds showed what they're building around

They talk up the high draft picks, the ones they pay copious amounts of bonus money to sign.