FAQ
By John Klima
March 17, 2009
What is Baseball Beginnings? Where did it come from? Why does it exist? Why should I bookmark this site?
Baseball Beginnings is the creation of a baseball person with a background as a journalist, author, scout and broadcaster, who saw a need for a website that offered a specific focus and coverage of elite Major League Baseball prospects through excellent writing, video and professional-level scouting and grading.
Baseball Beginnings uses the same methods Major League teams use to evaluate prospects. We seek to combine objectivity into our profiling. We believe that experience is the path to making the correct evaluation of a player. We want to help introduce you to these players, but we also want to help you see them the way professional baseball is going to see them.
Whenever a Major League team scouts, drafts and signs a player, the club breaks down each prospects by strengths and weaknesses. Baseball Beginnings follows the same methodology. This doesn’t mean we want to trash players. It just means that we don’t want to be eye wash. We strive for accuracy, honesty and integrity.
Every prospect has some gifts and some shortcomings, but sometimes media hype distorts the player’s actual abilities and creates unrealistic expectations. Baseball Beginnings wants to be the site where you can get the entire picture, not just bits and pieces of what someone else wants you to think.
That’s why Baseball Beginnings serves the readers first. We firmly believe the fans are king. And the fans deserve to have the same information that scouts collect for the teams they work for. We work for you. Let us be your scout.
Who comes up with Baseball Beginnings scouting grades?
The grades on each player are created by Baseball Beginnings. We see every player we scout in person. These grades are not taken from other scouts or from any other major league organization, publication, scouting service or other pre-existing source. We consult with professionals on our grades, but the buck stops with us.
Does Baseball Beginnings think it’s always going to be right?
Oh, hell no! Any good scout will tell you that predicting amateur players who will become professionals is the hardest thing to do in the business. Statistical analysis is perfect for proven major leaguers, but amateur baseball is the wild, wild, west. Major League games are almost always played in a controlled environment with consistent competition, fields, mounds, umpiring and scorekeeping. Amateur baseball is simply not (and frankly the minors are still pretty crazy despite all the new parks), which makes accurate player evaluation crucial.
Despite the Moneyball revolution, amateur scouting is mostly performed the way it has always been: experienced eyes having the courage to make a call on a player’s ability. Nobody buys amateur players sight unseen. Though there are some Major League teams that will trade for an organizational minor league player based on statistics alone, there are still many clubs that will not trade for a minor league player or sign a minor league free agent unless they have an in-house scouting report on him. Baseball Beginnings is an independent third party. We work like the clubs, but we work for you.
Where does Baseball Beginnings get its video?
Baseball Beginnings shoots is own footage and edits its own video. We grab all of our original film ourselves, hustling around the ballpark to get the best angles for each player.
What makes Baseball Beginnings qualified to grade players?
Founder John Klima has spent half of his life running around baseball fields from one end of the country to the other. He has covered baseball from the ground up, including high school baseball, showcase baseball, college baseball, summer college league baseball, minor league baseball and major league baseball. As a result, he has a complete and unique approach to the game.
Klima spent time with many of the game’s greatest scouts, including George Genovese, Bob Zuk, Gene Handley, Spider Jorgensen, Lennie Merullo, Bill Wight and others. His two years as a college baseball broadcaster and a minor league announcer helped give him the feel for the differing speeds of the game and how the business works. He’s covered several major league games.
Baseball Beginnings maintains a wide net of baseball contacts. Though all decisions on players rest with us and us alone, we do consult a group of active baseball men who see the same players and have approximately two centuries of combined experience to help us make sure we’re as close as it gets.
That takes guts.
Baseball Beginnings lives by the rule of scout George Genovese, who signed players who combined to hit 4,000 major league home runs: “When I make good, it’s on me,” Genovese said. “And when I make a mistake, it’s all my own.”
Who do you think you are, Baseball America?
Baseball America is great about covering many things. We don’t have the same manpower, so like a smart small-market club, we isolate what we can cover and set out to do it better than anyone in the business. Think of us as the Montreal Expos running against the New York Yankees.
Baseball Beginnings won’t cover games, teams or leagues. We are not result-oriented or news-cycle dictated. We are projection oriented. We’re not trying to replace Baseball America, either. In fact, if you like them, you’ll like us.
We want to cover the players as journalists with a scouting and professional baseball perspective. We want the readers to feel like they are in the war room with the scouting directors and farm directors.
What kind of writing can I expect to see on Baseball Beginnings?
In addition to detailed scouting reports and grades, Baseball Beginnings will provide a great many interviews with prospects and professional baseball people. We’ll also dig into stories that matter around the game. Working as an independent journalist allows Baseball Beginnings to find stories in unconventional ways. We get down and dirty in the trenches, where the game happens. You’ll also get a chance to hear from some of the nation’s top amateur players and read some stories that won’t get covered by the conventional media.
