Scout Picks Through Minefield for Gems : Baseball: After prospects are evaluated, then drafted, next comes the agonizing wait for results.

The crunch of their season is over. Now it’s nightmare time for baseball scouts.

Major league scouts saw two and three games a day all spring, prepared their draft list recommendations, then watched on June 1 to see which teams did or didn’t pick the players they had studied during the high school, junior college and college seasons.

Now . . .

Maybe a scout overlooked some shortstop who later will hit .350 in the big leagues for 10 years and make the Hall of Fame.

Or, maybe a scout persuaded his club to choose a player high in the draft. The club gives him a lot of money, only to learn he can’t hit a curveball.

Or throw one. Or catch one.

To find out how scouts evaluate young talent, a reporter tagged along with a scout, Darrell Miller of the Angels, while he scouted two high school games and a college game.

The Angels’ ground rule: No players or teams could be identified.

Miller was one of dozens of scouts in the Southern California area, all walking around with radar guns and talking scoutspeak.

The same scouts are now familiar figures at summer league games.

Scoutspeak is stuff like “light tower power,” a player who hits long home runs. Or “a gun guy,” a pitcher who throws exceptionally hard. A player with “a good hose” is an infielder with a strong arm.

Required equipment for a major league baseball scout: Reliable vehicle, Southern California map book with all high schools and junior colleges circled with a felt-tip pen, stopwatch and radar gun.

What do scouts look for? How can they tell if a good high school hitter can ever hit a major league fast ball?

The truth? They can’t.

*

Miller, 37, a former Angel catcher and older brother of basketball stars Reggie and Cheryl Miller, is at a high school field. It’s an hour before game time and he’s schmoozing with a coach.

“You always respect the coach,” he says, afterward.

“I always talk to him first, make sure he knows someone from the Angels is here. I get his starting lineup, make sure I know everyone’s year in school, ask him who’s hot and most important of all--I find out who’s ineligible.

“In Southern California, there are no secrets among scouts. If a kid is throwing 95 m.p.h. somewhere, it’s in the newspaper. The only time you ‘steal’ a prospect is if he’s ineligible and maybe hasn’t played much in the summer leagues.

“You could maybe steal a kid in some little town in Oklahoma, but not here.”

Moments later, Miller stands behind the backstop and watches infield practice.

“This is the most important time I’ll spend here,” he says quietly, not wanting to be overheard. Another scout is nearby.

“This is when I see infielders and outfielders throw, and make my body checks. OK, I see a couple of decent bodies in this infield.

“Ideally, you like to see a tall, lean kid with broad shoulders, an indication he might fill out over the next few years.”

Minutes later, the visiting team is taking infield practice and he studies a big, strong third baseman. Not quite a major league arm, he decides.

“On a third baseman or shortstop, I want to see the ball go across the infield on a line with his shoulder, a throw with no hump on it and the ball seems to be accelerating, not dying, as it reaches the first baseman.

“So you put him down as a plus or a minus on his arm. If he’s a minus, then he’d better hit some home runs for me.

“I try to imagine these kids in a major league stadium, taking infield before a big league game. I try to imagine their arm strength, dexterity, poise and smoothness in that setting.

“I make it a point to go to as many Angel games as I can, just to watch infield, to refresh in my mind what a major league arm looks like. If all I see is high school kids, I’d lose that.”

What about outfielders’ arms?

“OK, when the coach hits flies to his outfielders before the game, I’m looking for a major league arm,” he says.

“That means an accurate, low-arc throw from medium outfield depth. I want a one-hopper to the plate, and a throw that explodes off the grass.”

First inning. Miller is at this game in part to look at the big third baseman, known to be a good hitter.

Miller watches intently as the third baseman makes a bad fielding play then throws poorly to first, enabling a runner with average speed to beat it out.

“OK, that’s a bad play,” Miller whispers. “If he doesn’t show me a great bat today, then that’s the end of my evaluation of him.

“But let’s say he shows me a great bat. OK, then my perspective changes. Then I wonder where we could hide him on defense.”

Miller has also come to see a tall, broad-shouldered pitcher. He studies every pitch, for two innings.

“OK, this kid is throwing 84-85 m.p.h. His motion is not bad, but the velocity just isn’t there. If he goes up just to the next level--junior college ball--with that fastball, he gets hammered.”

The third prospect is a big, powerful-looking catcher. But there’s a problem--the small, permanent backstop common to inner city high schools.

“I’d rather see this catcher on an open field,” Miller said. “I can’t see him field his position here on foul pops, passed balls . . . but we’ll see his arm and if I’m lucky we’ll get a play at the plate.”

Double lucky.

There are two well-executed plays at the plate, the second on a throw from center field. The catcher, about 6 feet 2 and 215 pounds, fields the ball and aggressively applies a tag to a baserunner who creates a home-plate collision.

The catcher never wobbles.

In his car after five innings and on his way to a second game, Miller talks about what he’s seen.

“OK, the catcher is a prospect. He’s got a good body, he plays hard, has a decent bat and looks like he enjoys playing. I’ll see him again and I’ll ask another of our scouts to see him, to back me up.

“The kid’s a senior, so we need to know more about him right now. He does fine across the board on stuff like speed, arm, bat, throwing and fielding. But other than that I know nothing.

“Is he a good kid? Any bad habits? What kind of kids does he hang around with? What’s his discipline like? And most important of all: Does he want to play pro ball? How does he feel about 10-hour bus rides at some place like Cedar Rapids?”

Miller then talked about unturned stones.

“One thing I pay special attention to are high schools near military bases. Military families move around a lot and I make sure high schools near, say, March Air Force Base, haven’t had a kid move in I don’t know about.

“I talk to the Angels’ West Coast scouting supervisor, Tom Davis, about once a week. He’ll want to know where I’ve been, who I’ve seen, who I like.

“This is very hard to do. Scouting is like hitting. We all fail about 70% of the time. A major reason is that you can make an educated guess on almost everything except one question:

“Can a kid ever hit major league pitching? We really don’t know. That’s the hard part.”

At another high school game, Miller watches a left-handed pitcher, a junior, who appears to be about 6-3 and 215 pounds.

“This kid intrigues me,” he says. “I wanted to see him today in the late innings, when he’s tired.

“His motion is absolutely horrible. He’s doing everything wrong. But the intriguing part is, it’s all mechanical stuff.

“I have a hunch we could clean him up pretty good in Class A ball. And he might surprise himself with the velocity proper mechanics would give him. Next year, he gets a long look.”

*

Miller is at a college game, studying a catcher. He’s troubled a bit to see the catcher is wearing glasses.

“Does that mean he has astigmatism, which is hard to correct with contacts?” he muses. “You definitely need to know more about that.”

Miller also doesn’t like seeing the catcher drop to his left knee on every pitch.

“That should have been corrected by now,” he says.

A pitch hits in the dirt and the catcher waves at it as it goes by. No one is on base, but Miller doesn’t like the lack of effort.

The catcher is about to get low grades all around when he hits a grand slam to center field.

“OK, that’s light tower power,” Miller says. “That changes everything.

“Now I want to see him play the outfield or first base. I don’t like him much behind the plate but I sure like his bat.”

He talks about catchers’ arms, a subject he is familiar with. He caught for the Angels for five seasons.

“You look for an above-average major league arm,” he says.

“That’s a throw to second that accelerates all the way, has no hump and seems to explode into the second baseman’s glove. This guy doesn’t have one, but few do.”

It’s late, and Miller leaves after the eighth inning.

On the long drive home, he says, he’ll probably worry.

“What I fear more than anything is seeing a kid who has a bad day, I give up on him, then he gets drafted by someone else and he becomes a major leaguer,” Miller says.

“The second-worst nightmare is when I see a kid on his best days. I recommend him strongly, we invest a high pick on him, he goes to Class A--and we find he can’t play.

“Then I dream angry people are saying, ‘Who the hell recommended we draft this guy? Wasn’t it Darrell Miller?’ ”

*

None of the high school players Miller scouted that day were drafted. The college catcher with the glasses was picked in the ninth round by Milwaukee.