Baseball fans at Tufts were given a treat last night, as ESPN analyst Keith Law gave a presentation before an audience in Eaton Hall.
Law worked in the Toronto Blue Jays' front office between 2002 and 2006, where he evaluated both major and minor league players through the use of statistical analysis. He served as a special assistant to Toronto's general manager J.P. Ricciardi before leaving in June 2006.
Now the lead baseball analyst for Scouts, Inc., a division of ESPN, Law spoke last night about his job.
"Scouting involves a tremendous amount of travel," Law said. "It involves a lot of travel to a lot of non-glamorous places. Scouting is not glamorous."
As part of his job involves researching amateur prospects as low as the high-school level, Law has to travel all over the country to find talent. His destinations have included small towns such as Kendallville, Ind. and Wentzville, Mo.
"I don't even know where most of these towns are until I try Google Maps to find a way to get to these places without any connecting flights," Law said.
He characterized the job as a lonely one, not only because of the extensive time he spends on the road, but also because he distances himself from the players he researches.
"I don't want to know the prospects [personally]," Law said. "Most of them are really nice kids and they desperately want to get to the big leagues. ... But I don't want to know them, because frankly at some point I have to criticize a lot of these guys. I don't want to break anyone's heart."
Law's job entails the statistical evaluation of players, as he rates them on a 100-point scale based on their five "tools" - hitting, hitting for power, speed, fielding and throwing. He rarely focuses on the teams involved.
"When I go to amateur and minor league games, I don't even know who won," he said. "I walk out of the ballpark with no idea who won or what the score is because I'm not looking at that. In the big leagues, though, it's hard to avoid it - at Fenway, they let you know."
Law appeared as a guest lecturer for an Explorations course entitled "The Business of Baseball."
Senior Peter Bendix, who teaches the class alongside classmate Steve LeBlanc, explained how he went about organizing Law's lecture. Bendix is also a senior staff writer for the Daily.
"Technically, this was our class tonight," Bendix said. "We invited Keith here to speak to the class, but then opened it up to the public as well."
Last night was the culmination of a long effort to bring Law to Tufts. Bendix and LeBlanc had been pursuing him since the early stages of his time with Scouts, Inc.
"We were in touch with him last year, but we couldn't find the time to get him to come here," Bendix said. "I e-mailed him again this year and he was receptive to coming."
Law's lecture touched on the many myths surrounding baseball scouts, ranging from their stereotypical image as being overweight to their disdain for statistical measures. Above all, he stressed the difficulty of his job, as he's still learning the ropes five years after beginning his stint with the Blue Jays.
"You can't just pick it up," Law said. "There are a lot of things you can teach yourself in a fairly short period of time. But you can't teach yourself to scout in a year - you can't do it in two years. I've been doing it for five years now, and I have a ton left to learn.
"But the one advantage I have now is that I've seen the complete cycle," he continued. "I've seen players at the amateur level, I've seen them in the minors and I've seen them in the big leagues."
