"I grew up in Torrington," Scott Barnsby said. "I got to play in my hometown for one summer. It was easy travel. I was able to work during downtime and pitch when I could. It was great."
 
It's a good thing Barnsby, then a pitcher at UMass, got to stay local during the summer of 1997 when he twirled for the Torrington Twisters (now New Bedford Bay Sox).
 
There would be plenty of baseball-related travel waiting for him in the future.
 
Barnsby is now a Regional cross-checker for the Cleveland Indians. A cross-checker validates the work of an organization's area scouts and assists in comparing players from different parts of the country.  Barnsby and his peers play an enormous role in preparing their clubs for the Major League Draft in June.
 
But years before all of this, Barnsby spent the summer of 1995 playing for Waterbury in a fledgling NECBL. The League was just two years old and Barnsby was one of its earliest stars. He clinched League Pitcher of the Week in mid-June and cemented a spot on the All-League team thanks to six wins, three saves, a 2.64 ERA and the fifth highest number of strikeouts in the NECBL.

Two summers later, Barnsby went 3-3 with a 3.40 ERA for the NECBL regular season champion Twisters.
 
"There was a huge following for Torrington. I didn't know if it was going to take off but it was pretty impressive with what Kirk did," recalled Barnsby, alluding to then-Twister GM Kirk Fredriksson, who now holds the same position with the Holyoke Blue Sox. "As far as talent, the NECBL has done a pretty good job over the years.
 
"That was what always amazed me about Kirk. He does his research and he is extremely tied in. At that point, I didn't know enough to be impressed," Barnsby admitted.
 
The Dodgers selected Barnsby in the 25th round of the 1998 Draft. That round boasts a bit of trivia: eleven picks earlier, the Red Sox selected John Hattig, who is the only Guam-born player to ever make the Major Leagues.
 
A little closer to New England, Nutmegger Barnsby spent two seasons in the Dodger organization before being released. Meanwhile his pitching coach at UMass, Scott Meaney, landed a job with the Indians as an advance scout. Meaney watched games on TV and putting together reports for the Big League club.
 
"When I got released after a very brief," Barnsby emphasized smiling, "time in the Minors, Scott offered me an internship in the Front Office. It was a great experience. You learn what happens behind the scenes.
 
"I realized I had a strong passion for scouting. Every time scouts would come into Cleveland, we'd be talking about and preparing for the Draft. As I watched how they do it, there was no doubt in my mind that this was what I really wanted to do. I was at the stage of my life where there weren't any ties. I had family in New England but they were supportive of everything.
 
Continued Barnsby, "When I told them I was interested in scouting, the first area that opened was Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi. I moved down to Nashville and have been down South ever since."
 
Barnsby started as an Area Scout, eventually getting promoted to Cross-Checker, or Regional Scout. He explained the difference in the two roles:
 
"The area scout has more of the relationship with the player.  They get to know the kid and the family. We're relying on the area scout to find out about the makeup, which is crucial.  As an area scout you take a lot of pride in not only evaluating your player correctly, but in getting to know them as a person.
 
"When I was an area scout scouting the player and evaluating the tools, I learned quickly that I was going to be wrong a lot of times.  As you play, you're competitive.  You don't ever want to be wrong. Unfortunately, that's just a part of it.  But I also think that those mistakes, as long as you build on them and learn from them, let you make much better decisions down the road.  Being an area scout, I wasn't as hard on myself with the evaluation of the tools.   I was very hard on myself with the evaluation of the person.  If I found out two or three years later that I was wrong with their makeup and I did a poor job evaluating it, I personally took that harder than anything else.

"As a cross-checker, I don't have that relationship with the players.  I have the relationship with the scouts and obviously I trust them. My job at that point is to see a guy in Alabama, and then go see a guy in Texas and compare them to other guys in my region.  The cross-checking side of it comes down to more evaluation.

"The difference for me in cross-checking is that in winter I have more down time since I'm not going into houses and meeting players.  In the spring, the travel is a little more extensive as you're covering a bigger portion of the country."
 
There are a multitude of factors that go into evaluating a player, and Barnsby will explain what scouts look for in a future article.  There are the five tools- hitting, power, running, fielding, throwing - as well as the intangibles. The recent trend in baseball, emphasized by the book and movie Moneyball, has incorporated increasing amounts of statistical analysis.
 
But will Barnsby and the scouts ever be replaced by super-computers? Never.
 
"There are the five tools but there is definitely a place for statistics," assessed Barnsby. "For example, if a guy in the NECBL hits .150 for the summer and I tell the organization he is going to be a .300 hitter in the Big Leagues, they're going to question me and they have every right to question me.  Performance definitely factors in.
 
Concluded Barnsby, "I feel like the Indians have a very good balance between the scout's opinions and the statistical analysis that is an important side of it."
 
Cleveland does a commendable job of developing its own talent.  15 of the Indians' 40-man roster were signed by the Tribe as amateurs.
 
Firmly entrenched in the Indian organization, Barnsby has witnessed the full cycle of watching players get drafted and work their way through the farm system and into the Big Leagues.  Barnsby signed Jeremy Sowers, a first rounder who went 7-4 with a 3.57 ERA as a rookie. Barnsby also signed Sowers' college teammate Jensen Lewis, who assembled a 3.68 ERA in 161 pitching appearances for the Tribe.
 
Watching a player reach the pinnacle of the game gives scouts a feeling like no other.
 
"As a scout, you build relationships with so many of these players. I can honestly tell you that there isn't one night where I don't scour the box scores both for guys through out our organization as well as guys who I've scouted throughout my career," Barnsby said.  "I'm constantly watching.
 
"Once your organization starts bringing guys to the Big Leagues and you've been part of the Draft for an extended period of time, there is no better feeling as far as morale," Barnsby declared.  "It's one of the things that drives you. You spend a lot of time on the road and away from your family.  So it is a special feeling when someone gets called up to the Big Leagues and you've been a part of that. You're happy for the organization but you're also happy for the kid and the family.  You've taken the time to look into the makeup and everything turned out like its 'supposed to.'"
 
Since 2005, 65 NECBL alumni have reached the Big Leagues- an average of over nine debuts per year. There will be players in the class of 2012 who eventually play on baseball's highest stage, and people like Barnsby will try to help them on that journey.
 
But what does a scout look for?  What does a player, who wants to compete at the next level, need to know about the scouting process?  Barnsby will answer that in two weeks.
 
 
 
About New England Collegiate Baseball League
The New England Collegiate Baseball League is a wooden bat college summer league that fields teams in all six New England states.  Partially funded by Major League Baseball, the NECBL started play in 1994 and has sent over 75 alumni to the Major Leagues.