Baseball America’s Scouting Dictionary

I’m out this week visiting family for Thanksgiving. I hope there will be some good free agent signings and trades to talk about when I return. Meantime, here’s a little something you might enjoy…

Baseball America has unvelied a Scouting Dictionary, which claims to represent “the first time all important scouting terms have been brought together in one handy-dandy, clip-and-save resource.” Sorry to report that “knuckle curve” isn’t listed (then again, not many guys throw the pitch), but there are some good ones in here, including “Eckstein,” “happy feet,” and one of my favorites, “pie-thrower”:

a pitcher who, while throwing a pitch, holds his palm too far under the ball rather than having his fingers on top of it, as if throwing a pie. “If you’re a pie-thrower, you tend to end up in the zone a lot with your pitches flattening out. And you’ll very well have a short career — it puts tremendous stress on the elbow and shoulder.” (Mike Arbuckle)

Good stuff, as always, from the folks at BA.