Five-Plus Tools: The Past, Present, and Future of Baseball through the Eyes of a Scout

by Dave Perkin

“Five-Plus Tools” is a scouting term that refers to a rare and elite type of amateur baseball prospect. A player with five-plus tools grades out well above average in all five skill areas, known as hitting, power, running, throwing, and fielding.

While most baseball fans critique players who are already on the professional level, a scout needs to find raw talent and figure out if they’re the “future.” In Five-Plus Tools , Dave Perkin, who was a professional scout and is currently the Major League Baseball Draft correspondent for Sports Illustrated , breaks down not only what all scouts are looking for, but also how amateur players are evaluated and recognized.

Broken up into three sections, Perkin teaches the inner details of amateur scouting, using field reports on athletes he’s scouted over the years. Once the understanding of what a scout looks for is understood, Perkin delves into the current major leaguers and gives scouting insight on their game, skills, and influence on the sport. Finally, the hot-button issues in baseball are covered, including such points as Sabermetrics, baseball analysis, and an explanation of why few of yesterday’s heroes could succeed in modern baseball.

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304 pages, Hardcover

First published May 6, 2014

Reviews

[Anup Sinha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is as good a Scouting 101 book as you will find, for both casual and diehard fans who are unfamiliar what goes on in the trenches. Other scouts have tried writing books in the past but, quite honestly, few of them are literate and most paint an unrealistic picture. They simply romanticize their profession and peers. As a former MLB scout myself, I see where Dave Perkin is telling things that others don't want to; being a good friend of Perkin's over the years, I have seen many of them first hand. The book lives up to the title, sprinkled in are his views on a number of baseball issues and anecdotes of his run-ins with interesting figures like Wayne Gretzky and Frank Robinson. He gives controversial, but certainly informed, insight into how players of past eras would perform today including his opinion that the vaunted 1927 New York Yankees would go 0-162 if they were transplanted in time to 2014. (Yes, he said that!). Perkin is also dead honest with his dissenting opinion on the trends of baseball, namely the hiring of numbers people over baseball people for scouting and front office jobs. In full disclosure, I was interviewed for this book. If you know me, you may be able to pick out which bitter scout experience story is mine. (The first one talked about in that chapter, the scout who had the national supervisor who wouldn't let us consider drafting Justin Verlander with the first overall pick because "he couldn't get anybody out" :).)