Celtic Note
Living the dream
- Dec 22, 2006
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I had not heard about Bill taking guys with him. So, I would imagine most of the scouting staff is the same on the amateur side of things. But even if the staff is mostly the same, there is no guarantee that the talent evaluation priorities would be the same. When we transitioned from Jarmo to Bill, there seemed to be a shift in emphasis from tenacious and smart to size and skill (although not necessarily requiring both to be found in the same player). It’s unclear what the difference will be between Bill and Tony (assuming he stays in that role). It will be interesting to see how our drafts look with him at the helm.My point is that the same leadership supervises both efforts. The head scouts answer to the same person. It’s not like the each have to invent their own wheel. It makes no sense to think that they use no common tools and techniques.
Bill Armstrong is gone. Tony Feltrin has been the head of amateur scouting for almost a year now. Was there much other turn-over when Bill went to Arizona? Did he take his staff with him? If not, I don’t expect a sudden drop off. Time will tell on that.
It has been fashionable on this forum to venerate the amateur scouting and complain about the pro scouting, but I don’t see much to distinguish them one from the other in terms of effectiveness over the past 5+ years. If not for some favorable trades using Blues prospects as currency, we’d probably view amateur scouting more negatively.
I think there are quite a few around here that have questioned Bill and some of his more recent selections. And, yes, I think trading off the guys not working out helped make him look better. He was still good in comparison to other scouting directors, although he certainly had room for improvement.