How did Heyward slip to the Braves in the 2007 draft?

Yeah, that was my thought too. I've heard that when Tim Beckham was being scouted, the MLB guys would get to his school at 1:30, pull him out of class at 2 and get him to hit with a wooden bat during his round of BP. They knew they wouldn't see him do anything with the bat in the game because nobody was pitching to him. I figured that was standard practice with all the top position player prospects, and Heyward was no different.

The suggestion about the elite travel ball teams above is dead-on.

 

Oh, and someone in the Braves scouting department must be gnashing some teeth about now with this story coming out.

 

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Any team would want either of these guys.

Cosmo, nice analysis. Thanks.

 

It was an excellent piece. It was also done by Passan at the beginning of spring training.

 

Any scout who didn't already know that he needed to have his ass firmly planted at East Cobb every spring and summer shouldn't be scouting anyway. I played in tournaments at East Cobb. I'm far from a trained eye in spotting top-level talent in 16- and 17-year-old kids, but it was pretty obvious to me that there were some kids at EC that were going to be making big bucks.

 

Here's the Passan piece, though it was done March 28, not at the beginning of spring training:

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=jp-heyward032810

And Crash, some of what you mentioned is addressed by Passan. The days of every team having scouts scouring every corner of the country are long-gone (if they ever existed). I would imagine a lot of teams --- especially those far away from Georgia --- depend on the MLB Scouting Bureau to scout East Cobb, and they gave Heyward lukewarm reviews for whatever reason.

Whoever scouted Heyward for MLB is the one that has some explaining to do.