I just witnessed one of the most mind-boggling segments on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight titled “Scouting the Body” that seemed more like an episode of “America’s Next Top Model” than a show dedicated to covering baseball scores and highlights. This segment was one of those where the anchors (Buck Showalter, Steve Berthiaume and the usually reasonable Tim Kurkjien) are all standing in their suits on a fake baseball field in studio and the two anchors with no major league baseball experience (Berthiaume and Kurkjien) look to the experienced MLB vet (Showalter) for inside knowledge possible only through years of showering with other men and staring at their bodies.

I did my best to transcribe the segment and make as much sense of it as possible especially since Buck Showalter sometimes has difficulty with the English language (apparently “brains” is not one of the body parts that is scouted). Showalter did most of the driving in this segment and according to him “the stats are the easy part. If you don’t get to see a guy play 20-30 times, you can’t base it on experience so you need other things to look for.” These other “things” are as follows (again, please keep in mind that these were taken from an actual airing of Baseball Tonight and that I did NOT make these up):
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