Red Sox hope exhaustive advanced scouting tips scales in postseason

If you don’t think advance scouting is important in baseball’s post-season, you must never have heard of Dennis Eckersley or Kirk Gibson.

The former threw a pitch that the latter hit for a game-winning homer in Game 1 the 1988 World Series, a home run that produced one of baseball’s most iconic moments and set the stage for one of the game’s greatest Series upsets.

And it was all – or mostly – due to Mel Didier.

Didier doesn’t have anywhere near the name recognition that Eckersley or Gibson enjoys. But without him, Gibson almost certainly wouldn’t have hit the homer that is among the handful of most significant ever hit in the game’s long history.

At the time, Didier, who passed away last month at 91, was an advance scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers. It was his job to follow the Oakland A’s in the final weeks of the 1988 season and glean information that he could pass on to the Dodgers’ manager, coaching staff and players.

No information was considered too insignificant. It was Didier’s job to uncover tendencies and habits of the A’s players. What did they tend to do in a certain situation? What were their weaknesses, their vulnerabilities?

As it turned out, Didier ferreted out a whopper. With the count full on left-handed hitters, Eckersley had a habit of throwing a backdoor slider.

Scene: Game 1. Ninth inning. A’s lead the Dodgers 4-3. Mike Davis, who had walked, on second base. A gimpy Gibson drags himself to the plate. Sure enough, Eckersley ran the count full to Gibson. Sure enough, here came the backdoor slider.

Gibson, recounting Didier’s advice, was ready. He swung and carried the Dodgers to victory and himself into baseball lore. The Dodgers won that game, the A's never covered and the Series was over in five games.

Broadcaster Jack Buck famously exclaimed: “I don’t believe what I just saw.’’

But for the Dodgers, it wasn’t only believable. It was expected.

That’s the value of great advance scouting in the post-season. That’s why, for the past month, the Red Sox have assigned two scouts to follow every potential opponent in the post-season, American League and National League clubs alike.

As the Red Sox’ director of pro scouting, Gus Quattlebaum is in charge of coordinating the coverage and compiling the data.

“We have to utilize almost our entire pro scouting staff, with the help of the amateur scouting staff,’’ said Quattlebaum. “We use tandems. Myself and (main advance scout) Steve Langone will try to strategize on what clubs need to have which scouts (assigned). Some scouts are more comfortable with pitching, others with hitting.’’

In Didier’s era, the advance scouts supplied the basics, helping a staff know how to pitch to a certain hitter or what to expect from a given pitcher. Now, that information is readily available on video. In seconds, a team can search their organization’s database and easily find every swing, say, Carlos Beltran has taken this year against a curveball – from a lefty, ahead in the count, with men on base.

But the Red Sox maintain one of the bigger scouting staffs in the game, in the belief that some details – no matter how insignificant – can only be detected with a scout following a particular team on-site.

“We’re trying to find the other little nuances that you might not get on video – how staffs relay their signals, who’s the point person," said Quattlebaum. "We’re constantly trying to figure out their trends and who’s driving the bus. You can’t really get that on video. The shifting isn’t as apparent on video; it’s much more visible when you’re there in person and the game has really gone to extensive shifting. And everyone’s always looking to see if anyone’s tipping pitches.’’

In an era where advanced metrics have become essential to evaluating players, the numbers can help supplement the work of scouts and, in Quattlebaum’s estimation, “open (a team’s) eyes to something the scouts didn’t notice. That’s huge. If you were to not weigh that, it’d be foolish. It’s real info that is extremely revealing.’’