Man, You've Got A Cool Job
"We’ve had a lot of good shortstops here, and he’s the best one we’ve had."
When I’m out at a ballpark watching games it’s common to get asked about what exactly I’m doing by fans I’m sitting near.
That’s a natural reaction when you see someone sitting in a fan section, not cheering for anyone but instead quietly taking notes on an iPad between pitches, clicking a stopwatch each time the ball crosses the plate and and occasionally pulling out a video camera to film an at-bat or a pitcher.
“So who are you scouting for?” is a common question I get.
After I explain that I’m not a scout but a writer for Baseball America there are a few different reactions that follow. Sometimes the person I’m talking with is vaguely familiar with BA and will politely listen as I tell them what I’m doing before getting back to the game. Sometimes it’s clear they’re just a bit disappointed I’m not an actual scout for a big league club. Sometimes the person is a genuine BA reader who is actually familiar with my work.1
Almost always, though, after discovering I’m being paid to do for work what they’re doing purely out of passion for the sport, or diehard fandom for a school, or just as a leisure activity to unwind from their workdays—something like this comes next:
“Man, you’ve got a cool job.”
And you know what? I do have a cool job.
Last weekend was the start of Division I college baseball, and here I was flying out to Texas to watch a handful of the top-ranked teams in the country and a handful of the top-ranked players in the country in an air-conditioned, big league ballpark. On Saturday I took a break from Globe Life Field and drove 15 minutes down the road to Dallas Baptist (also a great park that I’d never been to before) to watch more baseball. For work.
I had a number of those conversations with baseball fans—in various states of sobriety—throughout the weekend.
Once you do something for a long time, it’s easy to normalize it. At some point we all step on the hedonic treadmill. This is now the ninth year I’ve worked for BA and been able to say that I cover baseball for a living. It’s quite literally the job I dreamed of having when I was a kid. I’m extremely lucky, because on top of being a dream job it’s also the only real job I’ve ever had.
Even though I try and avoid blindly trudging along on that treadmill, it’s still nice to have random fans at baseball games remind you that there are tons of people who would switch places with you in a heartbeat. That’s not to say the gig is easy. There’s still plenty of work and effort that goes into it, but man, it sure does beat the typical 9-5. I’ll always be tremendously grateful to do this.
Happy baseball season, everyone. We’re officially back.
Now that we’ve got live college games each week there’s plenty to write about. Following my trip out to Texas I cut up some video and wrote about 13 prospects who stood out. For the site today I also dug into three players who had loud opening weekends with a dive through Synergy—headlined by a more physical Marek Houston.
Just before the season kicked off the ninth annual first-round to-do list piece. This one is always fun to write and we’ll touch base later in the spring to see which players checked off their items and which went in the wrong direction. Spoiler alert: it’s a number of variations of “make more contact” for hitters in this year’s class.
On the pro side we rolled out 10 extra prospects to know for each team’s Top 30 list. For me that meant 10 extra Braves prospects and 10 extra Guardians prospects.
On the podcasting front Ben and I recorded three more episodes of Future Projection. On Episode 113 we picked out breakout prospects for American League teams; on Episode 114 we brought on Jacob Rudner to draft our amateur player teams for the 2025 class; and on Episode 115 we talked about how we try and value early season live looks.
On the draft podcast Peter Flaherty and I talked about our preseason top 200 draft list and our All-American teams. This week we talked through some of the standout draft performances from the first week of college ball.
If YouTube is your medium of choice, the Baseball America channel has continued to be prolific in 2025. I talked about Guardians and Reds prospects with JJ Cooper, and we’re in the process of rolling out deep dives for each system over the next few weeks.
I also want to highlight some of the opening week work from our newest additions at Baseball America, national college writer Jacob Rudner and staff writer Jesus Cano.
Rudner:
Cano:
UC Irvine’s Tony Martinez Embraces Culture, High Expectations Through Baseball Journey
Vanderbilt’s RJ Austin Begins Road To Lofty Goals With Loud Opening Weekend
Dax Whitney’s Electric Oregon State Debut Could Be Just The Beginning
JD Thompson’s Journey to Becoming Vanderbilt’s Friday Night Ace
I’m excited for our college coverage this season, and both Jacob and Jesus are key parts of that. If you’re a college baseball fan or would like to become one, definitely keep tabs on our Top 25 throughout the year. We update it every Monday.
Thanks for reading and following everyone. Hope you have a great weekend.
This will always be a bit strange to me.
This is an endorsement of Carlos and Ben griping about ballpark camera angles for 10 minutes. Also you were right, Scherzer was already unhappy about the ABS.
Dude, it's been nine years at BA already??? Wow, that went by quickly.