[BretMan]

A couple of evaluation stories...

My association holds an annual clinic, where one of the drills is plate work in a cage with live pitching. The cage work is video recorded, then reviewed with you by different senior memebers.

One of the evaluators told me that I was setting up too high in the strike zone. A different evaluator, looking at the same tape, told me that I was setting up too low in the strike zone.

That was about the time I decided to take evaluations with a grain of salt. Listening and nodding is a good strategy! You might pick up some good pointers, but might get some bad advice. You kind of have to pick and choose and figure out which advice is worth listening to.

Back a few years ago, I had an evaluation done on the field, during a live game. One senior official recorded several innings, while my partner for the game was also an evaluator. About a week after the game, my association sent me a DVD of my performance, complete with running commentary by yet another evaluator, and a copy of my written evaluation.

The first thing that was weird was that my partner- one of the senior evaluators- caused the beginning of our game to be delayed by 45 minutes because he had forgot his base shoes! This was one of those guys who's rear of his SUV looked like a freaking umpire store. It was stocked from floor to ceiling with at least 20 different hanging shirts, 10 pairs of pants, bags of extra equipment, a dozen hats in cap holders, boxes of extra shoestrings, indicators, plate brushes and every imaginable thing an umpire might need to get through an entire season- everything except for a pair of base shoes.

I offered him a pair of mine, but he refused. Instead, he called his wife who lived over a half-hour away and delayed the start of the game until she showed up with his shoes.

I had a little shoe problem myself that day. Knowing that this would be part of the evaluation, I made sure to have a clean and pressed uniform that day. The only problem was that I had worked a game the night before and, despite knowing the emphasis on shined shoes, had forgotten to give my plate shoes a good scrubbing and shine! They had been polished just before the last game, so I did the best I could on the spot with some water and a rag. The shoes had a good shine, but there was a little dust in some of the nooks and crannies that water and a rag just weren't going to get. They looked good, but not great- at least not up to my own standard of what consitutes a freshly polished shoe.

Anyhow, I get my written evaluation back and my partner/evaluator had made the comment that my shoes were "caked in mud"! Nothing could have been further from the truth.

All I could think was, "At least I had shoes!".

Just to add to the fun, apparently the person who put the commentary on the video had absolutely no experience with the Gerry Davis plate stance. I had begun using the GD earlier that year and was getting quite comfortable with it- all of the things that are supposed to be advantageous with this stance were working well for me. But not according to the evaluator. I was setting up "too high", "too far back" and "had my hands in a vulnerable position, just asking for a hand injury". The same evaluator, during the portion of the video shot from the side, mentioned that he did not think I was properly in the slot. Then, a few minutes later, in video taken from directly behind me, he mentioned that my positioning in the slot looked "real good".

Strangely, none of these comments on my stance made it into the written report. A different person filled that out and I got good marks for my plate mechanics.

So, evaluations can be kind of goofy. I'd like to think that I kept an open mind and picked up a few things that I could work on to improve- or, at least, to appease an evaluator. I also got some bad advice and conflicting advice that I had to filter through to get to the good stuff!