There are other such instances. In 2007, Red Sox advance scout Todd Claus identified a potential opportunity to pick off Rockies outfielder Matt Holliday if he reached first base. Closer Jonathan Papelbon, who almost never threw to first, wiped out Holliday for the third out of the eighth inning in a 2-1 win.
Get 108 Stitches
Receive the Globe’s best reporting and commentary on the Red Sox every weekday.
In 2015, Royals advance scouts observed Blue Jays right fielder Jose Bautista’s tendency with a man on first to overthrow the cutoff man on base hits to his left and throw directly to second. That information informed the decision to send Lorenzo Cain from first to home on Eric Hosmer’s single, the game-winning run in Game 6 of the ALCS that resulted in the Royals advancing to the World Series.
Traditionally, the work of advance scouts during the postseason has been a thing of beauty, one of the purest connections of expert evaluators to games. Starting in September, teams would send their top scouts to individual regular season and then postseason series, looking for those subtle tendencies that could swing a critical moment.
Before the 2020s, it was fairly common by the League Championship Series to see groups of a half-dozen or more scouts from one team covering the opposite league’s LCS, having meals together, dissecting minute details about potential opponents. Those conversations were graduate-level discussions of on-field nuance, and career highlights for those who took part in them.
But in an era where several teams have turned away from in-person advance scouting for the regular season with remote video efforts, what does postseason advance scouting look like?
The Sox, who have done all of their regular-season advance scouting lately by video and through in-office data analysis, started their in-person preparations last week when they sent two of their top scouts to New York for the four-game Yankees-Rays series, to check out their expected Wild Card and ALDS foes.
How does that compare to other teams? A survey of 13 of the 14 teams that remained in contention entering Sunday identified a fascinatingly broad range of plans — an area where teams surprisingly do not behave in like-minded fashion.
Two teams had not deployed any in-person scouts. One team had committed 18.
The 13 teams had a mean of just under seven scouts following potential opponents, with a median of six. Four teams had at least 10 scouts out, four had 6-8, and three had 2-5.
Most teams had scouts working on potential first foes they’d face. Some were already covering potential LCS teams, while one already had committed to potential World Series squads.
Interestingly, there was little correlation between payrolls and advance efforts. Both high- and low-revenue teams featured robust staffs; the same was true of the smallest ones.
Why would a team punt on seeing a team in person before the start of the playoffs? The primary reason was unsurprising, given industry-wide shifts.
“You can see a lot on video,” said one GM.
There’s an incredible amount of information available without having to set foot in a ballpark. Pitch velocity, movement, locations, and count-based usage all can be parsed. So can release point data and various pitch-tipping tendencies (glove position, or other physical quirks) from a variety of angles.
Hitter tendencies and vulnerabilities can likewise be tracked, as can swing path data that frames matchups. There’s also positioning data and more. As such, every front office has members who break down video and analytics.
That said, there is a great deal of information teams get from scouting opponents in-person that might not show up on video or in data — like a defensive player with poor field awareness that is vulnerable to aggressive baserunning, a hitter tinkering with his stance in a way that might close or open a hole, even feel for how a manager might approach a pressurized moment.
For such potentially game-changing details, some teams are willing to spend aggressively.
One evaluator estimated the travel cost for in-person scouting was roughly $6,000 for hotels and meals for every two weeks. Another team that starts its efforts in mid-September budgets an average of $500 per hotel night, with an expectation of spending $300,000 to $400,000 if the team reaches the LCS.
Those are meaningful business expenses, of course, but come with a pair of caveats. The first: some of the scouts would otherwise be deployed to other places, such as the Arizona Fall League. The second, however, explains the thinking of most teams.
“The line item pales in comparison to winning a postseason series,” said one executive. “The information is worth it.”
Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him @alexspeier.