AZ: Going back to your early days in Cleveland, you were one of the first to use video for scouting purposes. What technology is likely to be most significant for baseball front-offices going forward?
Josh Byrnes: The Internet's been a powerful tool - cellphones and email, not to be too simplistic about it, but it has changed how the business operates. Video's important, and it's come a long way since we moved into Jacobs Field in 1994 and we had a video room. Then going into digital, and co-ordinating it with charting, so we could randomly access events and games and have video behind it. The next challenge is the immediacy and portability of it.
As an example, for preparing a meeting with a post-season opponent, we have a little bit more time to support a scouting report with video. When you have the demands of every day, and travel, it's a hard thing to do over a 162-game season. Can we make better use of our plane time? Can we have more effective meetings in visiting clubhouses? We're probably able to get video more quickly on amateur players; one of the better players in this draft, I've already seen three at-bats from his first game. One of our scouts filmed it, and sent it to us. The next day I can watch players we're scouting in the Dominican and so on and so forth. That will continue to evolve; just how portable and how quickly you can access video
