Historical Scouting Reports - Eric Yelding

The National Baseball Hall of Fame did something really cool last year when they made thousands of historical scouting reports available to the public. This post is part of a series in which we'll look at the reports of players that have passed through Houston during their career. A lot of these are, understandably, difficult to read, so I'll do my best to transcribe them as-is while including pictures of a few of them.

Today we'll look at Eric "Cool Breeze" Yelding, who played primarily center field and shortstop for Houston from 1989-1992. Yelding was a former first round pick by Toronto in 1984. He was picked up by the Cubs in the 1988 Rule 5 draft, then waived by Chicago and claimed by Houston following spring training. His one full season, 1990, he hit .254 with 64 steals (2nd in the NL) but had just 15 extra base hits and led the league in caught stealing with 25. Speed was essentially his only tool and he totaled just 0.1 WAR for his efforts that year. He played sporadically the next couple years for Houston before being the PTBNL in a deal with the White Sox for LHP Rich Scheid.

The one scouting report we have for Yelding is from that 1990 season and was submitted by White Sox scout Larry Monroe. This one's nice as we see a handful of ratings on the 20-80 scale

1990

Physical Descriptions: Skinny. Attitude: Hustles, cocky? Good speed & range. Line drive, ground ball hitter. Steals bases, makes things happen offensively. Can be overpowered at plate. Chases breakers. Arm barely average for SS. Hands inconsistent. Makes dumb mistakes running & throwing ball around. Will be average ML SS, should be good offensive player. Better suited for 2B. How would we pitch him? Hard stuff up. Breakers down. How would we defense him? Shallow, bunch to CF.