Alright, so a few folks have been bugging me about Jose Tena. They see the box scores, maybe a highlight or two, and think they’ve got him pegged. Let me tell you, it’s not that simple. Not by a long shot.
When I first started really looking at Tena, I mean really looking, I wasn’t blown away. Seemed like just another guy, you know? Good glove, decent bat, but nothing screamed “superstar.” That’s what the surface tells you. But the more I dug, the more I realized the standard reports were missing something crucial.
So, I started my usual process. Fired up the game footage – hours and hours of it. Not just the flashy plays, but the routine stuff, the between-pitches stuff. Then I started to look for patterns, things that don’t show up in a stat line. His footwork on tricky hops, how he communicates with his second baseman, his approach in different counts. It’s a grind, believe me.
- Watched every at-bat from last season. Yeah, every single one.
- Focused on his body language after errors or strikeouts. Tells you a lot.
- Tried to see how he adjusted to different pitchers over a series.
And that’s when it started to click. It wasn’t one big thing, but a bunch of little things. His baseball IQ, for instance, is way higher than people give him credit for. He’s got this quiet intensity. He makes adjustments pitch to pitch, not just game to game. That’s rare.
The Real Story Behind My Tena Report
Now, you’re probably thinking, “Why’d this guy go so hard on scouting Jose Tena?” Fair question. It wasn’t even my main gig at the time. See, I was supposed to be breaking down a couple of hotshot pitching prospects for this… let’s just call it a ‘project’ I was working on. Big stuff, or so I thought.
Then, disaster struck. Our main video system, the one with all the angles and feeds? It totally crapped out. Went dark for three, nearly four days. Murphy’s Law, right? All I had access to was this one cruddy, fixed camera feed that mostly showed the infield. And there was Tena, day in, day out, right in the middle of the screen.
At first, I was just fuming, totally frustrated. Stuck watching this guy instead of doing my actual job. But after a while, with nothing else to do, I started to, well, watch. I saw him take charge on pop-ups, saw him patting a pitcher on the back after a tough inning, saw him working on his footwork during pre-game when he thought no one was paying attention. Stuff you’d miss if you were just looking for highlights.
It was a total accident, me focusing on Tena. But sometimes, that’s how you find the real gems, or at least, the real story. I ended up putting together a more detailed file on him than on the pitchers I was supposed to be scouting. My boss at the time? He wasn’t thrilled when the system came back online and I handed him this massive Tena dossier. He was like, “What the heck is this? Where’s the pitcher stuff?” I just shrugged. Sometimes you follow the game where it takes you.
So yeah, that’s how I ended up with such a detailed take on Jose Tena. Wasn’t planned, but it taught me a lot. Sometimes the best insights come from the most unexpected places, or when your tech decides to take a vacation.
