Talking through the process with Jonathan Cannon’s signing scout

What goes into a seemingly straightforward piece of scouting, like say, drafting Jonathan Cannon out of Georgia after getting to watch him his command-first profile tested out against SEC competition?

In the case of White Sox area scout Kevin Burrell, just about five years of dedicated observation and relationship-building. Now in his 33rd year in scouting, Burrell first met the eventual Sox third-round pick and rotation member as a rising junior chosen to take part in the East Coast pro showcase. The pair keep in touch to this day, and met up for lunch this past offseason.

"I always kept up with him, and when he would come to Georgia for draft meetings with guys, I always interacted with him," Cannon said. "Anytime I met with my agent before the draft, it was always that the White Sox were a team that had been high on me."

At a time when pitchers lifting up their arm slots to try to generate vertical action on their fastballs were commonplace, Cannon's low three-quarters arm slot stood out to Burrell, who was reminded how much he hated hitting against bowling ball sinkers from that release point in his playing days.

"He's not what I refer to as a long arm action, tricep-dominant guy," Burrell said. "He's more of a shorter, bicep-dominant guy from a really good slot."

Everyone saw how much the tall right-hander threw strikes, regardless of when his arsenal was as narrow as three pitches or as wide as six. But when scouts' focus on makeup can often be hard to parse from the outside in terms of how it shows up on the field, Cannon's progression shows two distinct benefits from Burrell diving in so much on him as a person.

The first is that Burrell stayed locked in on Cannon through a trajectory that saw his senior year of high school mostly marred by a forearm injury, a case of mononucleosis as a draft-eligible sophomore at Georgia, and another injury absence in his final season in Athens.

"Seeing how I can help them and serve them instead of trying to get something from them," Burrell said of how he approaches player relationships. "He was very upfront with me about [his junior year injury]. But again, if you don't have a relationship with a player, and you haven't built that trust and equity in that player, and they don't trust you, you're probably not going to get those answers, because there's a level of comfort there when you have a relationship with the guy. He assured me he felt good, all the tests were fine, and he wound up doing fine. But that could have played into why he slipped in the draft."

The second is that Cannon's emergence in the major league rotation has keyed around a collection of pitches that he threw sparingly, if at all, before becoming a professional. Previously a sinker-slider-cutter machine, both Cannon's four-seamer and sweeper were added in pro ball. His changeup was never a regular part of his amateur arsenal, but something Burrell saw flashed occasionally through the years enough to project it to be something Cannon would command if he was called upon to develop it.

"They really did not use his changeup at all, but I knew it was in there from years back," Burrell said. "Our coaches have really done an amazing job because when I watch him on TV now, at least when I see him, his changeup has developed into a weapon now. It's an out pitch. It's grown over the years, probably even better than what I thought it was going to be."

As much as seeing the occasional changeup buttressed that notion, talking to Cannon over the years revealed how much of an aptitude he had for understanding the concepts that the likes of Brian Bannister and Ethan Katz would be preaching to him down the road, as the raw feel for spin Burrell observed matured into wholly new pitches.

"For me at least as a scout, it's one thing to have stuff, it's another thing to know how to use your stuff and the cerebral understanding of how to pitch," Burrell said. "He's very smart. He's extremely intelligent when it comes to analytics. He can break it down. He can speak it. He knows it. He can articulate it. He can process it. A lot of guys do not have that ability up on that level in college to really do a deep dive into that. He understands it completely. It impresses from that standpoint that he's able not only to pitch and have really good pitchability, but be able to articulate and understand what makes him tick as a pitcher from an analytical side."

In an industry where no one wants to get beaten on even obscure talents, and there's an emphasis on knowing everyone in your area, Burrell feels he goes against the grain in his process. Every scout has to be all over every potential first-rounder, but Burrell tries to pick a handful of potential options for the first 10 rounds and works to understand each deeply; a quality-over-quantity approach.

"An old scout named Tony Lucadello used to say you know you've grown as a scout when you're able to walk away from a potential player, or a player that other teams consider a prospect," Burrell said. "You're focusing on big leaguers. You're focusing on guys that you really see and you really like and you trust your gut. You go evaluate those guys and get to know them. The problem today, especially with younger scouts, is they're worried about some guy from the 15th to 20th round, and don't spend enough time on guys in those top five rounds."

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While objectively he graded out Cannon's fastball as average or only slightly above, Burrell tried to always note all the reasons he expected it to play up and lead an effective innings-eating, sinkerballing profile. As the White Sox area scout for Georgia and South Carolina, he laid out his case for Cannon in team pre-draft meetings, and then he started hoping.

"I didn't know he was going to drop to the third round but when he was still there, I was just hoping above hope that we would take this guy because he was a guy that I loved," Burrell said. "I was just hoping and praying we would wind up taking him. Fortunately as a staff we liked him. We all had good reports on him and it worked out where we could draft him and sign him."

"On draft night you're just happy to hear your name called and that you're going to get the opportunity," Cannon said. "I don't think it could have worked out any better, and here we are."

Amateur scouts are conditioned against getting too attached to the idea of seeing the direct product of their work playing in a White Sox uniform. The cards have to fall just right to even land a player in the draft, and even from there seeing them thrive elsewhere is a common, even necessary fate. Burrell was quick to cite being the signing scout for fourth-round pick Zack Erwin, who was flipped for Brett Lawrie six months after being drafted, as a meaningful win his career.

He thoroughly enjoyed watching Cannon throw 8⅔ scoreless innings against the Astros last month, because of course he did, but this phone conversation actually took place right after the blowup outing in Detroit. Nevertheless, Burrell was unfazed. When you put in this much time with a player, it's a bit easier to see the long view.

"They're going to fail, but when organizations stick with and have a belief with a particular player or pitcher, they work through that process," Burrell said. "That's how they're going to learn, they're going to work through that failure. I think it's vitally important."