What makes a big leaguer? I asked...

"Sometimes you just see something," one scout says during batting practice.

He, only halfway paying attention to our conversation about a young outfielder's swing, surmised player evaluation pretty darn brilliantly. It's a complicated process that, unless you spent thousands of hours playing, you could never truly understand. At the same time, it's simple. Sometimes, you just see something.

As hitters pop in and out of the cage, the scout studies the mechanics of each swing. Hands here, foot lands there, left leg ends here, head doesn't move and shoulders end square. Then he studies bat speed and approach.

"But, for every guy who does all those things right, there are 100 guys in the Majors who do them wrong and make $20 million a year," another scout says.

The two agree on the skills it takes to play Major League Baseball. "Can a guy hit a 97 mph fastball?" They ask. "Does he have the arm to make all the throws?"

The thing is, there are thousands who can hit a 97 mph fastball and make all the throws, yet a select few make the Majors. The difference is makeup.

An instructor for the team - an 30-year baseball guy who has a way of fitting every possible curse word into his analysis - says makeup is what separates booms from busts. ""I tell these young players, if you want to make it to the show, it's not about hitting, running or pitching. Who can't do that stuff? Fuck, man, everybody has tools. If you want to play every day in The Show, you have to be like The Wizard of Oz. I say, if you want to make it, you better have fucking heart, you better have fucking courage and you better have fucking brains."

This isn't how we usually think of makeup. We ask whether he's a good person, whether he runs out ground balls and if he signs autographs for hours after the game. That stuff matters a little, but not much. "When I ask a guy to come out of the game, does he have a problem with coming out of the game?" The coach asks. "You can't teach a guy to not ever want to come out of the game. That's what I'm looking for."

The rhetorical questions seem endless. They ask so many questions, you wonder how anyone ever has the stuff to play in the Major Leagues. Can he make it through failure? Can he make adjustments? Is he willing to learn?

So, let's say we have a player who can hit a 97 mph fastball, he has heart courage and brains, he can handle failure, is willing to learn and make adjustments. He can still fail in the Bigs. In fact, he can still never make it. "Double-A separates the men from the boys," one of the scouts says. Why? "Approach," he says.

As players advance, the fastballs get faster, the curveballs are sharper and everybody throws all their pitches for strikes. The instructor says all the tools on Earth do no good if a batter doesn't have a plan. One of the players, a lefty, says he tries to take the ball to left field each time. If he gets a hanging breaking ball, he can react, but he needs to think fastball away, fastball away, fastball away.

There a hitters who can "see the ball hit the ball." There are guys so good they swing at breaking balls to fool the pitcher into throwing it again (see: Manny Ramirez). Those are outliers. And, guys that good had to learn it from thousands of minor league at bats.

All that said, sometimes the tools aren't there or the heart or the approach and a player still has success in the majors. Sometimes you just see something.