Six years after the release of “Moneyball,” the stats vs. scouts debate is coming almost full circle.
“Moneyball,” written by Michael Lewis, detailed the A’s use of statistical analysis to exploit inefficiencies in the player market, demeaning the role of scouts in the process.
Alex Anthopoulos, the Blue Jays’ new general manager, is increasing the team’s number of domestic scouts from 28 to 54 in an attempt to better compete with the Yankees and Red Sox in the AL East.
Anthopolous, 32, is no old-school throwback, longing for the days when teams relied solely on scouts’ opinions and not computers. Quite the contrary. He grew up reading Bill James, believes in blending subjective and objective analysis, and uses Tom Tango, a leading sabermetrician, as a consultant.
His increased emphasis on scouting, while more retro than radical, is certainly a departure from the current trend. But Anthopoulos sees it like this: So many clubs employ statistical analysis, the numbers no longer offer as significant a competitive advantage.
...“I’m a younger guy. I’ve been exposed to all that (statistical) stuff,” Anthopoulos says. “But the numbers on the page aren’t going to change — they’re a tangible item. Every organization in baseball has access to the same information. The way it’s analyzed, the way it’s cut up, that can be a competitive advantage. But the numbers don’t change.
“When you’re analyzing a player from a scouting perspective, it’s not a tangible process. Everyone has their own checklists and things that they look for. ‘People’ are the competitive advantage. The organizations that have the better evaluators have something that is specific to them and can’t be transferred to another organization the way the statistics can.”
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I don't know if the Jays will be successful, but if you believe that the whole point of what Beane was doing was find value where others didn't see it (or weren't looking for it), it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
But, truthfully, I'm skeptical that just increasing the number of scouts will produce sufficient marginal returns, particular with respect to scouting major league player(which is a key part of the Jays' plan). If all your plan does is generate more diverse and numerous opinions about particular players, you have to successfully identify which opinion is most likely correct.
After reading the article, perhaps the most significant part of the Jays' plan is to increase average salaries for scouts and improve working conditions. I suspect that increasing the quality of scouting may be more important than increasing the number of scouts, and making the job more attractive should help retain good scouts.
Well, it looks like Tango should expect 800 WTF?!? emails from me every time the Jays do something stupid.
I think the next frontier is video analysis. I'd rather send out video teams to film prospects and send the feed back to a central facility. The video can be subjected to quantitative analysis and viewed by my best scouts.
Good talent evaluators are hard to find. Don't waste their time driving six hours between podunk towns. Save the in-person viewing for once you've narrowed the population down.
It's not entirely clear, but a couple recent articles have indicated (or at least hinted) that this is a matter of Toronto both catching up and surpassing the number of scouts employed by other teams - AA has made repeated reference to emphasising scouting (both pro and amateur) within the Toronto organization as a way to help Toronto compete with the Red Sox and the Yankees.
I'm not aware of any central list that allows for comparison of the number of scouts in different organizations.
According to Anthopolous, they are increasing the number of scouts so that a particular scout can focus more on a smaller area, instead of having to cover a (much) larger area.
So their goal isn't so much generating more opinions, as it is generating more in depth, more detailed opinions.
I looked closey at 10-15 organizations a couple years ago. It was all of the playoff teams and some other ones that were notable for generally having good farms.
In terms of scouting for the draft, most teams had 15-16 area scouts and 3-4 crosscheckers under thier scouting director.
The team that had the most was the Red Sox with 19 area scouts and 5 crosscheckers.
The article states that the Jays will go from 14 area scouts to 25 and increase to 8 total crosscheckers. That looks like a pretty substantial increase.
Btw, the smallest dept a couple of years ago was the A's who only had 12 area scouts and 3 crosscheckers. Nobody else was below 14 and you cuold just tell from the areas those guys were based in that they had to be stretched extraordianrily thin and/or large tracts of the middle of the country were barely covered. It was mentioned in the article that the A's started to beef up their scouting ranks a couple years ago and sure enough they were up to 17 area scouts last year.
2. The marginal return on hiring your first stat analyst vs. an additional scout likely leans in the direction of the stat analyst pretty heavily. The marginal return on hiring your second stat analyst vs. an additional scout probably lies with the scout. By the time you get to your third stat analyst, you're just hiring a guy to spend his day reading primer, fangraphs, THT, etc.
3. I think Snapper's on the right track. If there's an "inefficiency" to be exploited here, it's going to be someone who figures out a different way of scouting or a third prong that's added to stats and scouts. Imagine a portable pitch/fx setup -- then maybe you start getting some useful data on amateurs. Of course a portable pitch/fx setup would disseminate quite quickly.
4. Anyway, it's hard to see how it could hurt. 26 scouts combined can't possibly make more than an FA utility infielder I wouldn't think.
If you see one of these jobs available, could you let me know?
This is a problem, how?
The Jays currently have 3 video scouts doing this. I was surprised when I first heard this - I didn't think this sort of analysis was happening.
Tinnish will have three video co-ordinators west, central and east.
"Video helped with Mike McDade (a sixth-round selection in 2007) and he's done well," Tinnish said. McDade hit .277 with 16 homers and 57 RBIs at single-A Lansing this season.
Here's the link-http://www.torontosun.com/sports/columnists/bob_elliott/2009/11/13/11732296-sun.html
(Sorry guys I don't know the proper way to do the links.)
Video scouting is happening a lot these days; it's a cost-effective way of separating wheat from chaff.
-- MWE
Use the bracket-a-bracket tag above the comments.
-- MWE
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