Rosenthal: Blue Jays bring in more scouts to help fill roster

And Eddie Bane just renewed his subscription to Kamehameha Garment Monthly!

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.”