This is the third time I've seen someone try to "unite statheads and scouts." So I guess the "until now" applies only to Baseball America.

Great stuff. Worth the time to read the whole thing. Voros comes across a bit prickly -- and the scouts even more so -- but it's an engaging, passionate converation. Congrats to BA.

Hughes comes across as more prickly than Bane. Bane sounds like he's got GM potential, since he's interested in what everyone else in the room has to say. None of the other three sound that way.

I agree, Hughes sounds as if he wants to strangle Voros any chance he gets and Bane is logically explaining how all information is important - both objective and subjective materials.

I'd love to see a video tape of this discussion. Without facial expressions, inflection, etc, you can't really be sure who was "listening" and who was thinking mostly about the next thing they were going to say.

The two most important things said in this article:

From Voros: "I fully admit that you can’t tell the future via stats. My point is that scouting has that equal amount of unpredictability. You can only know so much. You’re scouts, you’re not fortunetellers."

From Huckaby: "I think it’s important to understand that a lot of people have overclaimed what you can do by statistical analysis. It’s a tool. A car is a tool as well—you can use it to drive to the store, or you can use it to drive into a tree."

I guess we will be starting up a Steven Andrade stats pool shortly.

ALAN SCHWARZ: Gary Huckabay, I believe you coined the phrase, “There’s no such thing as a pitching prospect.”

GARY HUCKABAY: Yeah, but that was an overstatement designed to sell books.

LOL.

Regarding post #1, Baseball America had this debate before

Bane doesn't get it...he talks about how he won 15 games two years at a row in AAA, but had only 7 wins in the majors. He played college at ASU, so his AAA was presumably after his time in the majors. I wonder if that was during the prime of his career perhaps? The fact that he acknowledges this stuff is important, but doesn't bother to understand it...hell, at least Hughes has decided it's BS, and he doesn't need to understand it. I'm not sure what Bane's problem is.

Bane makes reference to Boston and Oakland paying these two guys...and there's an earlier reference to Huckabay working for a team I think. Any truth to that? The A's website makes no reference of Huckabay.

As for Voros' tone...strikes me as a guy who's been told he's wrong for reasons he can't accept too many times. There was an absolutely brilliant post here a while ago discussing sabermetrics and cagermetrics that talked about the arrogant/sarcastic attitude that permeates sabermetrics. I can't remember who wrote it, but it made a ton of sense to me. While the sabermetric community as a whole may not have earned the right for a little understanding on that, guys like Voros and James have maybe earned it a little bit. They've absorbed a lot of crap, from what I've seen.

I came back into baseball in part due to Moneyball, and while I've also had a ton of exposure to a former BJ's scout I know who loathes JP, this was still a very interesting read. Thanks for posting it here.

It was a really nice interview, although it seems to me that they were talking past each other at times. Both scouts came away with the notion that the risks attendant with drafting high school pitchers somehow means that you shouldn't draft high school hitters.

I like how Bane inadvertantly backed up TINSTAAPP by mentioning his own pitching career.

It’s a tool. A car is a tool as well—you can use it to drive to the store, or you can use it to drive into a tree.

I suspect that line isn't original to Gary, but it's a new one to me (or at least I can't remember when I heard it before). I loved it as soon as I read it here. I can't wait to find the opportunity to use it at work!

And I'll make a couple of my standard points:

1) Scouts (at least the ones who participate in these sorts of things or get interviewed) don't seem to understand the difference between numbers on a stat sheet and statistical modeling. Sure anybody can look at a stat sheet and see the guy has a good K/BB ratio. That's not statistics. But only a model can tell you how that combines with BA, walk rate, HR rate, etc. in terms of how his performance is likely to translate to the next level.

2) There are a bejillion ways to incorporate qualitative information into a statistical model. Every organization should be incorporating information from the scouting reports into their stat models. This could be something as crude as a 0/1 variable that indicates "thumbs up/down" or slightly more complicated like including their ratings on the 5 tools or a full-fledged Bayesian model. That is, if scouts have something to contribute over and above numbers, this can be statistically tested....or if numbers become almost meaningless once you control for scouting opinions. It's also a way by which you can evaluate which of your scouts are effective.

I'll add a few other comments:

Voros and Gary did an awful job of responding to the "don't tell me what this guy did, tell me what he's going to do" criticism. Prior performance does tell you, within a certain level of confidence, what future performance will look like.

I simply don't foresee a substantial role for stat models in the amateur draft. Controlling for competition, park, etc. effects in high school, especially for so few games (for any given player), is going to be near impossible, with competition effects possibly changing dramatically from year to year. Even if you could correct for all that, the error on any projection is going to be so huge as to be useless. College, especially the major conferences, seems feasible. Still, I don't think anybody can really tell me what a guy with 5 years in the majors is going to look like 6 years from now with any confidence.

Of course that highlights another difference between statistical modeling (especially without the subjective info) and scouting. As Huckabay briefly mention, the purely numeric stat models are essentially actuarial models -- i.e. you aren't looking at the individual player, you're trying to control your risk based on group tendencies. Of course there's a big difference between an insurance company with thousands of policy holders that they haven't given physicals compared with a baseball team where the "risk" only balances out across 10 years of draft picks, possibly resulting in you sucking for 9 years.

On the "are we going to spend $50,000 on a scout or a stat guy" dilemma, the scout's going to lose that one almost all the time. The scout can see a handful of players per year; a stat guy can help you evaluate the talent of thousands of players at all levels of competition (except probably high school). Even if the scout provides better info on any given player, he's unlikely to be able to provide equal overall value.

Now if the decision is between $50,000 on a scout or an a second stat guy, then I think the advantage shifts to the scout.

Great, great stuff.

I have to say that Eddie Bane came across a lot better than I would have thought coming into it. In the past, he has come across as a prickly scout type, but here he comes across as very open. The very fact that he knew about DIPS was impressive.

I didn't really like the fact that he hates reading that a high school hitter has a good eye, but, well, no one's perfect ...

... Huckaby says "Donnelly and Newhan were people we were screaming about for years," which, as a BPro reader for at least six years, really makes me wonder who "we" are. The comment on Donnelly in the 2002 book is dismissive of his chances and doesn't speak to his talent, and as far as I can tell it's the first book he appeared in.

Newhan in the 2000 book gets "has kicked around the minors for a few years now, and there isn't really a compelling reason to keep him on a roster" before mentioning that he would be okay in a cheap platoon. He hasn't appeared in the book since, and I generally remember everyone being shocked by his performance.

Now obviously BPro != Huckaby, but I don't really know who was jumping up and down about either of these guys prior to their emergence.

Bane seems pretty confident that Andrade won't make it. I don't think the Halos ever gave him a real shot at AAA, he had like 13 innings there before being sent back down to AA (and he struck out more than a guy an inning!), so it will be really interesting to see how he does in Toronto. I pegged him as the next Donnelly about a year ago, so I'm personally quite curious.

Great article. Eddie Bane sounds like my kind of guy. He has good ol' baseball horse sense and he recognizes the value of sabermetrics. If I were an owner, I'd want men like Bane in my organization.

I don't think anybody can really tell me what a guy with 5 years in the majors is going to look like 6 years from now with any confidence.

Exactly right. And the guy in the majors will be undergoing infinitely less change, in himself and in his competitive surroundings, than the kid.

But to recognize the daunting task that the statistical modeler faces in predicting prospect development is, or at least should be, to also recognize the daunting task the scout faces. That statheads can't predict this stuff well doesn't mean that scouts can.

This could be something as crude as a 0/1 variable that indicates "thumbs up/down" or slightly more complicated like including their ratings on the 5 tools or a full-fledged Bayesian model.

This may sound kind of lame, but when I work my projections for Fantasy Baseball, I read whatever scouting reports I can get my hands on for each and every player, and they definitely influence my projections somewhat.

And then, when I am done with every thing, I simply go back and start putting arrows either pointing up or pointing down next to the players name if I think he is clearly trending up or trending down.

In the heat of a draft, that system has really helped. All the work was already done to make me form my conclusion, so in the end, I trust those arrows more than anything. It may seem subjective, or trying to be overly intuitive, but those arrows are based on all the study and research. They don't end up pointing up or down for no good reason.

It works for me, anyway.

EDDIE BANE: The future of scouting, and I hope the Angels are ahead of the curve, is we're going to have to understand what Gary Huckabay is writing about. And what Voros McCracken is writing about.

What writing?

I didn't really like the fact that he hates reading that a high school hitter has a good eye, but, well, no one's perfect ...

Especially since this is the same organization with Mickey Hacker as the hitting coach. But between this and the Moose Stubing/Brendan Donnelly comment, Bane sounds to me more like a politician who's studied his quote-unquote enemy than someone interested in both sides of the debate.

I think it's interesting that Bane's trying to get his scouts away from the radar gun.

AFA my research (and others), walk rate does not translate from teh minors to the majors.

Heck, it's Gary DiSarcina's "I hope I don't walk all season" organization.

As for Voros' tone...strikes me as a guy who's been told he's wrong for reasons he can't accept too many times ... guys like Voros and James have maybe earned it a little bit. They've absorbed a lot of crap, from what I've seen.

James has absorbed an infinitely greater amount of crap than Voros and has handled it with more class. If Voros had to deal with what James has, he'd take hostages. Now, James certainly has a temper and at times a sharp tongue, but I never thought the overall tone of his writing was arrogant or condescending. The BP guys, like Carroll, are guilty of seeming like a-holes at times. Actually, Carroll probably is an a-hole. Even when James was being mean, he was so funny that you laughed anyway. Sometimes the BP guys just seem mean. In fairness, I think they are trending in a more civil direction now.

AFA my research (and others), walk rate does not translate from teh minors to the majors.

More please...

James has absorbed an infinitely greater amount of crap than Voros and has handled it with more class. If Voros had to deal with what James has, he'd take hostages. Now, James certainly has a temper and at times a sharp tongue, but I never thought the overall tone of his writing was arrogant or condescending. The BP guys, like Carroll, are guilty of seeming like a-holes at times. Actually, Carroll probably is an a-hole. Even when James was being mean, he was so funny that you laughed anyway. Sometimes the BP guys just seem mean. In fairness, I think they are trending in a more civil direction now.

Life is more fun when you're mean.

I was struck about the scouts' comment on fear. I think that scouts see essentially the same thing all the time that they might jump on something that isn't related to ability to differentiate one player from the hundreds or thousands they see in a year.

When I watched the Yankees this year, I got a tentative feel emanating from Miguel Cairo. He did a very good job offensively and defensively, but he sometimes had this uncertain look about him. Of course, he probably felt that if he had a 2 error game or an 0-fer with 2 Ks he would be watching Enweake play for a week (and with Torre, he might have). It's my suspicion that the Yankees let Cairo go because the Yankee scouts picked up this same vibe. It's sometimes easier to find a reason NOT to like a player than it is to tell the rest of the players apart.

Grabiner's original MLE work showed that "properly translated, minor league statistics are as good a predictor of major league statistics as major league statistics", except walks. For some reason, players walk rates didn't correlate. You could not walk in teh minors and walk in teh major and vice versa.

Dan Szym and I did a similar thing a decade later and found that tobe true (I used players from like 1995-1999 comparing players that played in the minors compared to players that played in the majors (I used roughly 20 for each set). Walks simply don't necesarily translate.

That's one reason I'm so dismissive of Beltre's minor league walk performance as compared to his ML walk performance. ML walk performance predicts ML walk performance *infinitely* better than minor league walk performance.

felt that if he had a 2 error game or an 0-fer with 2 Ks he would be watching Enweake play for a week (and with Torre, he might have).

This was not a "might", it did happen, a lot. Though much less towards the end.

Grabiner's original MLE work showed that "properly translated, minor league statistics are as good a predictor of major league statistics as major league statistics", except walks. For some reason, players walk rates didn't correlate. You could not walk in teh minors and walk in teh major and vice versa.

Dan Szym and I did a similar thing a decade later and found that tobe true (I used players from like 1995-1999 comparing players that played in the minors compared to players that played in the majors (I used roughly 20 for each set). Walks simply don't necesarily translate.

That's one reason I'm so dismissive of Beltre's minor league walk performance as compared to his ML walk performance. ML walk performance predicts ML walk performance *infinitely* better than minor league walk performance.

This is very interesting to me as I had assumed that it did. What about in terms of combining the BB:K ratio. For instance, do players with better BB:K ratios' minor league BB numbers correlate to their ML numbers with greater consistency? What about ones with poor BB:K ratios? (Sorry if this sounds nonsensical)

Kind of off topic, but something that I've noticed, and I haven't tried to quantify, but perhaps you have, is that players minor league batting averages in conjunction with their BB:K numbers SEEM to have some sort of predictive effect as far as their ML batting averages. Has there been anything done on that specific topic? Thanks.

I simply don't foresee a substantial role for stat models in the amateur draft. Controlling for competition, park, etc. effects in high school, especially for so few games (for any given player), is going to be near impossible, with competition effects possibly changing dramatically from year to year.

I don't think you can read much of anything into high school performance, but teams absolutely should be working on statistical models based on scouting reports.

I think it's highly unlikely that scouts (and scouting directors) by their intuition are weighing foot speed, power, velocity, character, size etc even close to correctly when they evaluate amateur players.

I'm sitting sitting here now having read this, absolutely stunned at how much I like Voros.

He doesn't disclose anything here of note, but his attitude tells me that he "gets it." "It" being that despite Bane and Hughes's claims that they look at stats, the fact that Voros is just plain smarter than these two. That's what it comes down to for me. Unlike everyone else, he didn't bungle anything in that. He didn't reveal his ignorance, just his arrogance.

Yes he's arrogant. And he has a damn good reason to be arrogant. Being right will do that.

Is it me or did Voros gain like 100 lbs or something?

I remember seeing his picture somewhere and he was quite thin.

It was a good article. I'd like to have seen Bane explain DIPS as I'm not sure he knows it based on his comments (although I agree that he comes across pretty well in the interview. Personally I think they all do).

AFAIK, to answer E Hinske, Gary and some other BP's (or possibly BP as an entity) consult for some number of ML teams. One of which is the As (given Gary lives in the East Bay). At some pizza feeds they'll reference studies they've done for teams which they can't fully talk about. So he isn't, AFAIK, an As employee but is an independent contractor for them.

As for Bane's minor league stats my guess is it was his 1974 and 1975 seasons where he was good in AAA. He was drafted in 1973 in the first round and was one of the youngest players in the majors that same year. He pitched below average. Then he didn't pitch in the majors in 1974 and only pitched <30 innings in the majors in 1975 (and they were a good 30 innnings). Then his last major league season was in 1976 at age 24 and it went very badly.

And if I were running a ML team I'd want a number of scouts and a number of stat guys (not just one). And I'd want my stat guys to be able to model things including the scouts abilities. It is pretty silly to be willing to spend $50+M on players but not $50K on a guy who might be able to help you avoid a multimillion dollar mistake.

If I could strike any word from the baseball lexicon, it would be "intangibles". Not because I don't believe they exist (in fact, I do), but because it's this vague, catch-all term rapidly losing all sense of any kind of meaning. Talk about leadership, talk about team spirit, talk about clutchness, talk about heads-up play, or even baseball sense. But, man, am I sick and tired of hearing "the intangibles" being thrown out there like it explains everything, and particularly as a counterpoint to "stats".

Hughes and Bane, to me, came off as intelligent men, but sloppy analysts. That's not a slam on them at all. On the whole, everyone is a sloppy thinker at one point or another; there's a reason why our mind uses heuristics and stereotypes rather than logically analyzing each situation. The problem is, their job is to analyze, and you'd hope that at least as far as baseball went they wouldn't fall prey to the the kind of sloppy think we all use to by in our everday lives. There's no doubt in my mind that both men are good men, competent at what they do, and its no surprise that they are where they are today.

At the risk of opening myself up to accusations of Beane-worshipping, one of the things that I find fascinating about Beane is that he combines the baseball savvy, experience, and subjectivity of these two men with the ability to objectively analyze like Bill James.

Yes he's arrogant. And he has a damn good reason to be arrogant. Being right will do that.

Whether or not he's "right" is largely a matter of opinion. And, even if we were to agree he is, it still shouldn't give him carte blanche to be a dick.

"I'm sitting sitting here now having read this, absolutely stunned at how much I like Voros.

He doesn't disclose anything here of note, but his attitude tells me that he "gets it." "It" being that despite Bane and Hughes's claims that they look at stats, the fact that Voros is just plain smarter than these two. That's what it comes down to for me. Unlike everyone else, he didn't bungle anything in that. He didn't reveal his ignorance, just his arrogance.

Yes he's arrogant. And he has a damn good reason to be arrogant. Being right will do that."


Wow! Imagine how much better your posts will be when you type with both hands!

This point has probably been made a zillion times elsewhere, but re: no radar gun, one of the explanation for the Angels' success in building inexpensive, high-quality bullpens has been a stronger-than-most emphasis on pitchers whose weirdo deliveries make it difficult to pick up the ball, and whose fastballs move a lot.

I live next to the main UPS hub for L.A. - talk about seeing lots of weirdo deliveries...

AFA my research (and others), walk rate does not translate from teh minors to the majors.

Huh?

That's one of the strangest things I've ever heard!

Since BB rate is one of the most consistent rates a player can have, and one of the three true outcomes, that CAN'T possibly be true, can it?

Of course not!

Here are the year-to-year correlations for park adjusted singles, doubles, triples, HR, BB, and K rates for all major league players with at least 300 PA's in back to back seasons from 2000 to 2004. There were 879 such pairs of players. I regressed 2001 on 2000, 2002 on 2001, etc., so there are overlapping data points, thus reducing the effective sample size below 879. No big deal though, as all we are eventually interested in is how well minor league rates correlate with major league rates. I will get to that in a minute.

YTY major to major (N=879 Average PA per year=450)

s=.506
d=.205
t=.345
hr=.642
bb=.712
so=.804

Here are the same correlations for park adjusted components for all minor league players during the same years:

YTY minor to minor (N=1241 Average PA per year=450)

s=.540
d=.308
t=.368
hr=.662
bb=.639
so=.784

Those numbers are very similar to the major to major ones, which is nice.

Now here are the same numbers, minor to major. 2001 major is regressed on 2000 minor, 2002 major on 2001 minor, etc.

YTY minor to major (N=98 Average PA per year=450)

s=.609
d=.268
t=.460
hr=.647
bb=.674
so=.737

Chris, where did you get your implausible and clearly incorrect assertion from, and please cite yours or someone else's research that conflicts with the above numbers!!!

Chris, where did you get your implausible and clearly incorrect assertion from, and please cite yours or someone else's research that conflicts with the above numbers!!!

The voice in which this is said in my head makes it sound really funny. Sometimes I feel like other people on this board might get their feelings hurt when MGL "makes a point".

MGL, have you ever done any work as far as BA correlation?

For minors to majors that is, I know of work on ML BA correlation. I just want to see if what I have intuitively noticed in regards to BA and BB:K when going from the majors to the minors is accurate.

From this website:

http://www.baseball1.com/bb-data/grabiner/mle.html

I should now revise the claim: MLE's are just as good as major-league statistics in predicting future performance, with the exception of strikeouts and walks.

However, 11 of 30 MLE projections for walks, and 9 of 30 for strikeouts, were off; that's 1/3 of all the projections. (6 of 30 major-league walk
predictiions and 5 of 30 strikeout predictions were off, about what would be expected.) The errors were not consistently in either direction. This suggests that MLE's are not good for projecting strikeouts and walks, probably because of differences in minor-league
pitching.

That is a lame sample size and a lame "statistical test". Also there were presumably no park factor adjustments although park factors for BB and K's are pretty trivial.

Again, Chris, please post or cite "yours and others research" that supports Grabiner's above claim...

park factors for BB and K's are pretty trivial.

Sorry, not trivial, but inconsequential.

Chris, where did you get your implausible and clearly incorrect assertion from, and please cite yours or someone else's research that conflicts with the above numbers!!!

The worst part of the above statement is that I ended a clause with a preposition!

It is a small leap from these component correlations to BA correlations. A few more lines of code and voila!

YTY major to major

ba=.266

YTY minor to minor

ba=.303

YTY minor to major

ba=.293

BTW, and back to the original article, where is it written that sabermetricians or sabermetrics must win someone (anyone) over? That is the implication of many of the discussions and articles concerning the sabermetrics versus scouting debate.

For example, it has been written that many sabermetricians come off as rude or arrogant (present company excluded of course), and that that is somehow a problem? To whom and how is that a problem?

Ok, so minors to ML the correlation is pretty insignificant. To be more accurate, I guess what I was wondering was whether or not any work had been done in terms of the following process:

You establish a baseline for what is a good BB:K ratio versus a bad one and a mediocre one. In addition to this ratio, you take into account the K rate and then after that you correlate the BA in the switch from minors to ML for each group of players and see with which group the correlation is highest and whether or not that correlation is significant, because from a cursory point of view, it seems that there be something there. Hopefully, someone understands what I'm saying here, though it may be a bit ambitious.

For example, it has been written that many sabermetricians come off as rude or arrogant (present company excluded of course), and that that is somehow a problem? To whom and how is that a problem?

I agree with what you're saying here, however, what I think those who are on the side of "sabermetricians are rude" are thinking is that since sabermetricians are on the outside looking in, they should try and "fit in". In other words, they have to give compromise their view, personality, or whatever in order to get in and when they act arrogantly that goes against that goal and pigeon-holes the entire sabermetrician group and makes them all look bad. At least, this is the impression I'm getting. It's kind of like being a black student in majority white schooling.

Hopefully, someone understands what I'm saying here, though it may be a bit ambitious.

Well, you've apparently got a lot of time on your hands. Get to it!

Well, you've apparently got a lot of time on your hands. Get to it!

I honestly want to, but I have no idea how to create easily usable databases, which is a huge impediment in other minor league projects I'm working on.

BTW, and back to the original article, where is it written that sabermetricians or sabermetrics must win someone (anyone) over?

Well, most big league teams trust scouts much more than they trust sabermetrics. And the only way to get the powers that MLB to start listening to you and implementing your ideas is to win them over. Until that happens, you'll have as much success giving sabermetric advice as I have when I talk to the characters in slasher movies, telling them not to go outside to investigate that strange noise.

Mmmmm..> i understand what you are saying, even at 4:30 AM, and it is interesting. I have not done any work in that regard. You might have to get lots of data to get any meaningful samples.

My point about sabermericians being rude or not is not whether it is true, or the dynamics, per se. It is who is supposed to care whether they are or aren't, or whether they convert anyone or not, or even facilitate anyone listening to them. Perhaps someone working for a skeptical or hybrid team or someone looking for a job as a sabermetrcian with a non-sabermetric or again, a skeptical, team.

Other than that, I don't see any significant advantgages brought on by sabermetric thinking to anyone or anything, other than a team desiring to be more successful...

<i>Mmmmm..> i understand what you are saying, even at 4:30 AM, and it is interesting. I have not done any work in that regard. You might have to get lots of data to get any meaningful samples.<i>

I haven't done any quantitative work either, it's just something that I've noticed since I spend much of my time looking up the minor league numbers of every player that piques my interest within the realm of professional baseball. I'd really love to be able to do the research at some point though.

Of, course, mgl, you're in a different situation. You've already got a big league team's ear. If other teams start hiring other sabermetricians, that's more competetion for you. I'm not sure if that's what you meant, but if it is, I can understand that.

Most sabermetricians are on the outside wanting to get in, so they want to win over teams so they can get paid and listened to.

Chris, I still have that spreadsheet and the ICQ logs - you were surprised at the time that BBs *did* correlate, unlike what Grabiner found in his set.

I was struck about the scouts' comment on fear. I think that scouts see essentially the same thing all the time that they might jump on something that isn't related to ability to differentiate one player from the hundreds or thousands they see in a year.

Ding! As someone who bird-dogged for two years, my off-hand training was that it the little things did matter. Scouts have many terms for guys that are pusses or wimps or limp-wrists (not in a good way, either).

Re: the radar gun, I applaud that decision as a drafting tool. Too many quality pitchers that can actually pitch rather than throw are passed over because they don't hit a certain number on the gun. A lot of scouts will adjust the guns to get the reading they want if they like a guy anyway. Kids also know they have to hit a number, so they overthrow to impress the scouts. That overthrowing on top of the normal abuse a young pitcher goes through anyway - ban the gun.

On the article itself - Hughes is an incredible talent finder, especially his years in the Montreal and Yankee organizations. It was also nice to see Bane name-drop the scouts like Poloni and Weaver.

From David Cameron at U.S.S. Mariner...on the article.

Honestly, the statistical community needs new leadership. Rob Neyer, Joe Sheehan, Voros McCracken, Mitchel Lichtman, all intelligent guys. And all of them need to take a giant step back, eat their pride, stop focusing on the flaws of the scouting community, and take a class on personal relations. As much as I agree with a lot of the theories and insights that performance analysis has brought to the game, I’m too often ashamed to be associated with the current voices of the statistical analysis community.

Is it me or did Voros gain like 100 lbs or something?

I remember seeing his picture somewhere and he was quite thin.

Where's the pic? I didn't see one.

There was an absolutely brilliant post here a while ago discussing sabermetrics and cagermetrics that talked about the arrogant/sarcastic attitude that permeates sabermetrics. I can't remember who wrote it, but it made a ton of sense to me.

That was Backlasher.

"I simply don't foresee a substantial role for stat models in the amateur draft. Controlling for competition, park, etc. effects in high school, especially for so few games (for any given player), is going to be near impossible, with competition effects possibly changing dramatically from year to year."

Obviously, the farther removed a player is from the bigs, the less the stats can tell you but I can't imagine not trying to model them - particularly since most scouting is negative (looking at what a player can't do, rather than what they can). Looking at college numbers has turned me on to any number of players before they were drafted (Kevin Youkilis was a monster at Cincinnati) and helped me avoid busts (I'd have never drafted Bill Bene).
Heck, it's even helpful at the prep level, though, again, not predictive (IIRC, Johnny Damon hit under .300 his senior year of HS after entering the year as the top prep prospect in the country).

For those who don't follow the world of scouting, Bane and Hughes (as explained in 52) are big deal guys - Anaheim is considered by many to have built the top farm system in the game.

Part of the problems the stat community has made for itself in terms of PR are a function of how we communicate with each other - often online, where snarkiness makes for a better read than civility and moderation.

I thought Voros was thin as well.

Paul Konerko had plate discipline when he was 18 years old. Magglio Ordonez was (swinging) at everything that came up there, but it developed over time. And they’re both great hitters.

Magglio Ordonez's numbers, 1992-present. He was 18 in the GCL in 1992. From 1992 to 1996, his K rate varied from about 1/4 to 15%. His walk rate hovered just slightly below 10%.

Paul Konerko's numbers, 1994-present. He was 18 with Yakima in 1994. He struck out about once every five times in 1994, 1995 and 1996. Eyeballing it, his walk rate hovered around 12-15% for those three years as well. By 1997, he really exploded at Albuquerque, but his walk rate remained about the same. He dropped his K rate, so he ended up walking more than he struck out.

They struck about the same and Konerko walked a bit more, but is it just me, or are these guys not all that far apart?

I've been trying to formulate why this discussion bothered me, and why bibigon's comment above bothered me even more.

I think I'm just sick of the "scouts vs. stats" question. I don't think people on one side are smarter, and I think that even if they are, making that argument only impedes intelligent discussion. (I also believe strongly that rude, arrogant behavior is not justified by rightness - admitting that I've been guilty of it as much as most anyone.)

Expert subjective evaluation and rigorous statistical evaluation are both methods which should have complementary, not contradictory ideologies. The goal is enhanced understanding of baseball on a broad level. I don't get why we'd be disputing who's smarter or who's better. I mwean, I understand historically how the debate came to be formed, I'd just really rather move beyond it.

"I don't get why we'd be disputing who's smarter or who's better."
Absolutely. That's just stupid.

Still - I want better baseball. That means you have to have these conversations until there's agreement and understanding that everyone is after the same goal and that everyone has something to bring to the table. Knowledge is power.

DK,

I agree. It's not so much the existence of this roundtable that bothered me, as some of its content. Like Cameron, I thought Bane and Huckabay came off very well.

i would've loved just to see a few of them sit down and hammer out what they thought of Steven Andrade - for instance - all through their different methodological lenses. Instead, the debate seemed very removed from real baseball questions.

Althoygh i am probably not the exclusive target audience of Baseball America.

Mikael, we agree completely.

On a barely related note - there's clips of Andrade pitching here.

See I find tradionalists arrogant. Isn't the height of arrogance an attitude that says "it is so because I saw it with my own eyes" as opposed to an attitude that says "it is so because I have compiled quite a bit of evidence"?

Hughes comes across as an old bitter blowhard. But all in all, a good debate- Huck came across a lot better than I thought he would.

For example, it has been written that many sabermetricians come off as rude or arrogant (present company excluded of course), and that that is somehow a problem? To whom and how is that a problem?

The fact that you ask the questions in that tone of voice suggests you probably won't find the answers satisfactory. I assume you have a low tolerance of what you might call b------t, and the answer would come across as that.

Other than that, I don't see any significant advantgages brought on by sabermetric thinking to anyone or anything, other than a team desiring to be more successful...


This is a extremely utilitarian approach to life (though a utilitarianism not to be confused with the philosophical school). Having been brought up in a catholic tradition, I have a different mentality relating to 'useless, pretty things' and 'fripperies'.

See I find tradionalists arrogant. Isn't the height of arrogance an attitude that says "it is so because I saw it with my own eyes" as opposed to an attitude that says "it is so because I have compiled quite a bit of evidence"?

So long as both Persons A and B are trained experts applying their methods properly, I don't see the big difference.

Seeing with your own eyes is evidence. If you have trained for years to recognize baseball talent, it's all the more valuable.

So long as both Persons A and B are trained experts applying their methods properly, I don't see the big difference.

Seeing with your own eyes is evidence. If you have trained for years to recognize baseball talent, it's all the more valuable.

Speaking of scouting, the SABR Encyclopedia has added scouting info recently (who signed who, who was signed by who).

I could this info being used as part of a method of evaluating scouts. The encyclopedia doesn't list signings that never made it or what teams the scout worked with or how long they worked, but it's a start.

Here's Cy Slapnicka's signings who made it to the bigs:

So long as both Persons A and B are trained experts applying their methods properly, I don't see the big difference.

Agreed. But I think the layperson that just takes the time to learn some fundamental SABR principals can evaluate a player more effectively than the layperson that fancies himself a good eye for talent.

Just to put it on the table, one area in which stathead arrogance has, in my opinion, dramatically hurt the quality of analysis is the whole question of baseball economics and the specific case of its impact on competitive balance.

Prospectus was particularly bad about this at the time of the last collective bargaining agreement. Utterly made-up drivel with no analytical value whatsoever like the "success cycle" was used as a club to vilify the owners, in almost the same way and almost the same tone as statheads often vilify scouts.

...and with that, it's off to work, so I won't be able to continue the conversation. Just my two cents.

Walt Davis
I'll ditto Walt's excellent post #11.

What I want to do
I'll also expand by saying I don't want a scout to look at any performance number, ever. If let's say he has time for only 3 days, I don't want the scout to look at the stat sheet, and pick out the guys he's going to look at. *I* want to do that. I'll say: here are the best players, in order. But, I have a huge confidence interval here, and my #6 guy could very well be #1. However, I am quite certain about #10 on down being nothing to look at at all. So, now I've given him a much smaller universe to concentrate on. *He* would have done that anyway, because he was looking at the stat sheet before entering the ballpark. But, let me do that job.

Why I love scouts
Then, I would absolutely love to have his scouting report. More important than the performance numbers of players in HS is what the scout is saying about him. Yeeshhh... we rail about not worrying about Jeter's 100 PAs in Apr 2004 for small sample size, but then you jump up and down about how great some guy hit in HS with 100 PA?

I would make him fill out a very very detailed scouting report. Voros is right: all I want is information, lots of it. Everything you see should be quantified in some respect. This is why I like the Fans' Scouting Report for fielding. Take a guy like Aaron Rowand. MGL's UZR had him high, entering 2004. But, he had few games under his belt. But, the fans loved what they saw of him up to Apr 2004. And what happened? His UZR was great again, and the fans loved him the same. Bingo. The scouting report added a huge level of confidence in this one player.

How many scouts to have
Scouts are extremely important. And I agree with Walt, that if I could only have one guy, the one scout or the one stat guy, I'll take the one stat guy. But, I'd rather have 10 scouts and one stat guy, than 9 scouts and 2 stat guys.

Bane and Hughes
And I agree with other posters: Eddie Bane sounds exactly like the kind of scout I'd want to work with me. As for Gary Hughes, maybe he was in Montreal when Gimbel worked there? However, Gary is another guy I'd love to work with, based on his reputation he had in Montreal.

MGL
MGL, great post #36.

As well, MGL's not afraid of the "competition". I would say (actually know) he's the exact opposite of that.

Minors, Huck, and Voros
Huckabay's claim about minors stats being just as good is off. It can't be right, simply because you are talking about two different contexts, much different than 2001 AL to 2002 AL. I would take a guess and that 2000 AL to 2002 AL would correlate as well as 2001 minors to 2002 majors (given same sample size and age of players). Voros was right the way he said it, and Gary shouldn't have made the claim any stronger than Voros did.

the only way to get the powers that MLB to start listening to you and implementing your ideas is to win them over. Until that happens, you'll have as much success giving sabermetric advice as I have when I talk to the characters in slasher movies, telling them not to go outside to investigate that strange noise.

As a D Back fan, this post struck a chord very very deep inside.

"No No!! Don't go near that Ortiz fellow! And stay away from the C&C;out factory! No No, I told you not to go outside.......ahhgggggggggg!!!!!!!!!"

fade to black

I just want to say how happy I am that Tango's back. Great post.

Tango rocks!

Here's Cy Slapnicka's signings who made it to the bigs:

To be fair, Cy Slapnicka was the ONLY scout the Indians employed for quite a long time. The excellent book "Dollar Sign on the Muscle" has a few good Cy stories, including passing on a player because the size of his member (having seen it in the lockerroom, we suppose).

Hugh Alexander, the first on that list, went on the become a very respected ivory hunter in his own right.

One last aside - scouts, at least the ones I have met and talked to, are some of the most opinionated people ever. And not all are old farts spittin' backie on the peanut shells. But a scout has to have an opinion - yes or no, and keep that opinion in the face of anything to sell their point to the cross checker and scouting director. That came across very clearly with Hughes.

I think the other thing that sticks in the goard is that scouts do things - they travel all over the place watching games in crappy stadiums eating crappy food while the stats guys sit in an office and lets the computer do the work (a grand generalization, to be sure). Getting paid 20k a year (50k, maybe after some time in service) to drive 20,000 miles to watch baseball is a tough life, and to see someone encroaching on that way of life is a threatening development - scouts are always fighting for budgetary scraps. Saving money on salary and expenses has been a battle from day 1 of the scout's existence.

Several unrelated comments:

The amazing thing here is that these are two of the best scouts in the country, but the representatives of sabremetrics are nothing compared to what is to come. This is not a slight to McCracken and Huckabay, but the pool of potential sabremetricians has been tiny up to this point. As it explodes there will almost assuredly be a massive upswing in the talent level of great sabremetricians. Example: the work Lichtman has done in the private sector is so lightyears beyond the DIPS formulation that it is insulting to him to even put the two in the same league. The move from "%h doesn't correlate year to year" to, for example, analyzing gb, fb and ld (line drives) and deriving an insight that ld allowed should be included in a pitcher's projection is not simply a nuance to the DIPs formula but a complete obliteration of the original hypothesis.

Relatedly, data is set to improve by leaps and bounds. Teams with a sabr staff will collect vastly more granular information allowing whole new universes of insights. Performance analysis is in its infancy and can still go toe to toe with straight up scouting as a means of evaluating talent. Hughes and Bane are like John Henry -- they may beat the crude steam engine of stat-based analysis now, but that victory is Pyrrhic. They are doomed. This is not hyperbole.

---

The scouts that are really in danger in the next five to ten years are not these guys, but the lower level scouts who can be phased out as automated observation and judgment of prospects becomes more efficient. The scouts as a whole seem to be displaying union-like behavior. If I was a top scout I would be doing exactly the opposite, attempting to differentiate myself from the mass of scouts, to become part of the performance analysis system.

Some scouting will likely prove useful for the indefinite future. Just as it pays to have actual doctors examine patients a risk of heart attack, a simple test of blood pressure, age, gender, family history, etc. can screen a huge number of patients into neat categories of so low risk they shouldn't worry, or so high a risk that a preventative course of action is required. In rare cases there may be a highly atypical case, or someone so toward the far end of the spectrum that personal observation is necessary. I will end this metaphor now. Sorry about that. The point is, sometimes a player will have no comps (not in the silly baseball reference sense, but based on whatever model a team's analysts are using) and so scouting can provide an invaluable alternative.

---

Scouting *is* performance analysis. Scouts gather incredibly fine (as in detailed) data, but they can only gather a small amount of it for each player. The scout then makes their judgment based upon that really granular data set by comparing it to similar cases they have encountered in the past. Sabremetrics does the same thing, but uses a much larger data set, in terms of number of observations, that is (present tense verb) concomminantly less detailed.

The upshot is that scouting will continue to be dominant in the areas where really detailed data is needed to make any sort of judgment. Scouting will move to toward the margins where the opposite is true, where breadth beats depth.

Unfortunately for scouts, baseball has the most detailed sabr data collection of any major sport already, and that pool of data will continue to grow more detailed as the technology to collect it improves. Up to this point, many/most/all teams have invested virtually (sometimes literally) zero in doing so. Once money begins pouring into projects such as collecting accurate across the board information on everything from pitch and bat speed, to visual accuity, to exact ball in play location and velocity, scouting as we currently conceive of it will become a relic.

------

The fear I would have as a top scout in an organization was hinted at by Huckabay. Scouting may not be eliminated, but it will become subservient to statistical analysis and modeling. Scouts will lose their normative influence (player is a good prospect) and become mere data collectors (player demonstrates x, y, and z traits). Alternatively, they will be disciplined to the extent analysis of their analysis becomes used by teams. For example, if a scout is consistently judging players based upon traits that statistically enabled GMs find to be useless, they will be told to change their scouting methodology.

The excellent book "Dollar Sign on the Muscle" has a few good Cy stories, including passing on a player because the size of his member

Too big, or too small?

Scouting *is* performance analysis.

Scouting is performance analysis. Scouting should be data collecting.

This is how my world would work:
1 - scouts have subjective interpretations of what they see, and quantify what they observe... everything... did he show fear, did his knees buckle, did he "guess wrong", did he hit with authority, whatever it is that scouts do... I want the scout to give me the perspective from inside the guy's head

2 - next to him is a guy who looks at the context, the count, the base/out situation, where the fielders are, what the pitcher is throwing, how fast the runners are, and records all that completely objective information

3 - then a third guy (the sabermetrician) takes the above information, two distinct sets of data that are completely independent, and makes sense of it

In the perfect world, these two independent observations will converge to a single point.

In the real world, there's a break-even point. For example, maybe after 300 observations, the data supplied by the scout, and the data collected by the scorekeeper will be equally valuable. Maybe after 100 observations, you weight the scout's data three times as much. And maybe after 1000 observations, you weight the scout one-tenth as much.

One-line summary: let data recorders record, and let data analysts analyze, and never the twain shall meet.


These are three distinct roles, that could be done by 1, 2, or 3 people.

Tango:

Minors, Huck, and Voros
Huckabay's claim about minors stats being just as good is off. It can't be right, simply because you are talking about two different contexts, much different than 2001 AL to 2002 AL. I would take a guess and that 2000 AL to 2002 AL would correlate as well as 2001 minors to 2002 majors (given same sample size and age of players). Voros was right the way he said it, and Gary shouldn't have made the claim any stronger than Voros did.

Me:

There is no way of knowing if minor-to-major projections are better than major-to-major projections. Minor league performance could be a better predictor for a large number of reasons. Examples:

Prospects may not play hurt as often, since there is less incentive to have one's minor league club win and so their numbers may be less polluted by injury noise;

Minor league talent may be less variable, since there is no cap on majors talent (Bonds can't go to the major, major leagues) but a great AAA player is promoted and a bad one demoted. Also the pool of those that can play AAA ball is much larger than those that can play MLB ball and so we should expect more players of the same talent level to exist. This reduction in variability could increase the accuracy of a projection to the extent a player's stats can't be effectively be adjusted for level of individual competition. Of course, the exact opposite could be true, and greater variability could somehow increase the confidence of our projection (being able to hit all qualities of pitcher perhaps). Again, there is no way to know. I'm not pretending the above is a strong argument. My goal is really just to demostrate that there is some uncertainty one way or the other.

The caveat is that we could say Huckabay was wrong if we could do effective correlation studies. The sample bias problem is currently intractible. A major-to-major observation requires that the player was not so bad (or possessed some non-measured characteristic that would impact year 2 numbers) as to be demoted. A minor-to-major observation requires that the player have the package to be promoted which includes traits unmeasured by current minor league stats. More importantly, we will also be seeing the best minor league performers make the jump by and large.

This last factor should dominate the others. The fact that minor to major correlations approach major to major correlations despite the fact that those promoted will by and large be those who were very lucky (and hence expected to regress) means there is a very real chance that minor-to-major projections are better than najor-to-major. Of course Tango knows all of this; he's the only person I know of who has done any real work on it at all.

I'm not saying Huckabay was right, I'm saying we have no way of knowing the work he has done privately, and we don't have any studies that can rule out what he is saying. To say Huckabay "can't be right" because there is one factor tilting against the superiority of MLEs ignores the possibility that other factors tilt in their favor.

"Huckabay's claim about minors stats being just as good is off. It can't be right, simply because you are talking about two different contexts, much different than 2001 AL to 2002 AL."
Absolutely. This is also the 153rd time I've said this in a thread here recently (give or take), so I'll bow out.

Tango - great posts!

...One-line summary: let data recorders record, and let data analysts analyze, and never the twain shall meet.


These are three distinct roles, that could be done by 1, 2, or 3 people.

I think this last bit is an important point. I'm guessing that a lot of scouts don't want to just be "data recorders". That sounds boring and unimportant. They want to see, but they also want to analyze, provide input, and see their work correlate to success. Certainly some scouts are going to have the ability to do so, and I don't see why they shouldn't be encouraged to.

Now, some scouts aren't going to be able to do any more than data record, just as some "stats guys" aren't going to be able to do more than crunch numbers. But if you can separate the activities from the person doing them, and allow people to assume multiple roles, according to their abilities, then you're going to get the most value and the most input out of people.

When the differentiation switches from "scouts vs statheads" (people) to "personal evaluation" vs "statistical evaluation" (activities), then people will be making a big leap towards getting it right.

Of course, the exact opposite could be true, and greater variability could somehow increase the confidence of our projection

Bingo. The more variability, the greater the confidence. This is why we trust K rates alot more than we trust HR rates.

VOROS McCRACKEN: ...I would say that you know almost as much about what a guy's going to do in the big leagues from his Triple-A stats as you do from his major league stats.

GARY HUCKABAY: I'll go further and say exactly as much.


Gary went out of his way to say "exactly". If Gary started by saying "exactly" before Voros spoke, then I'd give him a pass. But, he said this after Voros laid out his point of view. Gary first says "I'll go further", and then says "exactly". I know it might sound like I'm dissecting the Zapruder film here, but Gary shouldn't have said his line.

I agree that there are unknowns on both sides, which basically makes any "exact" claim dubious. Given two sets of data, with all things equal (injury, age, sample size, performance, etc), I would prefer the data from from 2001 AL than 2000 minors.

If you want to say that given the data at hand, that injuries plays a larger role with the 2001 AL data than it does with 2000 minors data, that is certainly an interesting claim. (That is, I'm now not controlling for injuries.) And, it may tip the scales to the favor of minor league data.

The selective sampling issue, which I've talked about a great deal at my site, is one that worries me the most.

I'd posit that the data for the analysis Tango suggests in post 76 is already available to teams and may even be utilized by some teams. IIRC, the current standard scouting report does include a numerical evaluation of players on the five tools on a scale of 20-80. I am not sure how long this system has been in place, but it seems that this has been a standard evaluation technique for quite some time. Certainly, these scouting projections contain some amount of information, and could be correlated to future performance every bit as easily at K rate. Such analysis could also offer an estimate of the value of scouting information to historical game data information.

Does anyone know of any teams that are performing this type of analysis?

Tango: Excellent explanation. I was trying to get at that, but wasn't nearly as clear.

The role you are advocating for scouts is vastly different than the one they currently occupy because they are reduced to mere data gatherers for analysts. They are just one more tool, like radar guns and scorekeepers, to be used by the person generating the final call on a player. A perfectly informed analyst could then make something approximating the following conclusion: given all of the potential players within and without the organization, that our organization is a win maximizing one, and is subject to a budget of X, this player is worth this fraction of our budget.

If I was a top scout I would be doing exactly the opposite, attempting to differentiate myself from the mass of scouts, to become part of the performance analysis system.

I think that's what Bane is trying to do.

One-line summary: let data recorders record, and let data analysts analyze, and never the twain shall meet.

This could be construed as an extremely arrogant statement. Your related idea, that scouts shouldn't look at stats beforehand, has the problematic assumption that only statheads can fuse the two realms.

Ughhh... Correction: I prefer the 2001 AL to the 2001 minors. I might prefer the 2000 AL to the 2001 minors. There's no way I'd prefer the 2000 minors to the 2001 AL. Carry on...

On the member size (hey, someone wanted to know) - it was Lefty Gomez and it was too big. To paraphrase, anyone with a dick that big can't pitch effectively in the big leagues.

I don't think it ranks up there with the good face or little right handers, but it has certainly gone down in scouting lore as one scouting prejudice.

Tango: I was trying to say that, as one of his consulting gigs, Huckabay might have done a study we don't know about that lead him to this conclusion. My overly-long, confusing, and at times weakly argued post was an attempt to demonstrate that there is reason to believe such an outcome is possible from a study that controls for the selective sampling problem or for some other variable(s) we haven't considered (injured playing time was pulled out of the hat as a possible variable).

I would assume you talk to those working for MLB teams. Have you been given the impression that there is groundbreaking work being done behind these closed doors or is it all mostly applications of existing work and/or getting team management informed about and believing in sabr principles?

From No Cheering in the Press Box:

Cleveland secured a ten-day option from the San Francisco club to buy [Lefty] Gomez for fifty thousand dollars and three ball players. The Seals were home, and I’m sitting up in the tower talking to Charlie Graham, the vice-president of the Seals.

Slapnicka comes in and he says, "Charlie, is it all right if I go down to the clubhouse where the players are dressing?"

Charlie said, "Sure."

After Slapnicka left, Graham says to me, "What the hell do you suppose he wants to go in the clubhouse for?"

I said, Charlie, I have no idea."

About a half-hour later Slapnicka came back and said, "Charlie, I’m going to forfeit my option on Gomez."

Graham says, "Tell me something, Cy. Why did you change your mind from the time you left here until the time you returned?"

"Well," he says, "I’ll tell you, Charlie. I saw Gomez undressed in the clubhouse, and anybody who’s got as big a prick as he’s got can’t pitch winning ball in the major leagues."

I guess my point is pretty inane. I understand that you are preventing people from misunderstanding Huckabay's likely over-statement as a correct account of the current state of MLEs. And you are presumably correct, although MGL's quick and dirty numbers from post 36 make a strong case that minor-to-major numbers are at least as good as major-to-major numbers. A damn strong case in fact.

What Zeba zeba is saying is what I'm saying: differentiate between roles and people.

A data gatherer should gather data. An analyst should analyze. Don't do the two roles at the same time. One follows the other.

Nothing is stopping Bane from occupying all three roles.

Voros and Gary did an awful job of responding to the "don't tell me what this guy did, tell me what he's going to do" criticism.

I agree but for different reasons. The obvious answer to this is that scouting is also entirely based upon what a guy did in the past.

I thought Voros came off as someone who was has strong opinions and wasn't going to let someone else bully him. He was going to state his opinions without fearing that he was going to offend someone.

Your related idea, that scouts shouldn't look at stats beforehand, has the problematic assumption that only statheads can fuse the two realms.

I think the point is that the scout might become biased if he had the stats in front of him.

On the member size (hey, someone wanted to know) - it was Lefty Gomez and it was too big. To paraphrase, anyone with a dick that big can't pitch effectively in the big leagues.

Any other primates think this is a great way to explain to some girl you meet in a bar why you never made it in pro baseball?

A data gatherer should gather data. An analyst should analyze. Don't do the two roles at the same time. One follows the other.

Why? The problem here is that knowing what data to gather requires data analysis. Do you spend your time collecting productive out data?

One other thing regarding amateur and minor league scouting: These are young men, or at least the "important" ones are, ages 16-25. I remember Chris Mullin saying he was the third-best basketball player on his block, but the two better than he ended up in jail or on drugs. Automated observation may be better for baseball skills, but there will always be a need for person-to-person contact.

"Automated observation may be better for baseball skills, but there will always be a need for person-to-person contact."
Does anyone think that there won't be?

Yes, all that is in the preliminary stage. For example, we've been collecting play-by-play data for 20 years, and no one has been tracking hang time. I've been thumping my SHIFT-1 button on this for years. Robert Dudek's article should at least open some people's eyes to this. There are alot of problems with the operational-side of data gathering with play-by-play data, probably for the reasons you are talking about.

That's why you put everyone in a room together, brainstorm, and lay everything out, and come up with the plan and focus, on data and procedures.

Once you've got all that, you now establish the roles to succeed. All sets of roles are crucial. You simply assign the best people to the one or multiple roles you need. Stir, and serve.

I think the point is that the scout might become biased if he had the stats in front of him.
Sure, that's possible. But the goal isn't to have pristine data useful for running projections so much as to know whether Jack Cust will be a major league star one day. The ability to analyze affects ability to gather data. For example, chess masters can remember a non-random board alignment better than novices can. If my scout goes to Sacramento without knowing that all Cust does is walk, then he'll probably be a step or two behind.

Pistol/92: right. I don't know why I didn't say it, but that's exactly the reason to separate roles. I don't want any bias in the data, that I'm not already aware of. If one person can keep himself from influencing two independent sets of data, then great. The less bias, the greater the confidence.

Selective sampling is such a problem, that while it's impossible to eliminate, at least reduce the factors that lead to it.

"Automated observation may be better for baseball skills, but there will always be a need for person-to-person contact."
Does anyone think that there won't be?

That was my take on post #74. Looking back, I seemed to be attacking a strawman.

If my scout goes to Sacramento without knowing that all Cust does is walk, then he'll probably be a step or two behind.


Ah, but that's exactly where I'm getting at. I want the sabermetrician to tell the scout that he thinks that Cust walks alot. I do not want the scout to look at the very biased data and make his own adjustments to make sense of it.

Well, if he acts in the role of the sabermetrician, then fine. But, he shouldn't do it in his role of scout.

Again, separation of roles.

Is it me or did Voros gain like 100 lbs or something?

I remember seeing his picture somewhere and he was quite thin.

So the legends were true about the long lost snack cache of Mo Vaughn. It looks like Indiana Voros has discovered Vaughn's Fart of the Condiment located in the Temple of Goo.

Best Regards

John