Anyone have an idea what scouts make? The impression that I get is that they make very little, which seems crazy to me but I guess it's just supply and demand...

They make very little but keep getting employed for the rest of their years.

I get the feeling that most of the people that write about Moneyball have never read the book. And when they attribute straw man like ideas like firing all the scouts to Billy Beane, or Paul DePodesta, shouldn't they ask them for their opinions? This kind of writing is just another display of anti-intellectualism in the mainstream media.

They make very little but keep getting employed for the rest of their years.

I'm not sure if that's still how it is today, but it certainly is how it's been historically. All but a handful of "star" scouts were paid a very small salary, but unless you really pissed somebody off or did something stupid, it amounted to a lifetime pension.

And when they attribute straw man like ideas like firing all the scouts to Billy Beane, or Paul DePodesta, shouldn't they ask them for their opinions?

You know what, if Lewis had bothered to talk to, for example, Kenny Williams about how the White Sox perceived trading with the A's from the other side or with the Mets about why they drafted Kazmir when they did instead of implying reasons for their actions; or if he simply had hung out with the scouts more to learn how they thought, Moneyball might have been a far more insightful book.

Where are stats on scout firings kept? Seems like 103 is mighty precise.

The response from some owners was all too predictable. The A's won, at less cost, with fewer scouts. In the winter following the publication of "Moneyball," 103 scouts lost their jobs, according to veteran baseball executive Roland Hemond.

Anyone have an idea what scouts make? The impression that I get is that they make very little, which seems crazy to me but I guess it's just supply and demand...

$25-40k for an area scout. Car and gas included. Not sure about meals. If anyone knows the exact # of scouts fired it would be Hemond.

The scout I know was just let go after 20 years working for the same team. Decided to go with a younger guy. The question then becomes what do you do for a living if you don't have baseball.

I get the feeling that most of the people that write about Moneyball have never read the book. And when they attribute straw man like ideas like firing all the scouts to Billy Beane, or Paul DePodesta, shouldn't they ask them for their opinions?

Huh? The part above about firing all the scouts is, in the excerpt, a direct quote of what the author of Moneyball wrote (presumably in the book). Now it's possible that Lewis didn't write that, though if so that wouldn't be a display of anti-intellectualism but an example of a rather brazen and complete breach of professional ethics.

The response from some owners was all too predictable. The A's won, at less cost, with fewer scouts. In the winter following the publication of "Moneyball," 103 scouts lost their jobs, according to veteran baseball executive Roland Hemond.

Obviously quoting the passage I was questioning doesn't answer my question. Let me phrase it more clearly. Roland Hemond seems full of ####, to know the number that precisely, and maybe he didn't intend to blame Moneyball for all the firings, but if he did, he's full of #### there too. I'm pretty sure many scouts get fired every year.

Roland was working for the White Sox as an advisor during that time. Were fired scouts sending their pink slips to the White Sox to be collated that winter?