Grant: GM Jon Daniels still finds solid players the old-fashioned way

Or as Gary Hughes once said…“You can’t have the DIPS guys against the guys chewing dip.”

A few moments after the franchise’s first AL pennant had been secured, general manager Jon Daniels thanked his scouts the minute a microphone was thrust his way during the trophy presentation.

It was unusual because scouts seem to be going the way of the printed newspaper. There are fewer of them, and the information available on the Internet – at least in the eyes of a younger generation – is more voluminous and immediate. Newspapers have the likes of Deadspin.com with which to contend. Scouts are threatened by a wave of young GMs who turn more and more to statistical analysis.

...The recent wave of young, college-educated GMs seems to be at the forefront of favoring the certainty of statistical analysis over the evaluations of scouts. In that regard, Daniels is the exception. He was the youngest GM in the history of the game when he took over after 2005 at age 28. And with a degree in applied economics from an Ivy League school (Cornell), he met all the criteria to be a stats-loving GM. He has turned out to be anything but.

“From Day One, I think people thought I’d be a numbers first, second and third type of guy,” Daniels said. “But I always kind of described myself as a centrist. We were going to use objective analysis and we were going to use the evaluation skills of our best people. But the more I’ve grown into this job, the more I lean towards the scouting end of the spectrum. And not by a small margin.”