New Data for Scouting Book, and a Deeper Look at Why Rankings Disagree

Okay…who’s helping me set up the Scouting vs Scouting roundtable tables?

Some of Baseball America’s other ‘biases’ (or impact considerations) are less obvious, but the patterns of influence can still be seen across the pages and over the years. In the same way Scouting Book solicits and factors in the opinions of various front office staffers and ‘behind the scenes’ experts in collecting our data, Baseball America gleans much of its information from personal conversations with MLB organizational scouts. This is golden information, of course, but it comes with a tangled string attached. Put simply, players who receive more scouting attention are more likely to have accurate and positive reviews from Baseball America. That means, effectively, that those who play in the USA, and especially in larger high school, college and minor league markets, tend to get more attention, and this ‘buzz’ can lead to higher rankings. This same problem impacts other sources, as well, but for an organization that’s very focused on in-person scouting reports, it can be especially impactful.

The shortcoming is more obvious overseas. Where some publications will also go outside the box in an attempt to evaluate and discuss significant Japanese, Cuban, or independent league players who may impact MLB in the future, Baseball America tends to ‘short shift’ players from outside the usual process in their publications, treating them more as interesting footnotes than regular entries. Indeed, BA does not even consider most of these players eligible for inclusion until they are signed by a Major League ballclub. This is not a failure on BA’s part: this is what they do, evaluate the minor league systems of today’s MLB ballclubs. They are not, after all, called Baseball World.