Welcome to Baseball Scout School - The Triangle Blog - Grantland

Good stuff in part 1.

I’d love to take a look at the manual. Would anyone be willing to let me borrow their book? Message me. Thanks in advance!

Known more formally as the Scout Development Program, Scout School is a 12-day course designed to teach the basics of baseball scouting. It takes place in Phoenix each fall, and it’s run by the Major League Scouting Bureau, an organization (now under the domain of Major League Baseball) that has supplemented the scouting efforts of MLB clubs since 1974. More than 1,200 people have participated in the first 28 sessions of Scout School, and many of them have gone on to hold high positions with teams, including some general managers whose names you know.

Aspiring scouts and player development personnel make up most of the graduates, but in recent years other front-office members have begun flocking to Phoenix to be exposed to the scouting perspective. Progressive organizations have increasingly sought to combine statistics and scouting information in their efforts to evaluate players. As then–Baseball Prospectus columnist Dayn Perry once put it, asking whether a team should be run with scouts or statistics is like asking someone to choose between beer or tacos. The best answer is “Both, you fool.”

Read parts 2-4:
Baseball Scout School, Part 2: Rating Beers, Falling in Love With a Cub, and Imagining Another A-Rod
Baseball Scout School, Part 3: How to Write a Scouting Report
Baseball Scout School, Part 4: A Little Less White Space on This Previously Blank Scouting Slate