The old Moneyball arguments of scouts versus stats reached the headlines again this past week as the Cardinal Nation lamented the National League Cy Young Award results. A pair of voters used sabermetric evidence in their reasoning for leaving Chris Carpenter off their ballots.
That led to a backlash of comments from watchers all over the internet about voting for the top awards.
Sharp Twitter retorts ranged from the sarcastic to the direct.
- Post-Dispatch columnist Bernie Miklasz: “I wouldn’t know how to vote for something as intellectually challenging as MVP. I would just let FanGraphs decide.”
- Tony La Russa: “Great for Albert. Respect Tim, but Adam & Chris earned CY. Computer data best when aid to personal observation & analysis.”
Another line of considerable media attention in recent weeks has surrounded the game plan of Alex Anthopoulos, the new general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays. The 32-year-old was hired after the dismissal of J.P. Ricciardi in October.
Ricciardi, hired in 2001, then part of the “new wave” of numbers-driven GMs, began firing scouts in 2002. According to the Toronto Sun, he cut the ranks from 61 in 2002 to the 27 on board when Anthopoulos took over.
“The Jays used to be the gold standard for scouting,” Anthopoulos recalled to the Toronto Star.
The former scout has a plan to zig when others are zagging in an attempt to return Toronto to its past glory. Anthopoulos will more than double the number of professional and amateur scouts to a total of 68 full- and part-timers by 2010 while increasing pay and bettering working conditions, building loyalty.
This seems a smart plan to try to find an edge, especially crucial when competing in a division that includes the deepest-pocketed clubs in MLB, the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox.
The Jays will be increasing the number of area scouts from 14 to 25, adding five regional cross-checkers where there were none plus three national cross-checkers. Their pro scouting department will expand from 10 to 21.
Sporting News notes, “By comparison, the Dodgers—considered a scouting powerhouse—list 16 area scouts, five cross-checkers and eight pro scouts in their media guide.”
The Cardinals show 13 area scouts, three crosscheckers and an assistant director of scouting on the amateur side along with eight local scouts, presumably part-timers. On the professional side, they list ten individuals with another dozen in the international department. The rough total appears to be about four dozen.
Of course quality is at least as important as quantity. In addition to offering more competitive wages, Anthopoulos is restructuring scouting assignments to minimize travel and increase number of games seen as well as devising new ways to provide his valuable scouts more time off.
“There’s a reason scouts have been with eight, nine, 10 teams. I don’t think there’s a lot of loyalty,” he told Sporting News. “If we can have less turnover by treating them well, paying them well and giving them better quality of life, people will be dying to come work here.”
The increase in investment doesn’t mean the Jays plan to scout differently. They want to do more of it more productively.
“We’re not going to change the way we evaluate,” Anthopoulos said. “But the way we go about covering teams and tackling the amateur market, we can make more efficient.”
The Jays clearly plan to spend more money on the men who find players, not necessarily on the players themselves.
“I don’t think it comes down to signing bonuses,” the GM told the Star. “It comes down to evaluation.”
Toronto’s decidedly old-school initiatives will certainly be worth watching to see if they bear fruit.
Well, its not like TLR isn’t biased. My guess is that the Cy voters are no more stats driven than in the past. A few may look at different stats than those in the past did but the Cy has always been about stats and publicity. TLR is just blowing smoke (similar to what he does in many press conferences).
Of course what is left out is how Toronto uses stats. They may uses the same ones as some of the more sophisticated stat driven teams. In that case, added scouts should help no matter what. If they are using scouts instead of stats (which is not clear) than this might be considered a radical difference in trend but if it just an augmentation than it is harder to say.
Adding $2-$3 million annually to your scouting dept budget doesn’t seem like a lot but it adds up over 3-4 years if you don’t find a cheap superstar as a result.
Another thing that is not clear is whether quantity is better quality. I realize the article talks about quality but I’m talking about superstar quality. would Toronto be better off to invest those millions in 5-6 superstar scouts?
Another way of looking at this is from a “moneyball” philosophy. To me moneyball was simply about finding bargains by going against the trend. If the current trend is to value guys with good stats then toolsy guys are going to be undervalued and cheaper and this may capitalize on that.
CC, I don’t profess to be a Toronto expert, but from the 8-10 articles I read, the impression I got is that they don’t view stats as giving them a competitive advantage because every club is doing it. Not that they plan to stop analytics, but a view that scouting, including an increased use of video, offers them a better chance for an edge today.
Here is Anthopoulus’ discussion of expense and his target for results (from the SN article): “An average draft is getting one above-average player. If we can go from one to two, while certainly there’s an incremental cost, the value to our organization will be tenfold.”
Scouting of amateurs and pros is a key aspect of the game. Yet it is shrouded in a lot of secrecy.
The Blue Jays were once helped by a strong Latin American program.
For US amateurs, under Riccardi, they seemed to draft collegiates.
A few years ago, the Jays were going to up spending on veteran free agents like Burnett, to compete with the Yankees and Red Sox. This gameplan has seemingly died and they are going back to homegrowth (cheaper). There fans are going to need to learn lots of patience.
I wonder if this means a change from “STOUT” to “SCAT”, where scouting is listed first ahead of stats…
In baseball, there is much circulation of scouts and business executives among teams. This would make it very hard to invent a new approach to finding and developing talent that no one else can adopt.
There are similar themes from the Jays, Indians, and Cards. They see amateur recruitment and player development as vital to their futures. The Cards were bold to integrate scouting and development under one executive.
One easy gain for the Cards was to add more scouting in Texas, a big talent pool that they had too long underscouted. On the other hand, its not clear so far how much talent they are getting out of Latin America. There are something like 32 teams in the Dominican. There is a lot of competition, so its not easy to go into Latin America and scoop up impact talent.
At a very high level, it looks like Toronto has a comparable level of Latin American staffing or slightly below that of the Cardinals (nine vs. 12?). The articles I read seemed completely focused on beefing up US-based amateur and pro scouting.
It seems plausible that most teams are using a lot of video. Teams need to shoot and analyze video so as to stay competitive against the opposition.
The Sun article noted they “will have three video co-ordinators west, central and east.” That seems a lot, though I am unaware of comparison points.
The Jays found a lot of Latin talent in the 1980s/90s. Tony Fernandez, Cesar Izturis. George Bell (might have been snagged away from the Phillies), Carlos Delgado. Alfredo Griffin. Pitchers. They have lost a lot of this old advantage.
The undiscovered metrics for scouting are strength, and potential for strength development. A new study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research looked at hundreds of position players at all levels, over several seasons, and found strong performance correlations with lean body mass (everything that isn’t fat), lower-body strength and power, and to a lesser extent grip strength.
When you look at scouting reports now, they talk about “projection” based on whether a guy has “room to fill out.” But I’ve never seen an evaluation of pure, measurable strength.
How far a kid can hit the ball now is important, of course, and nothing matters more than a scout’s evaluation of his baseball skill and potential. But pure strength really does matter, according to this study. If you have a big, strong HS kid who’s never been on a serious strength program, you might grade him higher for power potential than a big, strong college kid from a major program like Texas or Nebraska, where you know he’s gotten top-notch strength coaching from the minute he walked in the door (and maybe before that as well).
With teams constantly looking for an edge, this might be the place where a forward-thinking organization can find it.
Lou, tell me more. How easily are these measurements gathered and are they allowed to be taken on amateur free agents?
Here’s a few thoughts, both on and off topic, which I hope doesn’t interrupt the interesting discussion seen above.
1. As to sabermetrics, there seems to be two things: the science of it, and the art of applying it to human endeavor like baseball. It seldom pays to argue with science and those who do make easy targets. I am sure there is solid science behind voting for Lincicum and leaving Carp off. Whether the guys who did so are artists or hacks is something that can profitably be argued.
2. I’ve looked at Albert’s minor league stats (brief though they are) and also at Colby’s AA numbers before he got laid up. Colby’s power numbers exceeded Albert’s. As Diz points out, Albert came up and was kept in the lineup at one position or another the whole year. Colby was a platoon guy from the start. I’m not sure why the difference. It would also be interesting to reverse engineer and look at what a pure sabermetrics approach would have thought of the young Albert playing college ball.
3. A low payroll team like the Pirates might not be thinking that having a solid second baseman is the best thing for what your highest paid player should do for you. So They would listen to reason about Iwamura. The Cards paid $4M for what they thought would be an everyday shortstop and they could do the same here as to second base. The Pirates might think a cheaper Skip would be OK. Iwamura would give us a left swinging #2 hitter who would not have to be platooned because he hits lefties just fine. At risk of unfairly stereotyping, he might have the right temperment and discipline to hit ahead of Albert. This would be in keeping with the theory that Mo has caught on and is willing to make roster moves which will control the maddness. Somebody, maybe Brendan, would need to be made into a serviceable leadoff.
The researchers tested 343 guys in the Rangers’ organization for two consecutive years in spring training. The players ranged from rookie ball up to MLB. They tested vertical jump power (a mathematical formula using the height of the jump and the athlete’s body mass), speed in the 10-yard dash, agility (measuring speed on a series of lateral movements with changes of direction; it’s also used in the NFL Combine), and hand-grip strength.
These aren’t difficult tests to do, and I can’t imagine that MLB scouts wouldn’t be allowed to use them in private pre-draft workouts. They already measure speed from the batter’s box to first base. Agents might not allow body-fat measurements, so that’s something scouts have to assess with their eyes. (Body fat itself isn’t damning; what you want to know is how much muscle there is beneath the fat.)
No telling what scouts can or can’t do in Latin America before the kids are signed. Obviously, they don’t allow eye tests!
Back to the study: The measures of muscle mass, strength, and power increased with the level of play, whereas the best scores for speed and agility were in rookie and A ball.
Home runs, slugging percentage, and total bases were all correlated with muscle mass, lower-body power and grip strength, and stolen bases correlated with speed and agility — no surprise there.
All the strength and power variables can be modified with training, of course, but what you want to know before you sign a kid is how much he has now, and how much training it took to get him there.
The Cardinals, with their emphasis on college hitters, seem to end up with a lot of guys who’re already close to their genetic ceilings. It makes Luhnow look smart when those guys advance to AA and AAA two or three years into pro ball. We had the youngest teams in baseball in the upper levels of the system, as we all know.
But right now everyone agrees that the Cards have very few potential impact players in the system. This is why. The Phils, for example, tend to draft raw young athletes, the guys with natural power potential that’s hardly been tapped. To a certain extent guys like that can be taught to play baseball. (And their ability to learn is something else that can be assessed, in a general way, before the draft.)
The Cards have had the most success in the draft with HS and CC position players. Albert might be the best example ever of a young, untrained guy with raw power who transforms himself into a monster with serious, professional strength and conditioning.
Then you look at the college guys we draft. There’s hardly any strength and power projection left in most of them. That’s why they look so good in the computer analysis.
This also applies to physically mature HS players like Pete Kozma, who seemed very well trained when he was drafted and may have been closer to his physiological ceiling than some of the college guys we pick.
BB, Albert hit .329/.404/.610 as a rookie, vs. .251/.307/.407 for Colby. I think that explains why Albert didn’t have to worry about being platooned.
And Colby still got 474 ABs, fifth-most on the team, and second-most among outfielders. I don’t think opportunity was an issue.
Lou’s post @11:50 makes so much sense its crazy, and in plain english.
My point about Albert vs Colby was that on day one niether had done anything. Albert was kept in the lineup somehow, whereas Colby was a platoon outfielder when he walked through the door. He got more regular play and built up AB’s later on once the outfield ranks thinned out. RCWarrior, who knows Colby well, believes this irregular play for several months is partly to blame for the mediocre year. It didn’t take Albert long, I admit, to prove he was special, but he hadn’t already proved it on opening day. (or had he, somehow?)
Lou makes a point I’ve made several times over the last year or 2 – we know Luhnow drafts are producing better minor league players, we don’t know yet if they will produce better major league players. And as Lou points out, the logic says that what makes them good minor leaugers may very well be the thing that makes them not very good major leaguers.
Solid thread and information boys. I recommend the Rorschach test as a psychological profile.
Do this while the player is holding a 38ounce 34inch maple stick. Using standard testing protocol, place a picture of Carlos Zambrano in Cubs regalia about 10 deep in the flash cards. If the appropriate reaction isn’t noticed……..move on a more promising candidate.
Maple? Westy, I wouldn’t have thought you’d go for a cheap haute nouveau fad.
Jumbo that’s a very impressive knowledge of the Blue Jays. You are so right too. Back in the infancy of Toronto, future Hall of Famer Pat Gillick built one of the top 3 scouting systems in all of baseball.
One of the smartest things he did was hire Epy Guerrero to scout and sign latin american players; Carlos Delgado and Manny Fernandez being two of the best. George Bell was a rule 5 pick up from the Phillies. Alfredo Griffin and Domasco Garcia, I think they got in the expansion draft, but it was because they scouted them before the franchise even started playing. They got some pretty good pitchers out of their too; Juan Guzman, Luis Leal and Kelvim Escobar to name a few. The heart of their world series winning line ups was Roberto Alomar, George Bell and Carlos Delgado. The Jays and Dodgers practically owned exclusivity in the P.R., Dom. and Ven. back then.
Toronto has had some of the biggest success stories with the Rule 5 draft too, with George Bell, Tom Henke, Willie Upshaw and Manny Lee.
In my opinion, the dumbest move Riccardi made was letting go a very talented scouting staff that was by all accounts one of the best in all of baseball. Guys like Gord Lakey, who I think runs the Cubbies scouting department now and there are a number of others who I can’t remember off hand now. Anyway, Riccardi and Moneyball were going to be able to do so much better so he cut the farm teams down to 5 and the DSL presence down to one. Big mistake! They only signed about half of their drafted players too. The Jays farm system went into the tank for the first 4 years until JP realized he screwed up and reinstated the farm teams to a proper amount. Only recently have his top picks been successful with Aaron Hill, Adam Lind, Shaun Marcum, Ricky Romero, Jesse Litsch and Travis Snider.
Riccardi’s ego was so massive when he first started he wanted to rid the team of everything the previous GM; Gord Ash had put together. So he gave away guys like Chris Carpenter, Kelvim Escobar, Carlos Delgado, Orlando Hudson, Felipe Lopez, Brandon Lyon, Raul Mondesi Jayson Werth, Jose Cruz Jr., Darrin Fletcher, Brad Fullmer, Mark Hendrickson and Cesar Izturis and got NOTHING in return. Most of it was salary dump, as he had gotten his job by promising the owners that he could win with a smaller budget and the Moneyball system. The only thing he did right was keep Roy Halladay and Vernon Wells (okay this one’s debatable).
Riccardi and Moneyball failed very quickly in Toronto and he spent the next 4 or 5 years complaining that he couldn’t win with his teams budget in that division. Out the window went Moneyball and up went the teams payroll to double and in came the free agents. Still no winner and so finally out the door went Moneyball in Toronto. That my friends is why you have Anthopoulos hiring back scouts.
“Obviously, they don’t allow eye tests!” That’s funny Schuler!!! Painfully funny that is. I read your material with great interest. It all seems like good common sense.
Hockey scouts use to always want to meet the fathers so they’d have a good idea what the kid was going to end up like. Short & skinny fathers meant a drop in the draft ranking. The non-obstruction era in the NHL has pretty much done away with that though.
BB, I think the obvious difference was that Albert was more then ready to step into a major league lineup. Colby should have started in Memphis. He spent a rather painful first year being schooled by major league pitchers. Pujols ‘the prodigy’, on the other hand, educated his foes on his future greatness. Rasmus’s time will come very soon, but he was just not at El Hombre’s level of development and didn’t deserve to be in the lineup at times and that was for his own good the way I see it.
The differences in Albert and Colby, Bling, were that Albert had a really superb year prior to being in the big leagues and Colby didn’t for one. Nobody could predict Alberts greatness prior to him doing what he has done. My goodness he was a throw away draft pick from a po dunk junior college. He was a winning lottery ticket from a raggedy convenience store so to speak. But nobody could have predicted what he did that first year.
Two, TLR wanted Colby in Memphis because of Rick Ankiel but was force fed Colby by Mo. If TLR had had his way Colby would still be in Memphis, believe that. There was alot of time and energy put into not allowing that to happen. So he knew he was gonna be part of a OF rotation from jump street. That was the trade off Mo made with TLR.
Colby was the poster boy for the new cardinals, you see, the sabermetricly run luhnow birds, and didn’t you know Colby was gonna have to take one for the team for Luhnow. Its amazing Colby did anything positive having been thrown into the shit he was thrown into. Jimmy Edmonds and Colby have the same agent so Colby got great advice on what to expect, the isolation and the bad mouthing that was to take place from the powers that be. Knowing what was coming really helped him be ready for it. But it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. The hiatel hernia and the ulcers attest to that.
And schooled by Major league pitching? Maybe yes, maybe no. He was no Albert that for sure, but who is. His line against RH pitching wouldn’t classify as being schooled in my book. .277 avg…………….332 OBP…………………….451 SLG………………….783 OPS. Those numbers are pretty solid for a rookie IMO. And we can argue all day about his numbers vs LH pitching. They were horrible in every way. But my opinion is they were horrible because of his lack of regular at bats against LH pitching. You see his numbers vs RH pitching mirror his minor league numbers vs RH pitching. Why wouldn’t you expect his numbers vs LH pitching to be similar to his minor league numbers. He saw LH pitching regularly in the minors, not in the big leagues, thats why.
And isn’t it funny that when he knows he is going to be in the lineup vs LH pitching …..ie the playoffs, he does as good aginst that LH pitching as any other player, much less a LH hitter. And Kershaw had, I believe, the lowest BA against in the big leagues this year for a starting pitcher. The preparation is different when you know you are going to play vs knowing you are not.
But in answer to your question, nobody knew whether Albert or Colby would have a better year going into their first years in the ML’s, nobody. Now am I saying if Colby would have played against both RH and LH full time he would have had a year like ALbert? No!!! But his numbers would have been better IMO had he been a full time player.