I've come to the realization that if we take the approach to scouting that some members here take, the best scouting "staff" would be a $1,000 laptop with Excel and a unpaid college intern who can copy stats from Baseball-Reference to the laptop.
If all an organization does is rely on publicly known stats, then there is no need for a scouting staff since all decisions are based on stats. True scouting reports are highly confidential since they should contain information about players that the other 29 teams do not know. This would be the intangibles like how the kid reacts to different situations, gets along with teammates, picks up on nuances in-game, etc.
100% reliance on stats is 100% the wrong approach. There is too much subjectivity and "luck" that goes into the stats. A Scorer makes many subjective calls if something is a hit or error. How do you account for that? Many times a batter is "robbed" of a hit by a Shortstop who perfectly times his leap to snap a line drive that would have otherwise been a two RBI hit.
Stats provide guidance, but to heavily rely on them would cause a team to miss the boat.
If all an organization does is rely on publicly known stats, then there is no need for a scouting staff since all decisions are based on stats. True scouting reports are highly confidential since they should contain information about players that the other 29 teams do not know. This would be the intangibles like how the kid reacts to different situations, gets along with teammates, picks up on nuances in-game, etc.
100% reliance on stats is 100% the wrong approach. There is too much subjectivity and "luck" that goes into the stats. A Scorer makes many subjective calls if something is a hit or error. How do you account for that? Many times a batter is "robbed" of a hit by a Shortstop who perfectly times his leap to snap a line drive that would have otherwise been a two RBI hit.
Stats provide guidance, but to heavily rely on them would cause a team to miss the boat.
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