Scouting Question

[GTAltman]

I'll preface this by saying I don't think I've seen this anywhere, so, I'm not sure how this really works.

SCOUTING..
Is this for players and just their development, or is there more to it?

What I guess I'm asking is if I can judge players performance, say at the Major League level, why would I ever need to devote resources (i.e. money) into Major Scouting?

Now, with that question being asked, could/would/ is this be a component of major scout spending...

When devoting money to Major Scouting, and having a sabermetric manager, or having a manager's strategy in PITCHING & DEFENSE using INFIELD SHIFTS.

Having a manager and his team get reports from my scouting department about a hitter who sprays vs being dead pull type hitter make sense for me to spend there.

I guess for summation, I'm looking for a reason to spend in Scouting Majors, but not sure even dropping a Hamilton is worth the effort.

- GTA

[CBeisbol]

After reading and watching some videos I've lowered the percent I spend on scouting majors. OSA scouting does a better job with veteran players and they have a statistical track record so there's less ROI on scouting majors.

As to never looking at scouting, you'd be missing a lot of information. If a player has been a consistent 120ish wRC+ hitter and has a 100 wRC+ season. Solely by statistics - BABIP might help you figure out if it was a bad year or a change in talent. But scouting can also help you figure that out (and if a decrease in BABIP was related to a change in skill).

Scouting can also help you see changes in player skill before it shows up in the statistcs. A player who drops during the offseason, won't have any stats to show that until a good part of the next season has been played. Or a player coming off an injury.

And looking only at statistics, it will be hard to determine a young players' potential.


If you can get enough information only from statistics, no, there would be no reason to spend on scouting. I think scouting does provide extra information.


EDIT: sometimes people play with the ratings hidden as a way to increase the difficulty. As well as using different rating systems (1-5 instead of 1-100) to decrease the precision of scouting

[GTAltman]

Originally Posted by CBeisbol

After reading and watching some videos I've lowered the percent I spend on scouting majors. OSA scouting does a better job with veteran players and they have a statistical track record so there's less ROI on scouting majors.

As to never looking at scouting, you'd be missing a lot of information. If a player has been a consistent 120ish wRC+ hitter and has a 100 wRC+ season. Solely by statistics - BABIP might help you figure out if it was a bad year or a change in talent. But scouting can also help you figure that out (and if a decrease in BABIP was related to a change in skill).

Scouting can also help you see changes in player skill before it shows up in the statistcs. A player who drops during the offseason, won't have any stats to show that until a good part of the next season has been played. Or a player coming off an injury.

And looking only at statistics, it will be hard to determine a young players' potential.


If you can get enough information only from statistics, no, there would be no reason to spend on scouting. I think scouting does provide extra information.


EDIT: sometimes people play with the ratings hidden as a way to increase the difficulty. As well as using different rating systems (1-5 instead of 1-100) to decrease the precision of scouting

So, in other words, you're not sure either?
Seriously though, I'm guessing there really isn't a need to devote resources to Major Scouting.

I'd love for it to be used in conjunction with team scouting, and applied for and with infield shifts and whatnot.

Thanks CB