The Pros And Cons Of Evaluating Professional Baseball

Are the eyes of experienced scouts better than advanced statistics in high-tech computers when evaluating Major League Baseball prospects? For over 100 years scouts have used their eyes and occasionally some basic stats to evaluate young baseball players that might succeed in MLB. In the early 2000’s the Oakland Athletics started evaluating players through advanced statistics on a computer. They called this new strategy moneyball. It worked because advanced statistical analysis could find players who were undervalued by scouts on other teams. They could find stats like “on base percentage.”In the 2002-2003 season, the A’s had a team with players that were evaluated using only statistics and they had a successful season. Some teams like the

For example, in 1945 Branch Rickey and the Brooklyn Dodgers signed a contract with an african american baseball player named Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinson was the first african american to play MLB. This changed the process of evaluating baseball players because now many african american players played professional baseball for teams in MLB that were made up of 100% white players before 1945. Another example is the creation of the moneyball in the early 2000’s. The idea came from a man named George William “Bill” James. In 1997, Bill James started researching and writing about advanced baseball statistics in a basement. He did not have a lot of money but he had brains. James created new and advanced baseball statistics that would help analyze baseball players. He published books and pamphlets about these stats but no one paid attention to him or his stats. Finally, in 1999 Paul DePodesta took these advanced strategies with him to the Oakland Athletics. With the advancement of computers, DePodesta computerized these stats and strategies. He introduced these tactics to the Athletics General Manager Billy Beane. With a low budget and not many talented players, Billy Beane took the risk and decided to use these new tactics. They called this moneyball, because they could hire good and undervalued players for a small amount of money. Billy Beane did not allow his scouts to watch any players and only relied on advanced statistics when he was using the moneyball tactics. During the A’s 2002-2003 season, they had a great record of 103 wins and 59 losses. During this season they had players that were evaluated through moneyball statistics. Shortly after the A’s had a few successful seasons when using moneyball tactics many teams picked up on the strategy and tried it themselves. Soon most teams were using only these moneyball statistics and did not use their experienced scouts at all. The