From: mjones@fenway.aix.kingston.ibm.com (Mike Jones)
Subject: Re: Cordero
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 92 16:53:36 GMT
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Reply-To: mjones@donald.aix.kingston.ibm.com
Organization: IBM T. J. Watson Research
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wall@cc.swarthmore.edu (Matthew Wall) writes:
: In article <20554@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>, ez027993@chip.ucdavis.edu (Gary L.
: "Longstop" Huckabay) wrote:
: > >>Sherri once claimed that talent could be more accurately assessed by 
: > >>relying on stats alone and that observation actually hindered the 
: > >>evaluation process!  Do you agree with this? 
: > Once the player is 20 years of age I do.  Before that, I think careful
: > observation is an important tool - but not a perfect one.  I think observation
: > and analysis of mechanics are DIAGNOSTIC tools, not predictive ones. 
: [stuff deleted]
: > >> Do you believe, as one
: > >>who claims to understand the game on both levels, that observation
: > >>hinders the evaluation process?
: > Depends on who's making the judgment.  If it's a GM who says "I don't care
: > if Glenn Braggs hasn't hit before - look at those muscles!  Look at that
: > swing.  He'll hit eventually!" then I would say yes, it hinders the 
: > evaluation process.  And I would submit that more GMs think like that
: > than anyone would care to admit.
: Ah, there are some other important reasons to look beyond the stats and
: look at the player live. The many extenuating circumstances that affect the
: stats need to temper their interpretation, and IMHO require observation to
: judge their true impact. For instance, pitchers misused by managers,

This should show up clearly in the statistics for a team. I would certainly
hope that teams have guidelines for the use of young players, especially
pitchers. This is an issue that goes well beyond scouting, because you could
ruin a young guy's arm. Still, how can a scout who goes through town once or
twice during the season tell whether a pitcher is being misused better than
someone at the home office who's getting regular statistical reports and can
see at a glance that Joe Pitcher has started 5 games and completed 4 of
them?

: hitters with bad lineup spots or game situations,

Depends on what statistics you look at. If you look at RBI, you'll regularly
be fooled by this. If you look at SLG, for instance, you're much less likely
to be. What's more, I think that many scouts have their observations colored
by the statistics they get or use (often just the triple crown ones) before
seeing a player. Something in what John said about the scouts visiting
London (sorry I didn't save the posting) reinforced that impression. 

:                                                   players coming off of or
: playing through injuries,

This is a good reason to observe in person. A young player coming off an
injury should always be observed closely for a while to determine whether
his raw skills have been affected and whether he's completely healed. 

:                           fielders playing behind bad pitchers or vice
: versa (you know what I mean) and so on.

Unless every pitcher on the team is bad, looking at something like Defensive
Average should minimize any effect like this. Even if all the pitchers suck,
you should be able to tell a lot by comparing the player's DA to other
players on the team, or to his previous year's DA.

:                                         Seeing how a player hangs in for
: the right pitch on a 3-2 count is more important than whether they walk or
: K.

Oh? Why do you care whether they "hang in for the right pitch" if they can't
do anything with it? I can't see how anything is more important in the long
run (say, over a season) than the *outcomes* of the AB's.

:    I would note as further proof the number of major leaguers who've made
: improvements to their games after reaching the majors - the "maturation"
: process and the fact that major leaguers hit their prime around 26-31 - you

Care to list a few of these? There's natural development until a player does
hit his prime - around 27 for hitters - but players who've made dramatic
improvement after hitting the majors are very few and far between. We can
predict fairly well what the maturation process is going to do for most
batters.

: can't give somebody natural skills, but you can see through scouting what
: room for improvement there is in a host of intangibles not readily apparent
: from stats. Maybe that's the gossip part of what Econoclast from London was
: talking about.

Well, you can try to spot players whose game is fundamentally sound but
don't have good numbers and try to figure out why, but that seems much more
like a coach's job than a scout's. I mean, the scout sees a guy 2-3 times a
year. What if he goes 0-4 both nights the scout shows up but hits .340 on
the year? What do you think the scout's report is going to reflect, the
numbers or the 0-8 he actually saw?

: The problem is the observation, as Gary says, needs to be made by somebody
: with a clue, and should be done with multiple samples over long periods.
: From what I've learned about scouting, the scouts don't usually do that for
: most players.

Exactly. In fact, the only people in a position to make the kind of
observations we're talking about are the managers and coaches of the minor
league teams, and any changes they make in players should show up in the
player's statistics.  If *I* were a GM, I'd be much more interested in what
a player's manager had to say about him after watching him for 60-70 games
than what a traveling scout had to say after watching him for 2 or 3. 

This is not to say that there's no use for scouts. They can be very useful
in helping managers and coaches diagnose problems players are having, they
can help independently verify some of the managers' reports, and they can
help managers and coaches evaluate raw skills of very young players. But the
stats should help define their roles. The vast majority of players progress
in a relatively predictable way. If you have the statistics to measure
those, you can concentrate the scouts' efforts on the players where personal
observation can make a big difference:
  1. players who appear to be statistically well above average
  2. players who appear to be statistically well below average
  3. players whose performance has radically changed from the normal
  progression for better or for worse.
Especially in the third case, you're looking for information to help decide
whether an improvement is real or a fluke, or whether a sudden collapse is
the result of an injury or a real change in the player.

   Mike Jones  |  AIX/ESA Development  |  mjones@donald.aix.kingston.ibm.com

There are eight different ways to insert a floppy disk into a drive, but only
one of them is interesting.
Newsgroups: rec.sport.baseball