An in-depth look at the intersection of judgment and statistics in
baseball
Scouting and scoring are considered fundamentally different ways of
ascertaining value in baseball. Scouting seems to rely on experience and
intuition, scoring on performance metrics and statistics. In Scouting
and Scoring, Christopher Phillips rejects these simplistic divisions.
He shows how both scouts and scorers rely on numbers, bureaucracy,
trust, and human labor in order to make sound judgments about the value
of baseball players.
Tracing baseball's story from the nineteenth century to today, Phillips
explains that the sport was one of the earliest and most consequential
fields for the introduction of numerical analysis. New technologies and
methods of data collection were supposed to enable teams to quantify the
drafting and managing of players--replacing scouting with scoring. But
that's not how things turned out. Over the decades, scouting and scoring
started looking increasingly similar. Scouts expressed their judgments
in highly formulaic ways, using numerical grades and scientific
instruments to evaluate players. Scorers drew on moral judgments,
depended on human labor to maintain and correct data, and designed
bureaucratic systems to make statistics appear reliable. From the
invention of official scorers and Statcast to the creation of the Major
League Scouting Bureau, the history of baseball reveals the inextricable
connections between human expertise and data science.
A unique consideration of the role of quantitative measurement and human
judgment, Scouting and Scoring provides an entirely fresh
understanding of baseball by showing what the sport reveals about
reliable knowledge in the modern world.
