Everyday type player. Alot like Noochie Varner.
March 8, 2019 1:22 PM Subscribe
All this week, The Ringer will break down its findings from the massive database of reports spanning 1991 to 2003 given to us by a former member of the Cincinnati Reds front office. Ben Lindbergh: Name a pro player from 1991-2003 or an amateur player from 98-03. I'll tell you what a scout said.
As the source explains, “We stupidly didn’t insist that scouts write up the guys scouts didn’t like, so if a cross-checker went to see one of his [area scout’s] players and didn’t like him, he just wouldn’t bother writing a report.”
Abraham Wald lived in vain.
posted by asterix at 2:57 PM on March 8, 2019
Abraham Wald lived in vain.
posted by asterix at 2:57 PM on March 8, 2019
a 20-80 scale is absurdly fine-grained for subjective evaluation of pretty much anything. I doubt they'd lose much predictive ability by switching to a bad/OK/good/great scale.
posted by scose at 8:00 PM on March 8, 2019
posted by scose at 8:00 PM on March 8, 2019
Yep, great post. I'd missed this, so thanks, Think_Long.
If you've followed the rise of analytics in baseball, or even read/seen "Moneyball," you know there's been a tension between the scouts and the data wonks, each believing the other is missing the true picture of the player.
Read the article deep enough to see the scatter plots and correlation coefficients, and it's abundantly clear that overall, scouts are just pulling these numbers out of their collective asses. So the beautiful irony is that applying data analytics to the scouts' own words pretty much hoists them by their own petards.
posted by martin q blank at 8:06 PM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
If you've followed the rise of analytics in baseball, or even read/seen "Moneyball," you know there's been a tension between the scouts and the data wonks, each believing the other is missing the true picture of the player.
Read the article deep enough to see the scatter plots and correlation coefficients, and it's abundantly clear that overall, scouts are just pulling these numbers out of their collective asses. So the beautiful irony is that applying data analytics to the scouts' own words pretty much hoists them by their own petards.
posted by martin q blank at 8:06 PM on March 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
> So the beautiful irony is that applying data analytics to the scouts' own words pretty much hoists them by their own petards.
Likewise though if you applied scouting methodology to assessing data analysts it would (correctly) identify them as terrible baseball players.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 3:27 PM on March 9, 2019
Likewise though if you applied scouting methodology to assessing data analysts it would (correctly) identify them as terrible baseball players.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 3:27 PM on March 9, 2019
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posted by ezust at 2:37 PM on March 8, 2019