Scouting and Scoring - by Christopher J Phillips (Hardcover)

About the Book

"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 diverions. 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."--Jacket flap.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"Finalist for the CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year, Spitball Magazine"

"Phillips' book is an enticing read for baseball data enthusiasts and, more broadly, those interested in thinking about notions such as 'fact' and 'truth, ' how one measures the seemingly immeasurable, and attempts to quantify human potential."---Russ Goodman, MAA Reviews

"The subject of Christopher Phillips's Scouting and Scoring is baseball, but it's worth reading for more than just the baseball. The book is an effort to help us understand one of the oldest problems in modern societies, which is how to evaluate human beings."---Louis Menand, New Yorker

"Winner of a SABR Baseball Research Award, Society for American Baseball Research"

About the Author

Christopher J. Phillips is associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the author of The New Math: A Political History. His work has appeared in such publications as the New York Times, Science, and Nature. He lives in Pittsburgh.