Scouting and Scoring - by Christopher J Phillips

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 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 fields to introduce numerical analysis, and new methods of data collection were supposed to enable teams to replace scouting with scoring. But that's not how things turned out. From the invention of official scorers and Statcast to the creation of the Major League Scouting Bureau, Scouting and Scoring reveals the inextricable connections between human expertise and data science, and offers an entirely fresh understanding of baseball.

Review Quotes

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

"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. Twitter @cjphillips100