MLB Team Case Study

Once you take the environment into consideration, you must translate it into the environment in which the player will play potentially half of his games. Other than the environment, one must consider the competition. A player at Vanderbilt sees better competition every day compared to a player at Akron. Although the Akron kid might have better numbers, the Vanderbilt player has probably seen a handful of more top-notch pitchers. Sabermetrics help when scouting the Akron player to see if his numbers are able to be reproduced in the scout’s opinion. Scouting has changed an overwhelming amount in the past couple decades, but the idea and main principles of scouting are still the exact same. According to Stuart Shea and Gary Gillette, scouting …show more content…
These amateur leagues allow top college players to sharpen their skills and to gain valuable additional experience during the summer, with the key added element of hitting with -- and pitching against -- wooden bats. These leagues also ensure that the scouts are watching the cream of the crop, or the best of the best at their level. Some MLB teams use age as a key factor as well when selecting a prospect in the top rounds of a draft. High school-aged players generally have "higher ceilings" due to their young age and greater growth potential. For the same reasons, however, there is more variability and unpredictability in projecting their future. College players are older, closer to their adult size and strength, and generally considered safer bets because of their extra experience playing against higher-level competition (Shea and Gillette). When a team drafts a stud straight out of high school that player has a few more years to develop and show his true potential. Those players are also better as trade bait for trades to acquire an MVP caliber type player. For example, the New York Yankees traded Starlin Castro and two prospects to Miami, in return for Giancarlo Stanton. …show more content…
Scouts look for talent that they can actually see in front of them on the field, but there are also subjective evaluations that take place. For example, scouts do some digging within an athlete’s family when considering a prospect. This is why many famous athletes have children that go on to get scholarships at a young age. To prove my point, Lebron James Jr. had offers from Duke and Kentucky, two of the most dominant college programs in the nation, before his eleventh birthday. Other subjective characteristics include personality and work ethic (Shea and Gillette). Teams like an outgoing, personable player that will be a joy to have in the clubhouse. Scouts also tend to lean towards picking up a hard worker. Lazy players do not play to their highest potential, so teams steer clear of those types of prospects. Another reason that traditional scouting will never vanish is that the traditional and statistical ways of scouting complement each other very well. Both ways catch certain aspects that the other misses. For example, the traditional scout might see a player that hasn’t played well all month, while a statistical scout sees a player that has faced the best of the best pitchers and boasted a great number of quality at-bats. Also if a statistical scout sees that a player has driven in 6 runs in the past 6 games, but a