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.
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How We Know What We Know about Baseball
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780691188980
Publisert
2019
Utgiver
Princeton University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter