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Baseball's Endangered Species: Inside the Craft of Scouting by Those Who Lived It
Scouting has been called pro baseball’s personalized way of renewing itself from year to year and a pathway to the game’s past. It takes a very special person to be a baseball normal family life is out of the question because travel is a constant companion. Yet for those with the genuine calling for it, there could be no other life. Hearing the special thwack off the bat that indicates a raw prospect may be the real deal is the dream that keeps true scouts going. Scouts have the difficult task of not only discovering and signing new players but envisioning the trajectory of raw talent into the future. But the place of the traditional scout has become increasingly dire.
In 2016 Major League Baseball eliminated the MLB Scouting Bureau that had been created in the 1970s to augment the regular scouting staffs of individual teams. On the eve of the 2017 playoffs that saw the Houston Astros crowned as World Series champions, the team dismissed ten professional scouts and by 2019 halved the number of all their scouts to less than twenty. More and more teams are replacing their experienced talent hunters with people versed in digital video and analytics but who have limited field knowledge of the game, driven by the Moneyball -inspired trend to favor analytics, data, and algorithms over instinct and observation.
In Baseball’s Endangered Species Lee Lowenfish explores in-depth how scouting has been affected by the surging use of metrics along with other changes in modern baseball business expansion of the Major Leagues in 1961 and 1962, the introduction of the amateur free agent draft in 1965, and the coming of Major League free agency after the 1976 season. With an approach that is part historical, biographical, and oral history, Baseball’s Endangered Species is a comprehensive look at the scouting profession and the tradition of hands-on evaluation. At a time when baseball is drenched with statistics, many of them redundant or of questionable value, Lowenfish explores through the eyes and ears of scouts the vital question of “makeup”: how a player copes with failure, baseball’s essential, painful truth.
In 2016 Major League Baseball eliminated the MLB Scouting Bureau that had been created in the 1970s to augment the regular scouting staffs of individual teams. On the eve of the 2017 playoffs that saw the Houston Astros crowned as World Series champions, the team dismissed ten professional scouts and by 2019 halved the number of all their scouts to less than twenty. More and more teams are replacing their experienced talent hunters with people versed in digital video and analytics but who have limited field knowledge of the game, driven by the Moneyball -inspired trend to favor analytics, data, and algorithms over instinct and observation.
In Baseball’s Endangered Species Lee Lowenfish explores in-depth how scouting has been affected by the surging use of metrics along with other changes in modern baseball business expansion of the Major Leagues in 1961 and 1962, the introduction of the amateur free agent draft in 1965, and the coming of Major League free agency after the 1976 season. With an approach that is part historical, biographical, and oral history, Baseball’s Endangered Species is a comprehensive look at the scouting profession and the tradition of hands-on evaluation. At a time when baseball is drenched with statistics, many of them redundant or of questionable value, Lowenfish explores through the eyes and ears of scouts the vital question of “makeup”: how a player copes with failure, baseball’s essential, painful truth.
344 pages, Hardcover
Published April 1, 2023
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May 17, 2023Lee Lowenfish MA’65, PhD’68
Author
From the author:
Since late last century, major league baseball has been invaded by a horde of "advanced metrics" people hired from the Ivy League colleges and elite business schools. Traditional baseball scouts, who relied on eyes and ears judgment and experienced evaluation of psychological "makeup," have paid the price in lost jobs, a trend that accelerated with the publication of "Moneyball" the book in 2003 and "Moneyball" the movie in 2011. Too many of the stories of the older scouts are being lost and the first section of my book is a determined effort to restore them to their rightful place in baseball and American social history.
From 1903 through 1960, baseball was truly the national pastime. Competition from pro football and pro basketball was not yet significant and there were only two eight-team major leagues and the winners met in a World Series that captured national attention. I tell this story from 1903-1960 through the eyes of the scouts for the two great farm systems of the period, Branch Rickey's St. Louis Cardinals and Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees' incredible dynasties that started in 1921 when Paul Krichell came down from Boston, just a year after Babe Ruth. The Yankee dynasties were truly cemented when it created an even better farm system than Rickey's after 1931. The other two sections of the book tell, through the eyes of the scouts, the story of baseball after 1960 when two changes revolutionized the sport, the expansion of major league teams to 20 and later 30 teams and the introduction of the amateur free agent draft in 1965. Wisconsin readers will especially enjoy the tale of Rick Reichardt, the Badger football and baseball star whose record $205,000 bonus in June 1964 led to the adoption of the draft that confined a player's buyer to only one organization. Wisconsin readers will also enjoy the story of Red Murff, who became a 35-year-old rookie pitcher for the 1956 Milwaukee Braves and later became the New York Mets scout that signed Nolan Ryan. Major league baseball as an institution has always been the subject of constant internal and external criticism. The competition from other sports is today greater than ever, but my book ends on an optimistic note as rival Yankee and Red Sox scouts work together on a summer program for talented high school and college players that ends with a game played on a top-notch professional field in memory of a woman scout who was rising to the top of her profession when cancer struck her down far too early.
Author
From the author:
Since late last century, major league baseball has been invaded by a horde of "advanced metrics" people hired from the Ivy League colleges and elite business schools. Traditional baseball scouts, who relied on eyes and ears judgment and experienced evaluation of psychological "makeup," have paid the price in lost jobs, a trend that accelerated with the publication of "Moneyball" the book in 2003 and "Moneyball" the movie in 2011. Too many of the stories of the older scouts are being lost and the first section of my book is a determined effort to restore them to their rightful place in baseball and American social history.
From 1903 through 1960, baseball was truly the national pastime. Competition from pro football and pro basketball was not yet significant and there were only two eight-team major leagues and the winners met in a World Series that captured national attention. I tell this story from 1903-1960 through the eyes of the scouts for the two great farm systems of the period, Branch Rickey's St. Louis Cardinals and Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees' incredible dynasties that started in 1921 when Paul Krichell came down from Boston, just a year after Babe Ruth. The Yankee dynasties were truly cemented when it created an even better farm system than Rickey's after 1931. The other two sections of the book tell, through the eyes of the scouts, the story of baseball after 1960 when two changes revolutionized the sport, the expansion of major league teams to 20 and later 30 teams and the introduction of the amateur free agent draft in 1965. Wisconsin readers will especially enjoy the tale of Rick Reichardt, the Badger football and baseball star whose record $205,000 bonus in June 1964 led to the adoption of the draft that confined a player's buyer to only one organization. Wisconsin readers will also enjoy the story of Red Murff, who became a 35-year-old rookie pitcher for the 1956 Milwaukee Braves and later became the New York Mets scout that signed Nolan Ryan. Major league baseball as an institution has always been the subject of constant internal and external criticism. The competition from other sports is today greater than ever, but my book ends on an optimistic note as rival Yankee and Red Sox scouts work together on a summer program for talented high school and college players that ends with a game played on a top-notch professional field in memory of a woman scout who was rising to the top of her profession when cancer struck her down far too early.
July 20, 2023
For a pretty dry subject, I was sucked in. I wouldn't say this is a Moneyball for scouting, but more of a history of the art. The Branch Rickey stuff was my favorite.
December 3, 2024
Delightful, in depth look at a fascinating subject. Makes you wanna grab your mitt and go play ball!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews