When people think of baseball scouts, they often conjure up images of middle aged men with scraggly mustaches and a lip full of chewing tobacco. However, over the past decade or so this common stereotype has begun to fade away. Instead, scouts can now be found with behind computer screens pouring over spread sheet filled with numbers to represent every aspect of a players performance. Rather than hiring ex players and coaches, teams are now looking towards university graduates who specialize in mathematics and computer science. Gone are the days of scouts claiming a prospect has the “it” factor, or saying things like “I just know it when I see it”. In today’s MLB, players are judged purely by the stats they produce.
These new comers to the game have brought a unique way of looking at the game. statistics now go much deeper than just a players batting average or how many runs they drive in. Statisticians have develop complex formulas to calculate exactly how much a given player contributes to their teams success. One of these such metrics is know as WAR, which stands for wins above replacement.While calculating this number is fairly complicated, it has become one of the most used metrics in baseball. The basic idea of the metric is to calculate how many more or less wins a given player would contribute to a team compared to the average player at their position. For example, in 2019 the MLB leader in WAR was Cody Belinger, his WAR for the season was 9. This is to say, The Dodgers won 9 more games that season then they would have if Cody Belinger was replaced by a league average player at his position. While this might not sound like a big number, it is in fact massive in the terms of WAR. Understanding theses individual influences players can have on the team has become critical to evaluating players value and it shows no signs of slowing down.
Looking toward the future, it seems like the role of mathematicians in baseball will only increase. Currently, almost all MLB teams have embarrassed this new method of player evaluation. And every year, mathematicians come up with more complex and specific formulas to calculate even the smallest contributions a player might have to a team. Finding new ways to strip away a teams ability to affect a players stats to find their true value. So moving forward, it looks like the nerds are here to stay.
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