Pat Gillick, a former Major League Baseball executive, achieved three World Series titles and served as the general manager for four different baseball teams between the 1970s and the 2000s. However, during an interview for our documentary “Fielding Dreams: A Celebration of Baseball Scouts,” he was quick to deflect the praise. “I wouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame if it wasn’t for the people in scouting,” Gillick remarked. “Those are the people that deserve all the credit, not me.” Despite their relentless efforts to find talent around the world, often on year-to-year contracts and spending extensive periods away from their families, no scouts are recognized in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Their recent hardships have largely gone unnoticed. The profession faces numerous challenges, from competition and skepticism from analytics proponents to widespread layoffs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the early half of the 20th century, scouting was a chaotic endeavor. Team owners willing to invest could send scouts to sign players with contracts hastily written by hand. For example, when Iowa teenage phenom Bob Feller was signed by Cleveland Indians scout Cy Slapnicka in 1935, a contract was simply handwritten, and Feller and his father signed it since Feller was underage. The agreement? One dollar and an autographed ball. Major League Baseball held its first draft in 1965, partly to level the playing field among richer teams like the New York Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals and others. This draft made scouts even more critical as each team needed to interview, evaluate, and rank a considerable pool of players. The draft is limited to U.S. amateur players, so some teams have established training facilities in countries like the Dominican Republic and Mexico, where international scouts discover and sign promising young athletes.
Since the early 2000s, some journalists and executives have questioned the value of scouts. In 2003, author Michael Lewis published “Moneyball,” which documented the 2002 Oakland Athletics’ success and their adoption of sabermetrics, the statistical analysis of baseball data. By consistently winning with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, other team owners took notice. Could data analytics exploit inefficiencies and deliver better results than scouts? Could teams save money by eliminating old-school professionals and their inherent biases in evaluating talent? The adoption of sabermetrics altered draft dynamics. With raw data becoming increasingly crucial, college players with more statistics became more appealing than high school athletes. This shift to data-driven decision-making led to unintended consequences.
Today, high school players need travel teams to gain recognition—a costly option that offers more games, experience, footage, and exposure. Many lower-income families, including young Black athletes, cannot afford this, contributing to the decline of Black athletes in MLB from 18 percent in 1991 to 6.2 percent in 2023. Retired Black utility player Lou Collier shared his perspective: “A kid like me, today, never would have had an opportunity. … If I wasn’t able to afford any of these events, you never would have heard of Lou Collier. But back when I was coming up, the scouts found the Lou Colliers.”
Scouts argue that analytics is not new. “We evaluated the player,” says former Atlanta Braves scouting director Roy Clark. “And when our scouts said, ‘We think this guy can play in the big leagues,’ the next thing we did is we gathered all the information we could – analytics. But then we emphasized makeup.” This grasp of a player’s character, drive, and grit is what distinguishes scouts’ evaluations from data-driven ones. Matt O’Brien, a scout for the Toronto Blue Jays, underscores the importance of a player having “a really good head on their shoulders.”
Scouts look beyond on-field skills to assess off-field character. “You’ve got to talk to his school counselor, his coach, his teammates, and other students,” explains Gillick. “Is he a good baseball player and a good human being?” This personal approach, emphasizing a player’s heart and mind, has kept scouting relevant. Despite the rise of analytics, the number of MLB scouts remained steady well into the 21st century, showing that fears sparked by “Moneyball” seemed unfounded.
However, that stability changed in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic not only shortened the 2020 baseball season but also led to significant reductions in baseball’s scouting workforce. USA Today reported that around 20 percent of scouts were laid off in 2020, and many were not rehired. Christie Wood of the MLB Scouting Bureau recalled the unease of that time. According to Baseball America, by 2021, seven teams had significantly reduced their scouting staff. Teams like the Tampa Bay Rays, Milwaukee Brewers, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants, Chicago Cubs, Los Angeles Angels, and Seattle Mariners all reported double-digit reductions in their scouting teams. At the onset of the 2019 season, teams employed 1,909 scouts across amateur, professional, and international departments, but by 2021, that number had decreased to 1,756. Most laid-off scouts were older and more experienced, leading 17 former scouts to sue MLB for age discrimination in June 2023.
Today, the state of scouting is mixed. Some organizations prioritize analytics, while others, like the Pittsburgh Pirates, Toronto Blue Jays, Houston Astros, Minnesota Twins, and Texas Rangers, have expanded their scouting staff since 2019. The Texas Rangers allowed our documentary crew to observe their internal operations and witness the relationships scouts built with prospects and their families firsthand. When the Rangers won the World Series in 2023, it affirmed that prioritizing personal touch and people still led to significant success, much to the delight of scouts throughout the league.