HF, the success of the ProspectBot says something interesting about the old "scouts vs. stats" debate, namely:
1. Scouting is important in the drafting of players.
2. Once a player is drafted and signed -- and has at least a bit a year of minor league experience -- "scouting" in the traditional sense becomes essentially irrelevant to projecting future performance.
Now, I'm not sure this is 100% correct. One could argue that both the mechanical stats-based formula of the PropectBot and the "stats + overall scouting impressions" input of the BA crowd undervalue young guys with exceptional raw tools who struggle mightily in the initial stages of their pro careers (David Christensen, anyone?). It seems that no one, not even the biggest scouting purist, has the guts to rank guys with miserable minor league stats highly on their prospect lists. So it would be interesting to see if some of those prospects -- the ones with tools, but who never make it onto the Top 20 lists -- do emerge as big leaguers. I'm guessing that while some do, it's a very small percentage, and there's absolutely no way to predict which ones do succeed. Hence, the tendency of everyone (Ringolsby included) to avoid putting these guys on their lists.
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