The next panel brings in the stats heavy weights:

• Joe Bohringer, Arizona Diamondbacks scout
• Bill James, Red Sox
• Vince Gennaro, Author, "Diamond Dollars"
• Tom Tippett, Red Sox
• Roy Neyer, ESPN, Moderator

Baseball Analytics Panel
Photo: David Pinto, Baseball Musings

Update: The panelists are talking about how they went from outsiders to insiders. Tom Tippett says he missed the Moneyball revolution. So many of his friends didn't get insider jobs before Beane that he stopped trying. He ended up getting brought into the Red Sox organization by Bill James.

Joe Bohringer came out of the Sloan School here at MIT, started as an intern with the Yankees, and over time became very good at writing scouting reports.

Update: Tippett says the Red Sox are trying to get health data and scouting data into databases. He's trying to add value to that data.

Update: The Red Sox now have play by play, pitch and ball in play data down to the rookie league level.

Update: Gennaro tries to help teams figure out how much money a player will bring in to a team.

Update: Bohringer cherry picks the analytics he uses. For more veteran players, he uses numbers extensively. For the 18 year old Dominican player, he uses his eyes more to write the report.

Update; Bohringer says scouts are moving away from BA, HR, RBI to OBA and Slugging percentage, ERA+ and other stats.

Update: Neyer asks what would you like to know about baseball that you don't know. Tippett wants to improve predictions of major league performance from minor league performance, as well as predicting the career arc of a player.

Gennaro wants to quantify the value a marquee player brings to a team.

Update: Bill James wants to collect data on character. The Red Sox worry about that whenever they trade a player. We don't have any way of dealing with this in a organized fashion. We don't know how to collect that data.

Update: Bohringer wants a better way of evaluating players. It's much more inexact than we think. He says, "We're not only trying to be more right, we're trying to be less wrong."

Update: James is talking about what scouts see that normal fans can't. He didn't realize that until he started working for the Red Sox.

Update: The panel agrees that a lot more work needs to be done on injury risk.

Update: Bill thinks the increase in batting numbers may be driven by improvements in bat technology. Should players own the bats? Or should the league?

Update: Bill James says the Red Sox can't get careless with young talent because the Hanley Ramirez trade worked out.