Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
February 28, 2009
Top Scout

The New York Times profiles Billy Eppler, the Yankees top scout for professional talent. Billy likes to stay in the background, so you may not have heard of him. There seems to be some confusion as to his stance on stats:

Yet Eppler emerged as a supporting player in "The Yankee Years," the book by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci that chronicles Torre's 12 seasons as manager. It is not a flattering portrayal. Eppler is presented as a "stats guru" and symbol of a front office that, to Torre, ignored the heartbeat of the game.

Cashman has not discussed Torre's book, and Eppler would not comment on it specifically. But the notion that statistics guide Eppler is inconsistent with his background and passion.

"Unfortunately in this game, if you're under the age of 35 and you didn't play in the big leagues, it's kind of easy to get classified," said Eppler, who pitched for the University of Connecticut until a shoulder problem ended his career. "And it's fine, I understand, but it's not something I'm real versed in."

Cashman has a statistician, but it is not Eppler. Michael Fishman, 30, is the Yankees' director of quantitative analysis, filtering reports from scouts, trainers and staff -- "plus every statistic pipeline that you have," Cashman said -- through a program the Yankees designed.

"Is Billy a stats guy? No, and I joke with him about it," said Bill Schmidt, the Colorado Rockies' vice president for scouting. "But does he use it as a tool? We all do. Billy is a well-rounded scout, and any well-rounded scout is going to look at stats."

He does understand OBA:

As much as Eppler is a product of the Rockies' executive factory -- which has spawned the future general managers Josh Byrnes, Jon Daniels and Michael Hill -- he is a descendant of Livesey's.

They would talk about tools, Eppler said, and, yes, statistics. One day in 2003, the year Michael Lewis's book "Moneyball" was published, Livesey asked Eppler what he considered a good on-base percentage. Eppler answered .360. To his delight, Livesey agreed.

"From that point forward, if he was in the park, I was sitting next to him," said Eppler, who still relies heavily on Livesey's advice.

The story is well worth the read.


Posted by David Pinto at 06:37 PM | Management | TrackBack (0)
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