I'm just about done with Rob Neyer's new book, "Power Ball" (and if you haven't read it yet, you should; it's really good). One of the things that he writes is that in the last few years, more and more scouts have been employed by MLB teams than ever before. The reason is because MLB front offices are data crazy and that while there is a ton of MLB data, there isn't a lot in the minor, college, high school and independent leagues, so they need to rely on scouts to fill in the blanks about who to sign, who to trade for, etc.
This, of course, is in direct opposition to what Cafardo has been prattling on about for the last five to ten years. He has said that scouts are being fired left and right due to front offices going statistics-only and eschewing the "human element". We all know that the last part is complete bullshit, every forward thinking organization has said over and over and over and over again that they are looking at data from everywhere (which lines up neatly with Neyer writes) but Cafardo is still spinning his wheels on this topic.
Which leads me to ask, is Cafardo blatantly lying or is he purposefully misrepresenting what's going on? I don't think that he'd do the former but I do believe he'd do the latter. I think Cafardo is writing that (older) scouts are losing their jobs and neglecting to mention that newer scouts are being brought aboard to take their place. Why is he doing this? I think that there are two reasons and they're each very simple. One, the newer scouts don't give a shit who Nick Cafardo is and won't speak to him, so he is actively losing sources. That fucks him over pretty hard for a guy who is kind of lazy, doesn't seem to use a lot of different sources but still needs to fill an entire broadsheet every Sunday. Two, and I happen to think that this isn't quite so much of a conscious decision on his part, but I think that he sees the old guard losing their jobs to the younger scouts who will do the work better and cheaper and probably sees a bit of his career too. So he's raging against that too.
But instead of saying that more experienced scouts can still do the job and are being replaced by young folks, it's just not as relatable or even tangible (I suppose) than simply writing, "people are losing their jobs to nerds and numbers".
Does this make him a bad guy? No. I don't think that this is an issue to hang the Wilbur for. But it does make him a very unreliable narrator. So if he's leaving out information about this, what else is he not telling us?