PICKING BASEBALL PLAYERS WHO HAVE A “GOOD FACE.”

PICKING BASEBALL PLAYERS WHO HAVE A “GOOD FACE.” MONEYBALL, Michael Lewis’s book about how Billy Beane of the Oakland Athletics had applied sabermetrics principles to baseball, was published in 2003, so that there is now some perspective about the predictions in the book. (Lewis, a marvelous financial writer, has since written THE BLIND SIDE). MONEYBALL portrayed how Billy Beane’s statistical analyses often put him at odds with scouts. This wikipedia article reviews Beane’s judgments on players in 2002, especially amateur players drafted in 2002, and how they worked out. Beane’s best judgment was probably his enthusiasm for Kevin Youkilis, then in the minor leagues. Beane famously referred to him as the “Greek God of Walks.” Scouts tend to consider what a player looks like—his swing, pitching motion, his speed. One of the categories that scouts look for is a “good face.” This review has a quote from Kevin Kerrane’s DOLLAR SIGN ON THE MUSCLE, a book about baseball scouts: “‘The Good Face’ is a mystical quality that the scouts look for in baseball players and it’s based on pure personal feeling. ‘Some players have the good face, others don’t,’ one scout says.” As this wikipedia article says, Youkilis looked chubby and unathletic, and so he was selected 243rd in the 2002 draft. Sabermatricians like Billy Beane look at results. Both methods have had their successes. In the case of Youkilis, the sabermatricians were right. Youkilis is an all star.