Beane Counter

The four scouts across from him either wince or laugh. Brown? Brown? Billy can't be serious.

"Let's talk about Jeremy Brown," Billy says. Now Billy Beane, in the scouting mind, had gone from the remotely plausible to the ridiculous. Jeremy Brown made the scouting lists, but just barely. His name appears on the last page; he is a lesser member of the rabble regarded by the scouts as, at best, low-level minor league players. He's a senior catcher at the University of Alabama. Only three of the old scouts saw him and none of them rated him even close to a big leaguer. Each of them has about a thousand players ranked above him.

"Jeremy Brown is a bad-body catcher," says the most vocal of the old scouts.

"A bad body who owns the Alabama record books," says Pitter. "He's the only player in the history of the SEC with 300 hits and 200 walks," says Paul, looking up from his computer.

It's what he doesn't say that is interesting. No one in big league baseball cares how often a college players walks; Paul cares about it more than just about anything else. He doesn't explain why walks are important. He doesn't explain that he has gone back and studied which amateur hitters made it to the big leagues, and which did not, and why. He doesn't explain that the important traits in a baseball player are not all equally important. That foot speed, fielding ability, even raw power tend to be dramatically overpriced. That the ability to control the strike zone is the greatest indicator of future success. That the number of walks a hitter drew is the best indicator of whether he understands how to control the strike zone. Paul doesn't say that if a guy has a keen eye at the plate in college, he'll likely keep that keen eye in the pros. He doesn't explain that plate discipline might be an innate trait, rather than something a free-swinging amateur can be taught in the pros. He doesn't talk about all the other statistically based insights—the overwhelming importance of on-base percentage, the significance of pitches seen per plate appearance—that he uses to value precisely a hitter's contribution to a baseball offense. He doesn't stress the importance of generalizing from a large body of evidence as opposed to a small one. He doesn't explain anything because Billy doesn't want him to. Billy was forever telling Paul that when you try to explain probability theory to baseball guys, you just end up confusing them.

"This kid wears a large pair of underwear," says another old scout. It's the first time in two days that this old scout has spoken. He enjoys, briefly, the unusual attention accorded the silent man in a big meeting. The others in the room can only assume that if the scout was moved to speak, it must be because he had something earth-shatteringly important to say. He doesn't.

"O.K.," says Billy.

"It's a soft body," says the most vocal old scout. "A fleshy kind of a body."

"Oh, you mean like Babe Ruth?" says Billy. Everyone laughs, the guys on Billy's side of the room more happily than the older scouts across from him.

"I don't know says the scout "A body like that can be low energy"