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Scouts versus Stats: the impact of Moneyball on the Major League Baseball draft

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  • Tony Caporale
  • Trevor C. Collier

Abstract

Michael Lewis’ influential book Moneyball (2003) discusses several sources of inefficiency in the Major League Baseball (MLB) labour market; one of these being the failure of baseball scouts to place a draft premium on college players. We test this implication of the Moneyball thesis -- the superiority of college players -- by measuring the productivity of players who were drafted in the first round of five MLB drafts covering the years 1995--1999. Employing a variety of specifications, we find that the performance of college draft choices is no better than those of high school picks and argue that this is consistent with Hayek's (1944) work on the economics of information and his emphasis on the importance of localized knowledge. Additionally, we utilize data on the first three rounds of the MLB draft from 1965 to 2010 to test whether Lewis’ book had any impact on teams’ draft strategies. We find no significant structural change in the draft following the publication of Moneyball .

Suggested Citation

  • Tony Caporale & Trevor C. Collier, 2013. "Scouts versus Stats: the impact of Moneyball on the Major League Baseball draft," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(15), pages 1983-1990, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:45:y:2013:i:15:p:1983-1990
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2011.641933
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    Cited by:

    1. Richard J. Paulsen, 2022. "Peer effects and human capital accumulation: Time spent in college and productivity in the National Basketball Association," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(8), pages 3611-3619, December.
    2. Tobias Berger & Frank Daumann, 2021. "Anchoring bias in the evaluation of basketball players: A closer look at NBA draft decision‐making," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(5), pages 1248-1262, July.

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