Episode 1632: The New Scouting Scale

Summary[]

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about ballpark renaming, follow up on their discussion about managers getting fired for their actions in a single game, discuss how the history of baseball’s sabermetric movement predicts the trajectory and ramifications of analytics use in football and other sports, and reflect on the significance of the Phillies hiring Sam Fuld as their new general manager, what the return of ex-player high-ranking execs may portend for front-office diversity, and Fuld’s lengthy Wikipedia page, then (51:15) talk to Driveline Baseball hitting intern and college baseball player Luisa Gauci about her multi-continent baseball odyssey from Australia to the U.S., her quest to bring data-driven development to women’s baseball, rewriting the scouting scale, why she’s determined to keep playing baseball, her work at Driveline, hitting technology vs. pitching technology, and more.

Topics[]

Interview with Luisa Gauci
Luisa's path to baseball
Usage of data and analytics in women's baseball
Luisa's internship with Driveline
Scouting scale for women baseball players
Importance of a women's scouting scale
Luisa's view of hitter and pitcher parity
Body tracking and motion capture technology
Next steps in Luisa's work and impact of COVID

Interstitial[]

Of Montreal, "It’s Different for Girls"

Banter[]

Upon hearing the news that the Oakland Athletics' stadium has changed sponsors once more, Ben declares that he is going to stop making an effort to follow corporate stadium names. He and Meg discuss the frequency of name changes and how most often the first name of a stadium, or name when you were younger, is what sticks in your mind.
Episode 1631 follow-up: Several listeners wrote in mentioning former Red Sox manager Grady Little as possibly having been fired for his actions in one game (2003 ALCS). At the time the Red Sox maintained Little's firing was not solely due to him leaving Pedro Martinez in too long against the Yankees.
Analytics revolution in football and similarities to the early days of baseball analytics
Sam Fuld was hired as the new Phillies GM, prompting a discussion about the number of GMs that are former players and what MLB can do to ensure a diverse applicant pool for GM positions.
Ben and Meg marvel at Sam Fuld's extensive Wikipedia page which is over 6,000 words long with 196 citations.

Notes[]

Luisa originally started playing baseball because her mother signed her up for a local baseball team ten minutes from their house, not realizing that it was different from softball.
When looking at colleges Luisa was insistent on being able to play baseball, not softball. She could not get attention from US colleges and in order to do so took up olympic weightlifting. She received a college scholarship for weightlifting and accepted it on the condition that she could also play baseball.