Due to a recent surgery I just finished rereading Moneyball and noticed this interesting topic. If you follow the book closely you will notice that it appears to be mostly an ode to Billy Beane's "genius" by the author. Most of the players used as an example of the sabermetric approach outside of Swisher, Bradford, and Teahan haven't panned out since the book was written. While I think it is true too many scouts get hooked on pure "tools" and too many sabermetric guys on stats, the best baseball players are somewhere in between. Too much money is at stake to project players wrong by the old subjective methods. You don't pass on drafting players like the Upton brothers just because they are high school players. By the same token you don't pass on a John Kruk or Kirby Pucket because they don't "look " like a BB player should look. So there needs to be newer methods to evaluate players with so much at stake especially for small market teams. By the way, I insisted both my sons be deep count yet aggressive hitters from a very young age. I also love stolen bases but agree that stats show if you don't steal 75% or better you are hurting your team's run production. Neither outlook is an endall in itself.
Original Post