Scouts and Jered Weaver

Almost missed this great post from Rich's Weekend Baseball Beat on the scouts versus stats debate that I blogged about last week. Rich follows up on Angels scouting director Eddie Bane's comment that Mark Prior's and Jered Weaver's stats are not comparable by making the comparison and adjusting for park effects.

However, I'm not sure that Bane is being "disingenuous" as Rich says when Bane says that Weaver's and Prior's stats have "no correlation whatsoever". I tend to think that's simply how the scouting community in general looks at non-major league stats. He probably views them as not comparable since the two played at different times against totally different individuals (because of the turnover every four years). Under that view there was no common denominator in Bane's mind. What the view fails to take into account is that the level of skill required to play at the level remains relatively constant with respect to the major league skill level. Further, when both pitchers dominate to almost exactly the same degree with the same sorts of K/BB, WHIP, and K/IP ratios, that certainly should tell you something about how Weaver might fare given Prior's success.

Scott Boros, Weaver's agent, is being perfectly logical if his request is the same kind of contract Prior got with the Cubs after 2001 (5 years for $10.5M).