It’s a game that has to have a strong human element, whether it’s scouting or performing. You just don’t draw people up on computers and plug them in and that means they can perform at Wrigley Field in a pennant race. You just keep putting all your information together. You rely heavily on your scouts.
— Jim Hendry, as quoted by Bruce Miles in the Daily Herald, essentially explaining how much he doesn’t care that the team just hired Ari Kaplan as manager of statistical analysis. Kaplan, a former collegiate baseball player at Cal Tech, has been a consultant for “more than half of all Major League organizations” in the past 17 years, according to his website.
