And ran a 4.4 40 yard dash?

With the NFL draft now complete, it takes me to an interesting dialogue that it a fierce debate in the war rooms of really almost all major sports: old school vs new school and how much stock can you put into what you see? Anyone who has read Moneyball is familiar with the drama that can happen when a five tool prospect is revealed to only have a .400 OPS because he has a hole in his swing the size of Nebraska… but its so hard to pass on them because when they make contact, on that rare occasion, they knock the cover off the damn thing. Then you have the guys who look at strikeout ratios, compare stats to find comparable major leaguers, and can assess a player whom they’ve never laid eyes on. You’ve got guys with laptops who make decisions by the numbers, and the ones who judge by what they see.

This is something that could be seen with the change in draft position after the NFL Combines. Consider just how much weight teams place on the combine performances; 3-4 years of college game film is almost weighed equally with measurements and physical tests. In this case, you have the opposite of baseball which still tends to favor the old methods of scouting. Alan Branch (DL) was a perfect example of this: a top 10 pick who’s performances at the combine were less than spectacular and he became, in my opinion, a steal for Arizona in the second round.

A great example of the yin to that yang is the story of Jason Neighborgall, a pitcher with a ‘plus’ fastball and curve.

Scouts have a scale to rate players’ attributes. The low end is 20, the high end 80. Joel Zumaya’s fastball is an 80. Johan Santana’s changeup is an 80. Francisco Liriano’s slider is an 80.

Neighborgall’s fastball and curveball are 80s.

Only one little problem though: Neighborgall can’t seem to find the strike zone with any consistency. The number crunchers would probably be appalled that this guy is even a professional: appearing in five different games, Neighborgall has recorded only three outs, has a 108 ERA, 15.0 WHIP, and has a 1/6 K/BB ratio despite having an arsenal of an 80 fastball and curveball. But thanks to the old scouts, who trust what they see, and that pitchers can develop control (and batters can develop plate discipline), the Arizona Diamondbacks made this guy their 3rd round pick in 2005.

Because of that stuff – and in spite of everything else – the Diamondbacks still believe in Neighborgall. They’re going to experiment with his arm angle, dropping him down from his current over-the-top delivery. Perhaps they’ll try pitching him out of the stretch exclusively to take away the extraneous movement that plagues him. Maybe some tiny adjustment will make Neighborgall click.

Sometimes, saving a pitcher from himself is more blindfolded darts than science.

“We’ve invested in him,” Hinch says. “He’s invested the time and energy as well. At the end of the day, if it doesn’t work out, you want to look in the mirror and say you did everything you could to get the best out of him.”

I guess I can’t complain too much. As long as MLB teams keep drooling over the next Rick Vaughn and Pedro Cerrano, the A’s will still be able to afford to compete by sticking to the theory that you can only teach so much plate discipline and control on the mound; the rest should already be in place by the time they get signed. Think Barry Zito, who has lived on the command of the strike zone, but was hardly throwing “80″ stuff with a high 80’s mph fastball. Yea, there are intangibles to a player that can only bee seen, and not calculated, but if the WHIP and K/BB aren’t there, it’s probably more of a project than a prospect.

It also means that there is a place for teams to secure an advantage in the modern-day NFL. Perhaps there is an equivalent strategy for any GM in the NFL who is willing to take the opposite approach, and rely less on the combines tests the draftees must go through. Guys like Alan Branch, essentially dropping an entire round because, in large part, to poor combine performance, are perfect ways to get talented players, not only at a bargain in terms of draft position, but then you must remember that the lower you get drafted, the less you get paid. I’d really be interested to see if there are any GM’s out there who use this strategy at all, or if they feel too much pressure to make the “safe pick” because a few bad picks could mean a pink slip.

Ultimately, its not about which method, the old-school or new-school methods, is right, its about how to find a balance and incorporate each into the process. As an observer, it just seems that baseball is still much too reliant on drafting based on what they see, and the NFL too reliant on the numbers.

• Wild Thing (Yahoo! Sports)