In his best-selling book Moneyball, author Michael Lewis chronicles a growing trend in baseball.  For many teams, player acquisition and player development (i.e., the baseball equivalents of traditional "HR" decisions like hiring, firing, and training) are being increasingly driven by data and statistical analysis.  Simultaneously, more traditional forms of scouting (which rely heavily upon subjective observation and intuition), are being de-emphasized.

A baseball statistic that has recently received increased attention is on-base percentage (OBP).  OBP has a higher correlation with the percentage of games a team wins than any other offensive statistic (see Ken Ross, A Mathematician at the Ballpark).  For example, the two teams in the 2007 World Series - the Boston Red Sox and Colorado Rockies - were both among the top 3 teams in all of baseball in OBP during the season.

The World Series champion Red Sox are a prime example of a team that has made heavy and creative use of data and analysis in the last five years.  As part of this shift, they have developed a clear organizational philosophy that now emphasizes (among other things) characteristics that generate high OBP when hiring or training its players.

From a human capital management (HCM) perspective, baseball teams are certainly in an enviable position: their key organizational outcomes (wins and losses) are easily defined, and statistics on employees' contributions (e.g., hits, RBIs, ERA) are routinely collected and quantified - ready for analysis, if desired.