An optimization approach to designing a baseball scout network

We study the problem of assigning and scheduling minor league scouts for Major League Baseball (MLB) teams. There are multiple objectives in this problem. We formulate the problem as an integer program, use decomposition and both column-generation-based and problem-specific heuristics to solve it, and evaluate policies on multiple objective dimensions based on 100 bootstrapped season schedules. Our approach can allow teams to improve operationally by finding better scout schedules, to understand quantitatively the strategic tradeoffs inherent in scout assignment policies, and to select the assignment policy whose strategic and operational performance best meets their needs.