I'm coming in only knowing what those two links say (having no experience with the Moneyball media franchise or concept), but based on those, it sounds more lik

I'm coming in only knowing what those two links say (having no experience with the Moneyball media franchise or concept), but based on those, it sounds more like DePodesta is saying that the subjectivity was involved in selecting the relevant data points, and that once those data points were selected, they were used as the basis of evaluation -- they didn't override their formula to benefit "gut feelings". From later in [2]: >"We turn to data as our flashlight in the cave – our guiding light,” DePodesta said. “We said ‘unless we can prove it, we’re not going to believe it.’"... Essentially, from these articles, it seems that scouting used to be a random occurrence based on the biases (or "intuition") of the scout, and that DePodesta's "innovation" was an attempt to link that process to something measurable. This "innovation" is so obvious in other fields that it's not even mentioned, and that people who depend wholly on unjustifiable random chance deserve punishment and/or ridicule. Like most things, it boils down to subjectivity, because while you can find ways to quantify and analyze virtually anything, there is still a human who has to make a subjective judgment call as to what quantifications are significant to achieving their end goal. DePodesta says they would make those determinations and then refuse to change the criteria over undefined feeling-based intuition. That's, uh, good, I guess?