As the Mets GM search continues on, Doug Melvin, who remains a favorite in the running, spoke to Jon Heyman of Fancred about his thoughts on analytics in baseball.

Melvin, 66, has a scouting background, which makes his willingness to incorporate analytics as a GM a very legitimate question.

Nonetheless, he actually exhibited a strong understanding of the fact that the game largely requires him to do so at this point.

“It just gives you a lot more information to digest. I think a lot of the information is still being processed. When you talk about the scouting part of the game, they try to go out and subjectively they try to identify six main criteria of a player. Can he hit, run, throw? Does he have character issues? Whatever.”

Melvin, 66, went on to say that there are a lot of different methods in the game right now in terms of use of analytics, and, as a result, it takes some analysis from the organization about the importance of each piece of it.

“I think with the analytics there are a number of different formulas that people are using right now that, at some point, you are going to find out which are the 10 most important.”

“This is the thing that I always challenge the analytics department staff with. ‘You give me the 10 most important in the analytics department that can be important to us in performing and identifying talent that can be put into play for game management for the coaching staff.”

The former Brewers GM went on to say that the most successful teams in this aspect will be the ones that find the right blend of analytics and scouting.

“Sometimes, it works in a given year and sometimes you find out ‘maybe that doesn’t have the impact that you wanted it to have,’ so there is so much information in baseball that gets the mind going. I think the team that succeeds is the team that blends scouting, development, and analytics together.”

“I use scouting and analytics. Many teams are very secretive about what they use in analytics and what they want to use, but I think some teams use it better than others, but you still have to make decisions on the players. So, the combination of scouting and analytics in the true form is what is going to lead to success.”

As reported by Andy Martino of SNY, there are currently five candidates remaining in the hunt for the GM job that includes Melvin, Chaim Bloom, Kim Ng, Casey Close, and Brodie Van Wagenen.