Jeff Scholzen put his heart and soul into scouting young baseball players in Utah.
For 20 years, the Hurricane native said he spent thousands of hours on the road away from his family, missing birthdays and anniversaries, trying to find the next prospect that could have a professional career in a state not always known for its baseball talent.
But in August 2020, in the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Scholzen was let go from his scouting job with the Milwaukee Brewers. He said he was told his contract wouldn’t be renewed because the team was “restructuring due to COVID.” At the time, the virus was known to disproportionally affect older people.
But Scholzen, 55, didn’t buy that reason.
“You put your life into it,” Scholzen told The Salt Lake Tribune. “You don’t get rich doing it, but it pays the bills and the benefits are great. And then it ends because somebody wants to discriminate.”
Scholzen is one of 17 baseball scouts across the country suing Major League Baseball and its teams, alleging age discrimination in employment practices. The lawsuit alleges the league and its teams violated the Age Discrimination in Employment Act by denying employment to older, more experienced scouts at various times in 2020, 2021 and 2022 in favor of “younger scouts.”
“We do not comment on pending litigation,” an MLB spokesperson said. “However, we look forward to refuting these claims in court.”
The lawsuit claims teams used the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to discriminate against scouts older than 40. At the time, those scouts expected to be rehired once the pandemic ended. But that never happened, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit also claims teams chose to let go of older scouts based on the idea they’d be unwilling or unable to use analytics as an evaluation tool for their jobs. In court documents, the scouts refute that idea as well.
“Indeed, many of the older scouts that [MLB and its teams] have terminated or refused to reemploy have utilized statistics since the early 1900s,” the lawsuit says. “Various types of statistical analysis have always been among the tools that Scouts utilize to better understand the projection of professional baseball players.”
After Scholzen’s time with the Brewers, court documents say he sought scouting roles with 13 teams, including the Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Angels and New York Yankees. He has since found a way to use his scouting skills in his home state, and is currently the Utah scouting director for Prep Baseball Report.
Scholzen spent 20 years in the major leagues as a scout with the Milwaukee Brewers and Los Angeles Angels. He was also the head baseball coach at Southern Utah University in the mid-90s.
He said the silver lining of being out of the pro scouting game is being home more and getting to spend more time with his family. And he’s still helping Utah players get to college or the pros. He cited former Pleasant Grove High school player Payton Henry, who made his MLB debut in 2021; and Orem native Paxton Schultz, who played at Utah Valley University and is now playing at the Triple-A level.
Scholzen also said the younger scouts teams have hired to replace the older ones often are asked to seek information from the older ones due to their knowledge, experience and networks. That doesn’t sit well with him.
“They’re reaching out and asking us for phone numbers and emails and coaches’ numbers and wanting to use our network and us to help them,” Scholzen said. “It’s pretty distressing when [teams are] trying to use us and abuse us. But the information they want from us could be very attainable if they’d just hire us.”
The 17 plaintiffs suing the league and its teams are seeking back pay and other damages.
“We want MLB and the teams to pay these guys because that’s fair and it’s the right thing to do,” said Mitchell Albeida, one of the attorneys on the case. “These men have lost years of pay and benefits because MLB and the clubs have kept them from working only because they’re older.
“Professional baseball makes billions of dollars in gross revenues each year. They can afford to pay these individuals for what they’ve been deprived of.”
Court documents detail two instances when Scholzen reached out to MLB teams for jobs and the teams’ reasoning for not hiring him. The first was with the Yankees, who told him “ownership did not have the money to hire scouts.” The lawsuit argues the team has one of the highest payrolls in the sport, thereby making the lack of funds argument an “excuse” and “a pretext for discrimination.”
In another instance, the Giants told Scholzen they “didn’t know if ownership would allow a new hire” because some scouts already employed were set to retire and they “didn’t know if they would be allowed to replace them or not.”
