Bob Nightengale

USA TODAY Sports

Joe McIlvaine, the acclaimed two-time general manager who has been employed in professional baseball for 46 years as an executive or scout, suddenly can’t get a job.

Jeff Wren, 51, who has worked his entire adult life as a scout, is coming to the painful realization that he has no choice but to seek employment outside of baseball.

Baseball’s close-knit scouting fraternity has been besieged by wholesale layoffs this winter, with many pro scouts still unemployed one month before the start of spring training.

Never before has the Professional Baseball Scouts Foundation received so many formal applications for financial assistance, said executive director Cindy Picerni, with 20 scouts alone seeking help since October.

The Major League Baseball Scouting Bureau, which once employed 58 scouts, has been stripped down to 17, and getting smaller, with scouts advised to start looking elsewhere. The bureau is not closing down, contrary to industry rumors, but director Bill Bavasi acknowledged that changes are being made. The bureau will start focusing more on providing video and medical information on players, Bavasi said, spending more attention on international players.

“It’s just a terrible time for scouts,’’ said Dennis Gilbert, chairman of the Professional Baseball Scouts Foundation, who is being honored with the Dave Winfield Humanitarian Award at Saturday’s annual dinner. “I’m getting 15 to 20 calls a week from scouts who don’t have jobs. It’s really been difficult for the older scouts.

“This is the reason we started our foundation in the first place. We’re seeing guys who were getting thrown out of hospice care. We found guys living in the streets. Widows who didn’t have enough money to put them into the ground when they died, or lost their homes when they did.

“It’s pathetic. Nobody had anybody or anywhere to turn to. These guys really aren’t trained to do anything else. These guys are baseball guys. We’re here to bridge the gap until they're able to find something in the real world.’’

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The foundation, the brainchild of veteran scouts Roland Hemond, Dave Yoakum, Harry Minor and Gilbert, was created originally in the aftermath of the Moneyball movement, when teams started laying off scouts and turning to sabermetrics.

“It’s different now,’’ says Boston Red Sox special assistant Gary Hughes, who’s beginning his 50th year of scouting. “Now, it’s plain scary. And if they ever drop the scouting bureau, holy …’’

Teams are relying more heavily on analytics and sabermetrics than at any time in baseball history, with teams treating veteran pro scouts as if they’re old eight-track car stereos, needless in today’s game. Even McIlvaine, the former GM of the Mets and Padres.

No wonder Hall of Famer Wade Boggs broke down in tears discussing late Boston Red Sox scout George Digby, who discovered him, in an interview with Molly Secours, who’s directing and producing a movie on the life of baseball scouts: “Scouting for Diamonds.’’ If it wasn’t for Digby, Boggs said, he would have been driving a UPS truck for a living. Now, he’s enshrined in Cooperstown.

Los Angeles Dodgers vice president Alex Anthopoulos, who spent the last six years as the Toronto Blue Jays GM, hired more professional scouts than any team in baseball during his tenure. He never turned his back on analytics, but credits his scouting staff for enabling him to acquire the players who made up the strong clubhouse culture in Toronto, which led to their first playoff berth since 1993.

“The best moves we made were the ones we didn’t make because of the information we got from our scouts,’’ Anthopoulos said. “Sure, you look at the analytic side, but you’re talking about the human side, too. We looked at plenty of guys who could help us, but our scouts would give us information, letting us know that they wouldn’t fit into this group or dynamic that we had here.

“This game is so competitive, you need to get every ounce of information you can to try to separate yourself, and our scouts played such a big part in our success.’’

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Yet, the industry has fallen in love with analytics and youth. The Milwaukee Brewers hired 30-year-old David Stearns to be their GM, replacing 63-year-old Doug Melvin. The Philadelphia Phillies promoted 23-year-old Lewie Pollis to be their analyst for baseball research and development. There have been 10 general managers hired or promoted to the position since August, and only two, Al Avila of Detroit and Jerry Dipoto of Seattle, are older than 45.

“I’ve got 23 years in the business,’’ Wren said, “and now clubs don’t want that experience? I look at teams now, and they’re hiring guys who aren’t really scouts. They’re sabermetric guys from the office, and they put them in the field like they’re scouts, just to give them a consensus of opinion.

“I’m aching right now. It makes you sad, working in the industry as long as I have, doing my job and knowing you can provide value to a club, and then not even having the opportunity to have a conversation with somebody. It’s just so frustrating.

“You feel like someone stole your career from you.’’

Maybe this is just a fad, and if enough teams with scouting acumen win championships like the Kansas City Royals last season, veteran scouts will be back in vogue.

Then again. …

“I keep saying that teams will start coming back around,’’ said Yoakum, special assistant to Chicago White Sox GM Rick Hahn, “but wow, it sure doesn’t look good.

“It’s sure a scary time to be in the business.’’