In Game Stat Tracking

It looks like you want someone to chart pitches. You don't want to just know the hitter went the other way on a curve. You want to know the location of the curve. It impacts how the hitter responds. For teams you play a couple of times a year you will start to see trends on what hitters like and where they tend to bite when they shouldn't. 

A baseball scoresheet is a fairly simple thing, and I think that checking what a batter did last time up should take only a couple of seconds for anybody with only decent scorekeeping skills. It sounds like you're saying your guys are not yet up to using a simple tool and dealing with that by giving them multiple complicated tools.  I'd stick with the scoresheet until they master it, and I'd see if a parent wanted to back that up with iScore or Game Changer.  

But parents and players have their biases.  When I managed in travel I kept a 3x5 card in my shirt pocket and kept rudimentary score on that, both so I knew what had happened before, and so I could review the "official" book later and correct any overly generous scoring.   If you're good with it you could also score with Game Changer on an iPhone even while coaching third.

I would vote for gamechanger.  Been using it for several years and it blows the old book away.  Easy to use.  Lots of stats and info.  Even if you have a player or parent use it you can let them know your thoughts on an error/hit.  

CoachZ,

I normally respond to things as I read through a post, and I did that here. Then when I read further, I found some of my questions/observations had already been answered. Now I’ve got to start all over again! No big deal, I’m up for it.

Whether or not looking at what happened in a player’s last AB is something that on its own is a very useful piece of information, I don’t understand what the frantic ruffling of papers is about. If it’s a for real scoresheet, how difficult is it to focus one’s eyes a couple inches to the left? I don’t know about scoring apps like IScore or GameChanger, but the program I use displays a hitters previous PAs automatically, and can’t imagine other software doesn’t do something similar.

I have to stick up for any scorer trying to do that in one of the worst places to keep score, a dugout. If you’ve never tried to keep a good book, you can’t possible imagine how difficult that is to do when you’re sitting among a 15-20 friends, forced to listen to all the “noise” in a dugout, and subject to being asked at any time by any coach to come up with an answer like the one in your example.

I don’t know the situation, but I’m wondering how much time you devoted to teaching your scorer how to do the job and give you things you expected. That’s not a knock on you, but rather something you might want to consider.

You kinda threw a lot of different things into one sentence about “looking back”. I’ll do my very best to answer, but I’ll have to take them 1 at a time because they really are very different things.

Gathering information for “stat calculations” is prolly the most typical uses of a scoresheet. By that I’m assuming you mean counting and totaling things like ABs, Hits, Ks, IPs, WPs, etc. to use to add to the previous data on each player to get things like BA, OBP, WHIP, ERA, etc. for the season. Thinking “old school”, as in pencil and scorebook, there just isn’t any easy way to do that. Those things will have to be total individually for every player to get a game total, then those totals will somehow have to be added to the totals for all the other games. A lot of how you proceed from there has to do with how much information you’re going to try to get out of that data. Assuming you’re talking about a HS team, I’ll go through that scenario. Other levels will be much the same, other than the storage of the information.

So let’s say all you’re interested in is “typical” stats. For HS that’s pretty easily taken care of by either MaxPreps or another service like it. After each game, you put in the totals of what you want to keep track of for each player. Once you’ve done that, you’ll have access to many typical things like Ba, OBP, FPct, ERA, and totals for things like hits, HRs, Ks and others, and you won’t have to do anything yourself other than enter the data, and you’ll be a happy camper.

The problems start when you decide you want something extra. If you even want some easy things like K:BB ratios, WHIPs, BABIPS, or any of about a million other possibilities, you’re gonna have to do that on your own. For that you’ll need something like a spreadsheet or some other software available just for that purpose. So now you’ll have to put the data into two different places. That problem is somewhat mitigated by going to some kind of scoring software like IScore or GameChanger.

The nice thing about them is, they not only do the totals for you, they provide many more stats, and have direct links to MaxPreps so it’s only the press of a button to put them in. They do have their drawbacks, but for the most part they’re a great alternative, and will make many “other patterns” available.

When you say I want to be able to, at a quick glance, say "he went oppo on a curve in his last at bat", the only way I know how to do that at the HS level is to do some pitch charting. That’s where you tie each thrown pitch to each PA. Not only that, in order to get usable information you’ll need someone who either knows the signs or can recognize pitch types extremely well, and has a great vantage point from where he can accurately tell locations of where the pitch actually was. Believe me, the dugout is not that place.

But once you have that person, he’ll have to not only mark the pitch and location, but also where the ball was hit and what the results were. Some of the scoring programs also have the capacity to chart pitches, but it does get complicated and hectic. The thing is, every pitch has to marked because no one will ever be able to guess when you’ll ask that question.

In order to know when you’ll "need to work more on throwing first pitch strikes" during a game, you’ll 1^st have to determine what an acceptable level is, say 60%, and you’ll need to have a way to get a running percentage. That’s quite a job for only a pencil and scoresheet. My program does that and quite a few other things automatically and makes it available at the press of a button, but I truly can’t speak to what apps like IScore and GameChanger do, or how easily they might be able to provide that information. So I’m afraid I can’t be a lot of help there.

Now that we’ve got at least some idea about what information you’ll be needing and when you might need it, we can look at how many people it might take and where they’d come from. You’ve already figgered out that its gonna take more than one poor schlub sitting in the corner of the dugout, so I’ll go with that.

I’ll state once again that the worst place at a ball game to try to keep score is in a dugout. If you have a team manager, it’s perfectly within the rules for him/her to sit in the stands and keep score, and that’s where they should be. They should also be as isolated as possible! I’m goin’ on 68, have no child or relative on the team, have been scoring games for well over 50 years, and I still get bothered by parents/players/coaches/fans all the time! What’s the score? What inning is it? Who’s up next? How many K’s does Billy have? Did you give Bobby a hit or an error on that last at bat? How many players have we left on base? I could go on for a long time, but I think you get the idea. The score’s job is tough enough for an old fart like me, but it can get impossible for a young kid. So if you can provide at least a scorer’s table and make sure everyone knows to leave the scorer alone, it would be a huge help.

Now for those during the game questions and showing other patterns, it depends on how precise you want that information to be. If you want as high a precision as possible, the person charting should be sitting right next to the scorer, and as close to directly behind the PU as possible. That way they could help each other out, but it doesn’t give someone in the dugout quick access to much information. L

I have my own answer for that. Either keep everything in the dugout, or figure out things you want to know on a regular basis, and I’ll get you that information if I’m your scorer. The guy I’ll be scoring for next year like to know pitch counts and strike percentages for his pitchers. No problem. In the past I sent him a text after every inning our pitchers throw and give him that information. If he wanted something on top of that, he’d send a player over and I’d give it to them to give to the coach.

This coming season I’m gonna change things up a bit. Since this is an entirely new program and he’s the HC rather an assistant, we’ll e going 1^st class. I have a pair of kid’s walkie-talkies. He’ll get one and I’ll have the other. He asks and gets an answer. I like that system because I can ask him questions too!

The thing with all these great ideas is, you can’t wait until opening day and say here’s what we’re gonna do! The HC and I are conversing daily, planning on what we’ll be doing, and how to get it done. On opening day things won’t be perfect, but we’ll have a pretty good system worked out so he can get whatever information he feels he needs. As the season goes on, things will change, but the world won’t come to an end when it happens.

I really like your Idea about tracking some things at practices. Personally I thing getting a base number for the things you mentioned, including home-2-1^st times are a good thing. The problem is, you have to have someone willing to go to practices to get that data and a place to store it. If you ever get to that point and I can help, just say the word.

I hope I gave you some info to work with.

Thanks for the replies all. Especially you stats! I appreciate your time and input a ton! 

It looks like I have a lot to consider!

So I may have exaggerated with the "frantic ruffling of papers" comment. The point is, things were taking too long and i cant help but think its worth exploring other ways of doing things. I anticipate having a lot more kids try out this year, and think that this might be a good role for a couple kids who might otherwise get cut or ride the pine a lot for instance. and I agree about preparing my scorers. It was my first year coaching. I wasn't so sure what I was up against. My managers were not willing to attend practices regularly to work on these things, and I certainly did not do enough to prepare them. I will take full ownership of that mistake. Lesson learned, and thats why I'm on the boards here asking questions now. When I got the coaching job, it was pretty sudden/last minute. The coach they hired had a health issue and had to step down and I took it with literally just a few days notice. This year, I know what I'm up against and I have all year to prepare, so here I am!

I guess stat tracking is probably not the best term for what I'm trying to do here. I'm really trying to get my kids to look at other aspects of the game than their stats. Maybe "pitch charting" or "at bat charting" is a better term. I agree, for stat calculations, looking through the book is fine for most things. My main concern is having a secondary source of tracking the game and live pitching practice situations, etc. something i can grab and look at when i need to without bothering the official scorer. as well as keeping track of a few other things that are not in the book. for instance, in the book, in the boxes for balls and strikes, i have the scorer write a number for each pitch, so i can see the sequence of balls and strikes in the at bat. This other chart would include whether the strikes were swinging or looking, as well as fouls.

So say i have a timid kid at practice pre season watching a lot of strikes. I start tracking this at practice and talk to him about fighting back and being aggressive with 2 strikes and such. We start to track these things and set goals for growth. Now, in a game when this kid strikes out, I can later say "hey, look, you fought hard and fouled a few off with 2 strikes on you and went down swinging. Your showing growth in this aspect of your playing. atta boy." And I have concrete evidence on paper to show him his growth over the weeks. We all know baseball is a game of failure and there are some successes like this that happen in the game and are not shown in the book. In my experience (which is not exactly vast) some kids get very caught up in certain stats. They can get very discouraged when they set themselves a personal (and uncontrollable) goal of "getting on base 2 times" and then not reaching it. I want to be able to come back to that kid and say "hey, You fouled off X amount of good pitches, didnt take many strikes, you hit the ball hard but right at someone, and flew out deep in the outfield 3 times. thats good hitting. the goal you set was uncontrollable, but the goal I set for you, your improving on. Keep doing what your doing and it'll work out." For some kids, saying it isnt enough, they think your just being nice. Some need to see it on paper for it to click with them. I want to really get into the whole Steve Springer style of setting attainable goals and be able to track some of these other aspects of the game in games and practice for my kids. Let me know if you think i might be going about this the wrong way or something.      

And yes, whether or not it matters what a kid did in his last at bat, we could talk about that all day I'm sure. But i think its worth being able to quickly recall this if you feel necessary without bothering the official scorer. I like the idea of having a scorers booth and keeping them in their own little bubble. I think it would not only make it easier for my kids, but give them more of a sense of pride in the job. Charting pitch location... I really am not sure we would be able to do that. could get really tricky. I would love to though! id love to keep a stat of swinging at balls:swinging at strikes  but thats just not realistic for us at this time.

I'm attaching a rough draft of a chart I'm working on as an example. I would use one each for my hitters and for the other team. I think i may be including too much on here. I need to really sit down and decide what exactly are the things that I:

1. need on the fly in the game

2. cannot normally get in the book

3. can have someone realistically chart in real time

4. need for charting players growth and set goals

I think this chart i have now probably has too much on it and i could condense it and leave some other things for the book. Let me know what you all think. Am I looking at this the wrong way entirely? does my idea just need to be refined a bit? should I just focus on really teaching 1 person to keep the book well and can this thing altogether? I can take criticism very well, as long as its constructive. Thanks again everyone. 

CoachZ,

Based on your comments, I highly recommend the gamechanger app.  Although it is only for apple ios (if you don't have an ipad or iphone -- hello booster club), It's free.  So download it and work with it this winter.  See if it has what you want.  It is simple to use and does everything real time. 

One thing it does do is measure "Quality at Bats" which sounds like you're looking for.  It counts things like pitches seen/plate appearance, seeing 3 pitches after 2 strikes, appearances with 6 pitches or more, extra base hits, hard hit balls, etc.  So you can show a kid who might be struggling, that at least he is having good at bats. 

Also, it keeps track of each play and allows you to "replay" the game.  So you can review what happened in certain situations. 

CoachZ,

I know it will be a PITA, but I’m gonna quote the stuff I’m responding to keep any confusion to a minimum.

…The point is, things were taking too long and i cant help but think its worth exploring other ways of doing things.

It’s ALWAYS worth exploring options.

I anticipate having a lot more kids try out this year, and think that this might be a good role for a couple kids who might otherwise get cut or ride the pine a lot for instance.

It really doesn’t matter who keeps the book, but I very strongly suggest not having the book kept in the dugout. Judging by the attachment, you’re not concerned with pitch locations and types, so charting pitches/ABs in the dugout shouldn’t be a big deal. The only reason I suggested the scorer and person charting sit together and as close to behind the PU as possible is, I know how much focus it takes to keep a good book, and kids don’t very often keep that focus. So, it just makes it easier on everyone if someone can lose focus but have a backup to help them.

and I agree about preparing my scorers. It was my first year coaching. I wasn't so sure what I was up against. My managers were not willing to attend practices regularly to work on these things, and I certainly did not do enough to prepare them. I will take full ownership of that mistake. Lesson learned, and thats why I'm on the boards here asking questions now. …

Live and learn.

… I guess stat tracking is probably not the best term for what I'm trying to do here. I'm really trying to get my kids to look at other aspects of the game than their stats. Maybe "pitch charting" or "at bat charting" is a better term.

Again, this is just my opinion, understanding my perspective. I don’t have a problem with players knowing their stats, providing they understand what those stats mean. The numbers explain the game and give insights into what takes place so the manager can manage what’s going on.

I agree, for stat calculations, looking through the book is fine for most things. My main concern is having a secondary source of tracking the game and live pitching practice situations, etc. something i can grab and look at when i need to without bothering the official scorer. as well as keeping track of a few other things that are not in the book. for instance, in the book, in the boxes for balls and strikes, i have the scorer write a number for each pitch, so i can see the sequence of balls and strikes in the at bat. This other chart would include whether the strikes were swinging or looking, as well as fouls.

You’ve encouraged me to get back into a project I’d given up on some years back. I’ll tinker with it and get back to you on it.

So say i have a timid kid at practice pre season watching a lot of strikes. I start tracking this at practice and talk to him about fighting back and being aggressive with 2 strikes and such. We start to track these things and set goals for growth. Now, in a game when this kid strikes out, I can later say "hey, look, you fought hard and fouled a few off with 2 strikes on you and went down swinging. Your showing growth in this aspect of your playing. atta boy." And I have concrete evidence on paper to show him his growth over the weeks.

We all know baseball is a game of failure and there are some successes like this that happen in the game and are not shown in the book. In my experience (which is not exactly vast) some kids get very caught up in certain stats. They can get very discouraged when they set themselves a personal (and uncontrollable) goal of "getting on base 2 times" and then not reaching it. I want to be able to come back to that kid and say "hey, You fouled off X amount of good pitches, didnt take many strikes, you hit the ball hard but right at someone, and flew out deep in the outfield 3 times. thats good hitting. the goal you set was uncontrollable, but the goal I set for you, your improving on. Keep doing what your doing and it'll work out." For some kids, saying it isnt enough, they think your just being nice. Some need to see it on paper for it to click with them. I want to really get into the whole Steve Springer style of setting attainable goals and be able to track some of these other aspects of the game in games and practice for my kids. Let me know if you think i might be going about this the wrong way or something.      

That’s a heap o’info in those paragraphs! I’m going to save your post and hopefully I’ll be able to get back to it soon and address many of the different aspects of it.

And yes, whether or not it matters what a kid did in his last at bat, we could talk about that all day I'm sure. But i think its worth being able to quickly recall this if you feel necessary without bothering the official scorer. I like the idea of having a scorers booth and keeping them in their own little bubble. I think it would not only make it easier for my kids, but give them more of a sense of pride in the job. Charting pitch location... I really am not sure we would be able to do that. could get really tricky. I would love to though! id love to keep a stat of swinging at balls:swinging at strikes  but thats just not realistic for us at this time.

I love your enthusiasm! I encourage you to keep thinking and putting your thoughts on paper because it will be easier to use them to plan what to do next.

I'm attaching a rough draft of a chart I'm working on as an example. I would use one each for my hitters and for the other team. I think i may be including too much on here. I need to really sit down and decide what exactly are the things that I:

1. need on the fly in the game

2. cannot normally get in the book

3. can have someone realistically chart in real time

4. need for charting players growth and set goals

I think this chart i have now probably has too much on it and i could condense it and leave some other things for the book. Let me know what you all think. Am I looking at this the wrong way entirely? does my idea just need to be refined a bit? should I just focus on really teaching 1 person to keep the book well and can this thing altogether? I can take criticism very well, as long as its constructive. Thanks again everyone. 

One suggestion. I don’t know what software you used to make that attachment, but let’s say you made it in the new WORD. Change the name to “In game- batting chart pages.docx. When you wiped out the type of file it is, it makes it difficult for others to get it open.

You’re finding out how difficult it is to go outside the envelope. But don’t let that worry you! Making it better will never stop because you’ll always think of something else that will make it better. IOW, I think you’re looking at it just fine, and the more you think about it and use it, it will almost refine itself.

Personally, I like the idea of having more than 1 person who can keep score. That way if someone has to miss a game for some reason or need to hit the head or go home, there would always at least be someone scoring. Of course it’s only my opinion that the book is always the most important job of the two.

Golfman- That does sound super helpful! I have an iPad, so i will have to tinker with gamechanger. one of my managers last year had an iPad and we had tried iScore and it crapped out mid game (luckily my other kid was keeping paper book still) and he had a lot of trouble making lineup changes on the fly (preparation again...my bad!) It kind of left a sour taste in our mouths about the whole app. thing, but i have seen other coaches use it successfully. And the quality at bats is a big thing we are looking for this year! one of my kid is playing some fall ball, maybe ill go to one of his games and try gamechanger from the stands and see how i feel about it...now that i actually know ill be coaching! this is the type of stuff i would have been working on last fall! 

Stats- Thanks again for all the perspective. Good to know I'm not cruising down a road to nowhere! haha. And i agree about letting kids see their stats. i'm not going to withhold them or anything like that, I just want to make sure they don't get too caught up in things they cant control. its a game of failure, and some don't handle the failure as well as others and/or define it differently.. consistent performance doesn't necessarily mean consistent results in this game...can be super frustrating! 

Im glad I've inspired you to dig back into an old project! I'm excited to see what you come up with.

Sorry with the confusion with the attachment. I did it in pages, the word processor that comes on our school issued macbooks. 

Thanks again everyone. 

OK CoachZ,

Here’s something you might be able to use. Take a look and if you like it but need some “tweaks” we can do that.

This is an example of the scoresheet my program produces, without any of the information, so if you wanted to see if it might work for you, you could print it. I had to make a few “tweaks”, but I’ll explain it.

Up at the top you can put in the inning and pitcher’s name.

The blue font headings correspond with the blue boxes down below. The 1^st is the at bat for the game. the 1^st batter is 1, the 2^nd 2, and so on. I just continue that no matter which team’s up, but you can certainly do it however you like or not use it at all. For BPOS, put in the batting position of the hitter. It should always go 1 thru 9 then start all over again in HS. # is the player’s uniform number, and batter is his name.

Runs show if a hitter scores, and RBI and LOB are self-explanatory. Runners is the runners on base when the ball is put in play or the AB finishes. Those 4 things are generated automatically by my program and might turn into a PITA if someone tried to do it manually, so if it were me, I’d just do away with them.

The headings in black correspond to the boxes on the next line. The 1^st it’s the number of pitches for the AB. The next 12 are for 12 pitches because that’s all I have my program account for. My program puts in ‘BALL’, ‘MISS’, ’FOUL’, ‘CALL’, AND ‘BIP’. The program also puts in BID for bad pitches and MID for swings in the dirt, but again, that’s gonna be a bit difficult to do manually.

B4play are things that take place before the play finishing the AB. Play is the play that finishes the AB. And Afterplay is what takes place after. B4 play would be something like an SB, WP, or pickoff. Play would be something like a 5-3 GBO, a 6-4-3 DP, LD double to right center. And after play would be something that took place outside of the play, like a runner moving from 2^nd to 3^rd, scoring from 3^rd, or getting tagged out at 2^nd trying to stretch a single into a double. I’ll also attach an example of a game scoresheet so you can see what it looks like.

Like I said, if it’s something you’d like to try to work with, be my guest. If you’d like to tweak it a little, that’s fine too.

About iScore crapping out: That's probably the iPad's fault, not the app. All sorts of apps crap out on my iPad, including Game Changer. Fortunately, it only take a few seconds to restore, but if that happens at the wrong moment it's not fun. Also, if you're in a warm climate and you score in the sun, iPads will overheat and lock down for good.  I find that using an iPhone instead of iPad mitigates both issues. My favorite system is to set up the game on an iPad, then put that away and score the game on an iPhone.  Whatever you use, a book should always be available for emergencies. 

BTW another nice feature of Game Changer -- spray charts.

I have nothing but good things to say for either IS or GC for general use by the vast majority of teams. My problems with them have to do with getting access to the data in order to generate stats I’ve been using for many years, and to do combined stats from different seasons. That’s strictly a personal thing very people would ever have an issue with.

As for an app crapping out, here’s the truth. There is no perfect piece of software! Heck, I wrote my own scoring/stat program, that’s hundreds of screens, and hundreds of stats and other reports, representing literally tens of thousands of lines of code and I wrote every single one. I know every quirk and glitch, and have used it to score almost 1,000 games since I wrote it. But guess what? Every once in a while it still farts in my face! I’ve put things in my program to make it easier to match my style of keeping score and to help me recover from little things that are more difficult on other pieces of software, but because it’s so “tuned” to me, I’m sure others would find it very cumbersome indeed.

I had a couple problems with the apps that are the opposite of JGC’s. I’m old with fat fingers and had a lot of trouble not only getting enough on the screen of an IPhone to use it, but couldn’t read what was on it in the bright sun. So, I grabbed my daughter’s IPad, and tried again. Lots better, but living here in the Sacramento Valley where many games are played in 100+ temperatures, I heeded the warnings from Apple. Between those issues and the ones I noted earlier, I just wrote my application as an exe and run it on either a desktop or laptop Windows system.

But even with all the “issues” I have with them, I’ll state again that either IS or GC will meet MOST of the needs of anyone, and do it very well. Unfortunately, no matter how good any program is, there’s still a major roadblock. You still have to know how to keep score!

Now that I’ve got that “project” out of my system and stuck it into your hands, I’m gonna go back to this post because there are a couple things I think are important in it I want to comment on.

One main thing I want to comment on is this. Once you have all the great things scored or charted that you want, how are you gonna make them available for later use? I can’t begin to tell you how many coaches I know who have literally reams of paper with charts and other things on them that took place during a game, but its next to impossible to glean much useful information from them.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you chart just 2 games and have only player names and whether each pitch was a ball, called strike, missed strike, fouled strike, or a BIP. For a “normal HS game that’s gonna be something like 400-600 pitches in 60-120 at bats. How would you put all that information together to use it to draw conclusions?

The easiest way for most would be to make a spreadsheet. Allowing for 12 pitches in an at bat and the name would mean at least 13 columns. For each additional piece of data you’d want to associate, you’d need at least 1 more column. Typically people keep the date and the opponent, and I’d think having the pitcher’s name would be helpful. Now we’re up to 16 columns, and haven’t even thought about things like was the batter an pitcher left or right handed, what was the result of the at bat, was it the only game on every date or could there be multiple games. But for the sake of example, let’s just stick with the 13 columns.

How would you know how many pitches were balls, called strikes, fouled, missed, or put in play? On top of that how would you put together a report showing what you wanted to see? The reason I bring that up is, I don’t want to see another coach who has reams of paper with scads of data, but no way to put it all together.

You mentioned something about being able to use the numbers to show growth or progress, and that’s something else I think is a great idea. So I’m assuming you’re talking about setting a baseline in a lot of different things for each player, then comparing that baseline to a cumulative example to check progress, like once every month, or from the start of the season to the end. Here’s the trouble. It can be done, but I’m not aware of it being part of any of the scoring apps.

Since I’m already on a roll, I’m gonna include comments on a later post of yours.

Originally Posted by CoachZ:

Golfman- That does sound super helpful! I have an iPad, so i will have to tinker with gamechanger. one of my managers last year had an iPad and we had tried iScore and it crapped out mid game (luckily my other kid was keeping paper book still) and he had a lot of trouble making lineup changes on the fly (preparation again...my bad!) It kind of left a sour taste in our mouths about the whole app. thing, but i have seen other coaches use it successfully.

One of the biggest problems I’ve had with every single coach I’ve ever scored for, is getting a good lineup for both teams far enough before the 1^st pitch that I’m not sitting there with my hair on fire trying to get the names into the software. With the help of MaxPreps, for almost all of our league games, I get the other team’s roster at least a couple days earlier, once I have that, it’s just a matter of maybe a couple minutes to move them into the correct batting spot and field position. On that some topic, even getting a good lineup from each coach, not getting substitutes is a very big problem! Do yourself a favor. Have one of your assistants give every substitute to the scorers. If they don’t want or need them, fine. But its dang near impossible to get defensive stats worth squat with coaches making substitutions without telling anyone.

And the quality at bats is a big thing we are looking for this year! one of my kid is playing some fall ball, maybe ill go to one of his games and try gamechanger from the stands and see how i feel about it...now that i actually know ill be coaching! this is the type of stuff i would have been working on last fall! 

Why QABs are important to you isn’t important. It’s enough for me that you have you’re reasons. Just do me this favor. Without looking at what QABs are for any particular piece of software, write down what you think they are. Then take a look at this short article. http://proplayerproject.com/20...-productive-at-bats/

Personally I like productive at bats more than quality at bats, but I suppose that’s because I’m much more result oriented than process oriented.

Got to thinkin’ ‘bout the title to this thread and some of the things that have been discussed, and I thought I’d see if I could help CoachZ sort through the maze of POSSILBE stats available during a game the coach might want to see. To me, the 1^st step in such a process should be differentiating between truly useful stats, or stats that could help make decisions because of their proven efficacy, and stats that are interesting but really don’t offer a lot in the way of help.

I tried to come up with a list of things coaches I know personally like to look at. Some may seem trite, but if you’ve ever been to game where there’s no working scoreboard, you’ll understand.

Score

Inning

Number of outs

Count

Hitter’s batting position

Pitch count

Pitch count for the current inning

The 1^st 4 seem silly, but like I said, if there’s no working scoreboard, the ump and the scorers are getting asked what those things are a lot.

Hitter’s BPOS is something a coach whose team is on defense wants to know, the theory being, the lower in the order, the less dangerous the hitter. I suppose that’s true to some degree, but in HS, I’d sure be careful about pitching players a certain way based on the BPOS they occupied. However, whoever’s calling pitches should definitely know whether the batter is the # 3 hitter or the # 8.

Pitch count is one of those things that could mean a lot depending on what the coach’s perspective is and what he’s thinking about. But for sure it’s importance in the modern game has increased.

Pitch count for the current inning is almost entirely a defensive concern, but is a definite concern.

If anyone knows of other things that are generally useful to all/most coaches, please list them.

Now comes the more difficult task of listing things that are interesting or nice to know, but their worth as counting on to make decisions is at least questionable.

Strike percentage

1^st pitch strike percentage

Strike percentage is something I find very interesting, but unless it’s really way out of whack, I don’t think worrying about it for one game is worthwhile. When I say way out of whack, I mean something like 10-15% lower than normal, but it should be up to each coach to make that determination for himself. In order to know that, one would also need to know what was normal for that pitcher. That’s not all too difficult to have at hand, but there would have to be some way to have a running calculation.

1^st pitch strike percentage is something else again. There’s little doubt how much of an advantage it is for pitchers to get ahead in the count, but IMHO there’s a big difference between 1^st pitch strike percentage and 1^st pitch strike percentage not counting BIPs.  Having both would give a better picture.

There are plenty of other things that could help, but for right now those I listed should get the ol’ brain thinkin’.

Hey, 

Sorry, I've been off for a few days. Just finally checking back in this morning. Lots to think about! thanks for the scoresheet Stats! I like it a lot. I think I will make some minor tweaks to the way i notate things, and i might leave a couple things out like you mentioned since we will be doing it by hand. In the example you provided, what are some of the additional notes you have in the "Play" section. like in the kids 2nd at bat he K's, then theres a couple numbers in parenthesis after. What does all that other stuff mean? Thanks. I think this will be a great start for me and an easy way to show kids the pitch by pitch track of their at bats. 

Quality at bats are my big focus for now for several reasons. I like the idea of productive at bats, and if i was in a different situation, or even just a few more years down the road, I think i would be closer to that philosophy. For now, with my kids, simply doing things the right way and measuring our success by the quality of our PA and not the result is the big factor we need to be working on i think. I mean, we had some really terrible quality at bats last year. lots of strikeouts that should have been walks, very high rate of K's looking, swinging at bad pitches. However, I'm still new to this and am speaking strictly from my own standards here. This sheet will help me better track things and determine what is a fair baseline number for them. I would love to hear more from someone who has spent more time with this stuff. Like: what is an average/acceptable K:K looking ratio? How many non strike pitches are swung at in the average game?  

One thing we noticed right away: at practice after a game with a lot of bad PA's, i played a game with the kids (I mentioned this in another thread also about being aggressive at the plate) each kid gets X number of swings in BP. every one that they swing at that isnt a strike, they run. Wouldn't you know it, the amount of weak pup ups and grounders decreased dramatically and the number of line drives increased when we simply made sure we were swinging at strikes! ugh! I wish i had been taking these stats all year, then this year when we spend a lot more time on it in the preseason, it would be really interesting to compare at bat results from poor quality approaches last year to this year from player to player. 

First day of LL practice many, many years ago Coach told us the secret of being a good hitter was to watch balls and swing at strikes. 

Not much has changed after all these years.

Originally Posted by CoachZ:

Sorry, I've been off for a few days. Just finally checking back in this morning. Lots to think about! thanks for the scoresheet Stats! I like it a lot. I think I will make some minor tweaks to the way i notate things, and i might leave a couple things out like you mentioned since we will be doing it by hand. In the example you provided, what are some of the additional notes you have in the "Play" section. like in the kids 2nd at bat he K's, then theres a couple numbers in parenthesis after. What does all that other stuff mean? Thanks. I think this will be a great start for me and an easy way to show kids the pitch by pitch track of their at bats. 

Hey! You’re askin’ me to give out all my secrets! But since you asked nicely, I’ll see what I can do to fill in the blanks.

Let me take those numbers inside the parens 1^st. Because I have several season’s data mixed together, and numbers will be used over and over again, even changing in the same season, I needed a way to make each player unique. I give each player an ID, which is just the next number in order. The opponents’ numbers during games are all between 600 and 700, and the opponents team stuff is all over 800. If I was to start all over again I’d change things a bit, but since I’ve been doing things this way for almost 15 years, I’ll stick with it.

So, on that 1^st page the pitcher’s is number is 147, the F9 is 114, the catcher is 144, f4 is 111, F3 is 113, etc.. I then use those number to automatically made the different kinds of records, like batting, defense, pitching, and so on. The 1^st batter made an out on a line drive to right field and the F9 made the play. The next batter struck out with the pitcher getting the K and the f2 the putout. The 3^rd batter hit a GB in the 4/3 hole the F4 fielded and threw to F3. It sounds complicated, but when you use the system for a while, it really tells you a great deal.

The basis for it comes from Project Scoresheet. Look here http://dcortesi.home.mindspring.com/scoring/

The refcard.pdf is where those location numbers come from. Under formhome and formvisitor you can find the basic format I got mine from. The scoring.pdf will explain the scoring system better than I. I admit I bastardized mine to some degree, but I was trying to make something work without changing the world. The attachment isn’t complete, but it should give a fair idea about what’s going on in my program’s scoresheet.

Later on, if you like I’ll show you how I store the data and examples of what I do with it.

Quality at bats are my big focus for now for several reasons. I like the idea of productive at bats, and if i was in a different situation, or even just a few more years down the road, I think i would be closer to that philosophy. For now, with my kids, simply doing things the right way and measuring our success by the quality of our PA and not the result is the big factor we need to be working on i think. I mean, we had some really terrible quality at bats last year. lots of strikeouts that should have been walks, very high rate of K's looking, swinging at bad pitches. However, I'm still new to this and am speaking strictly from my own standards here. This sheet will help me better track things and determine what is a fair baseline number for them. I would love to hear more from someone who has spent more time with this stuff. Like: what is an average/acceptable K:K looking ratio? How many non strike pitches are swung at in the average game?  

I don’t think you’ll find many people too willing to go out on a limb and say “X” is acceptable and “Y” isn’t. So much of that is based on an individual’s overall philosophy, it’s really tough to say. That’s why I don’t very often do much more than show things and let the observer make up their own mind about what’s good/bad/average.

One thing we noticed right away: at practice after a game with a lot of bad PA's, i played a game with the kids (I mentioned this in another thread also about being aggressive at the plate) each kid gets X number of swings in BP. every one that they swing at that isnt a strike, they run. Wouldn't you know it, the amount of weak pup ups and grounders decreased dramatically and the number of line drives increased when we simply made sure we were swinging at strikes! ugh! I wish i had been taking these stats all year, then this year when we spend a lot more time on it in the preseason, it would be really interesting to compare at bat results from poor quality approaches last year to this year from player to player. 

I won’t say whether I agree with your process, but I will say that any process the players can understand is better than them guessing! What you did was prove that what can be measured can be managed.

I really hope you stay focused on your goal, and that’s why I’m trying to be a little careful bout overwhelming you right out of the box. All I can say is, there’s a world of information out there that if used correctly can be of immense benefit.

Originally Posted by JCG:

First day of LL practice many, many years ago Coach told us the secret of being a good hitter was to watch balls and swing at strikes. 

Not much has changed after all these years.

Very true indeed. All CoachZ’s trying to do is identify which players are doing that well, and which aren’t. It’s a lot more difficult to do than people think, but it can be done.

JCG- Couldnt agree more! Especially in a rural league like mine where the competition is not exactly top notch. either way, strong fundamentals is soooo important!

Stats- thanks again for taking so much time to share your wisdom. I can tell you have a real passion for this stuff and a long history of working with it! 

I understand that there is a ton of variable with what is acceptable and not acceptable for stuff like k:k looking ratio. Not expecting a hard and fast answer. Just wondering if anyone who has had years to compile this type of stuff could give a ballpark of where they land. For instance, has anyone ever calculated that over the course of a season or so, and what did you come up with? It would just be nice to have some sort of background/reference point.

and yeah, in the future i will at the very least modify that hitting drill a bit. Like that other thread i posted in the coaches forum, ive been doing a lot of thinking on how to make punishments relevant to the action. Running is the big default thing coaches have been doing forever, but if the issue isnt hustle, running is probably not the cure. 

Originally Posted by CoachZ:

…I understand that there is a ton of variable with what is acceptable and not acceptable for stuff like k:k looking ratio. Not expecting a hard and fast answer. Just wondering if anyone who has had years to compile this type of stuff could give a ballpark of where they land. For instance, has anyone ever calculated that over the course of a season or so, and what did you come up with? It would just be nice to have some sort of background/reference point. …

These numbers come from our HSV team including the years 2007 thru 2014. But rather than look at batting stats, this is from the pitching view so I could get all of the hitters over those years in 1 report. You can work out the ratio for yourself by going to the final page and using the totals.

If you want similar numbers for many other things, go to http://www.infosports.com/scorekeeper/  and look on the left side for the links under “Combined Stats 2007 – 2014”

awesome, thanks! so in your case, it was just a bit more than 1 in 3 strikeouts were strikeouts looking. Thats about what i would expect overall. It really depends on the approach you coach them for of course. I would suspect from looking at this that these kids are coached to be pretty aggressive at the plate? I think you mentioned something before about your best hitters usually being the ones who see the least pitches? ...tons more than just the raw stats to think about here. Thanks again. 

Yeah, our guys are encouraged to swing at pitches they feel they can hit solidly, as early as possible in the count for the most part. Of course there are times when they’re encouraged to think about the situation though, like if their pitcher just threw a lot of pitches and needs some rest, or if the pitcher has shown he doesn’t have very much command. The “general” feeling for the hitters is, if you never get to 2 strikes, you can never strike out, and for the pitchers its if never get into a 3 ball count you’ll never walk anyone.