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 1st. 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 1st 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 1st 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 3rd 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.