2010 Observations

Welcome to the website! Based on your name and location, I assume your son plays in the PAL (as does mine)...all 5 of your points are right on.

Particularly playing at a higher level forces you to grow up-it's always amazing to see the players in their first year from JV. When they see a legit pitcher early in the year, they're helpless; there's no longer the hump in the ball's trajectory. It's downward and gets there very much on a line, up to 90 MPH. Kids learn quickly.

4. I'd rather see a kid playing tougher competition with worse stats. Some of the stats of kids in certain schools are just laughable: .700 BA, .5 ERA. Some kids in the PAL hit over .500 and others had an ERA of 1, which are legitimate stats in my opinion. Those are very good players.

5. Yes. Sadly, pitchers will continue to suffer serious injuries regardless of the bats.

I think it is great to recognize good players, those who are getting better, and try and create an environment where getting better will occur.
Players don't necessarily have all those options in HS. The PAL does produces good players but certainly does not have a monopoly.
In terms of what stats might mean in the PAL vs. stats of "kids in certain schools being laughable," I wonder what that is meant to mean.
How would each of you classify a couple of players by the name of Vanegas and Diekroeger? They are not the only ones, but are pretty good places to start in terms of top quality players with pretty good numbers at "small" schools.

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Some of the stats of kids in certain schools are just laughable: .700 BA, .5 ERA.

A player can only compete against the competition his high school plays regardless of competition. If a kid has genuine talent it doesn't matter what his stats say. There's a kid in our area at a small high school headed for a major D1 conference because he has talent. He also overcame playing baseball in the northeast where there isn't any talent.

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I'd rather see a kid playing tougher competition with worse stats. Some of the stats of kids in certain schools are just laughable: .700 BA, .5 ERA. Some kids in the PAL hit over .500 and others had an ERA of 1, which are legitimate stats in my opinion. Those are very good players.

I don't understand why PAL stats would be any more credible that any other set of stats.

My kid plays small school baseball and he and his teammates have 'laughable' stats. But it is what it is. Success is relative. We know that his ERA would rise and his BA would drop at a bigger school. It doesn't concern him. It's been a good experience.

I don't understand the need of big school parents and players to bash small school players.

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I don't understand the need of big school parents and players to bash small school players.

I remember Lou Holtz once say about recruiting .... "That gorgeous girl from the hills is still gorgeous when you take her to NYC."

The SF Chronicle Sports Section had an article this morning about a couple of brothers from one of those small schools in the PAL area who put up pretty amazing numbers.
One amazing number was that the older brother turned down over $1,500,000 from the Tampa Rays to attend Stanford, where he is one of the top players in the nation.
The brother currently putting up big numbers at the small HS has also signed an NLI with Stanford for 2010 and hopes to compete for the 2B job. His SAT scores: 2390.

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The SF Chronicle Sports Section had an article this morning about a couple of brothers from one of those small schools in the PAL area who put up pretty amazing numbers.

Well, isn't it a small world....

I was in the Bay Area last Saturday and went to watch Live Oak vs Menlo (Live Oak is the HS that my son would have attended if we hadn't moved) and saw this kid play.

Interesting...

I remember a few years ago hearing some comments from people in my surrounding area. I coached at a small 2A HS in a small little community just outside the triangle area here in NC. I had a LHP who was putting up some great stats. Some of the comments were "If he played in a 4A conference he would be just another pitcher." Well all I could say was "94 from the leftside in the hicks is still gonna be 94 when he comes to your field and shoves it up your a**!"

Talent is talent and ability is ability. Players dont get signed by stats alone and they dont get scholarhips based on stats either.

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94 from the leftside in the hicks is still gonna be 94 when he comes to your field and shoves it up your a**!"

Talent is talent and ability is ability. Players dont get signed by stats alone and they dont get scholarhips based on stats either.

Amen!

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Originally posted by Coach_May:
I remember a few years ago hearing some comments from people in my surrounding area. I coached at a small 2A HS in a small little community just outside the triangle area here in NC. I had a LHP who was putting up some great stats. Some of the comments were "If he played in a 4A conference he would be just another pitcher." Well all I could say was "94 from the leftside in the hicks is still gonna be 94 when he comes to your field and shoves it up your a**!"

Talent is talent and ability is ability. Players dont get signed by stats alone and they dont get scholarhips based on stats either.

I remember Lou Holtz once say about recruiting .... "That gorgeous girl from the hills is still gorgeous when you take her to NYC."

Allow me to explain myself.

First off, I wasn't saying the PAL is a particularly strong league. It's just a normal league.

Menlo is not a small school when it comes to athletics. Those players don't have "laughable" stats. When I said some players had "laughable" stats, I was referring to kids that play against very lousy competition and hit .700 because everytime they hit a groundball they're safe.

Some of those players are very good. Yes. Pitchers' velocities' don't change based on who they're playing. My point was that I am more impressed by someone that hits say .400 in a top, competitive league than someone who hits .700 against kids that can't catch the ball.

And that goes back to many a discussion here about the fact that high school stats MAY be meaningless @ the college level. You also have to remember that gaudy stats may be the result of an inexperienced scorekeeper at the high school level. I assume that's why college coaches and scouts show up with radar guns @ hs games.

High school stats certainly have a great deal of variation based upon who is doing the scoring.

I was the official scorer the last two years of my son's HS career and found that my scoring was much more severe than the opponents scorekeeper in many cases - that is balls that I ruled errors they ruled hits.

In a season of roughly 100 plate appearances and perhaps 75 official ABs, every decision moves the batting average roughly .013. For example, a hitter with 75 ABs with 25 undisputed hits and 5 hit/errors would have either a .333 average or a .400 average.

Five is probably a conservative estimate of the number of disputed plays - there was one team in particular with whom I normally had 5 or 6 hit/error differences every game.

Have you ever went back and looked at JV ball after watching varsity for a couple years?

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Have you ever went back and looked at JV ball after watching varsity for a couple years?

How about 18u travel vs HS varsity? And so on to MLB....

The larger the pool of players the better the overall talent on the team.

I'm not claiming that small schools can compete with big schools, I just don't see any reason to bash the individual players.

Players on small school baseball teams, on average, are smaller and younger than the varsity teams at big schools. They're not as deep and not as talented from top to bottom. However, there are individual players that would play varsity at almost any high school. They might hit .700 or have a 0.30 ERA because there isn't as much competition but that doesn't mean they wouldn't hit .500 or have a 1.0 ERA at a big school either....

I have been asked why my son chooses to play at a small school. There were lots of reasons and it has turned out to be the right choice for him. His travel coach told me it would be a mistake since he wouldn't get any recognition but, in reality, he is getting plenty of looks since he stands out at the small school level....

I sometimes feel sorry for 'average' players at big schools riding the bench waiting for senior season and their 20 games of HS varsity when they could be playing every day at a smaller school....of course, they won't be facing 90+ mph pitching, but they can't hit it anyway....

I've never been into where a kid plays makes a difference relative to playing in high school. I'll bet the high school baseball player from the far corner of North Dakota who starts is having more fun playing ball than a kid in a major metro area who doesn't. It's about the experience.