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Originally posted by luv baseball:
Curious - Why is the coach that wrapped up in the details of scoring? If I have my guess right you're giving him plenty of information to digest without that level of nitpicking.
Sometimes its difficult to explain how this particular coach deals with such things without making it sound as though I think he’s some kind of jerk, which is definitely not the case. Let me start out by saying that for a fellow in his early 40’s, he’s one of the least tech-savvy people I know. Although he has a card on every batter and his pitchers for every game, he doesn’t put the information into any kind of data “gathering” software, even something as simple as spreadsheet or word processor. Everything is pencil and paper, which is a throwback to much earlier times. Nothing at all wrong with it, but what that does is act as something very limiting.
The biggest limiting thing about it is, the number of things he has to examine is really restricted. While as a kid I used to get a kick out of computing the BA and ERA for every one of the Indian’s players after every game, much beyond that was pretty much out of the question. The result is, he only cares about what he can verify with his cards, and that’s pretty much BA and ERA.
Over the last 6 years I’ve given him everything I could think of that might help him, and offered to track and provide him anything else he’d like to see. I’ve generated everything from scatter charts to detailed minutia, but he chooses to ignore everything other than his cards. I only come into the picture when its time to go to the annual meeting where the coaches choose all league players. Since he has no way to break data out using different criteria using software, in order to get totals for league only, that’s where I come in.
It doesn’t bother me though. I don’t do what I do to the degree I do it, for anyone other than myself. Its my hobby. I really believe there’s a lot of information being missed, but that’s not my worry.
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I'd think he'd be more interesstd in the fact the pitcher got a ground ball with runners on 1st & 2nd. If the play was behind the 3B (playing in front of the bag) did anyone yell "Go to one" if he didn't have a play?
I don’t think you’re quite getting the full picture. Its truly a matter of perspective. There’s the perspective of someone who’s only concern is trying to put down on paper what’s taken place during a game, using the rules created over 150+ years of playing the game. Then there’s the perspective of a coach who feels he has to control every teeny aspect about everything, from mowing, chalking the lines, and watering down the IF dirt, to giving every offensive and defensive signal, while trying to remember what took place when he was coaching 3rd, then recording it on his cards by memory. I’m not saying a person couldn’t do all those things, but I am saying they couldn’t do all those things to the same degree of excellence.
Before he came to this school, he coached as another one up the road. He’s said many times that he only had one scorer during all that time, and I’ve talked to her on several occasions, both when he was still the coach there, and since he’s been gone. She did/does what I think is pretty typical at this level. She kept score, period. She’d get the scorebook before the game, then turn it in after, performing absolutely no duties as the statistician, not even calling in the score to the paper. And that’s fine. But if a coach wants someone to be the statistician, that person needs the book, and I don’t mean a few days later after the coach has “fixed” any problems he “feels” are in it.
Again, I’m not knocking coaches here, but there are dang few of them who know the scoring rules, and dang few of them who can control every facet of their team’s play, and still manage to keep an objective and accurate scoresheet. In the end, if a coach doesn’t believe in any numbers other than BA and ERA, there’s no a lot that can be done to help him. For me though, it makes no difference, because the numbers I generate, I generate as a hobby, and would like generate whether I was the team’s scorer or not.
