High School Stats; Does Anyone Care

Water cooler talk! Parents care...and I do believe high school coaches care to a certain extent, to see who may have hot hand in certain situations, etc...but, all in all, just fun to talk about if they're good.

Stats are relative to the quality of competition. 99% of the time they are worthless.

Mostly parents!

Had an absolutely incredible experience the other night. I keep the book for the coach which is always crosschecked the next day with him to review any questionable scoring decisions...no negotiations; he has final say.

HS team loses a great game in extra innings and as I'm packing up in the pressbox this father comes up the stairs, bruskly says I want to see the book! After a brief look, he throws it down, points to a box (his senior son's of course) and barks "it's wrong- 2 stolen bases there"...(actually a wild pitch) and marches out.

Been at this for about 20 years and NEVER had anyone question a stolen base (lots of hits, errors and earned runs) but what makes this even more incredible is that the player involved has already signed with a top 20 D-1 and this "know-it-all" is fussing about a stolen base.

I agree with Redbird. Stats don't show everything, it depends on the competition. We played a team last night that I felt sorry for. They were swinging at pitches in the dirt and over their heads. However, the book looks great for our pitcher with all those K's!

Stats are meaningless unless broken down properly for a coach. For instance I break them down this way. If we are playing a quality team with a good pitcher I keep these stats separate from the overall stats. I take the stats against the quality competition and use them when I am determining the line up against quality opponents at the end of the season and playoffs. We have had kids that feasted on the clown pitching and got destroyed against the good pithing and ended up hitting .375. .Then we have had kids that struggled against the clown pitching and crushed the good pitching and ended up around .275. By breaking down your stats this way when you are in the playoffs or facing quality opponents down the stretch you have valuable info that can help you get the best line up in the game. But as far as just stats in general they are meaningless to knowledgeable High School coachs and above as well.

Stats are very important and are a huge part of what makes baseball special. Granted College and Pro Scouts probably don't give a hoot about Jr's batting average or ERA. But Jr. cares and uses it as a tool to set goals. Speaking from personal experience my son works hard every year to elevate his batting average and lower his ERA and most years he seems to improve those stats just a little even though the level of competition gets tougher. Without the stats I don't know that my son or other players would have a good gage as to whether their game is improving. For example when my son started playing baseball 10 years ago his batting average was about .250 and we won't even talk about his ERA the first year he pitched. However over the last 10 years he has worked extremely hard to improve both stats. Using this incremental approach to improving stats has brought my son into this season with the goals of hitting .450 and to have an ERA of under 2. Currently he is batting .463 and his ERA is 1.88 so he sees his goals are in reach and continues to stay after practice working on hitting and perfecting his pitches. If we hadn't kept stats and seen an increase in batting average of 20 pts that first year he may have lost focus and not stayed with it. Trust me when your son lifts his average from .250 to .270 it doesn't look like much from the stands but at the end of the season you have something tangible you can point to and say wow that hard work paid off.

In addition there are many other great uses for stats as Coach May's post so aptly pointed out. So just because College and Pro Scouts don't put a lot of weight on stats when evaluating talent that doesn’t mean we should discount the importance of stats to the game of baseball. I really don't think any coach, player or fan could imagine the great game of baseball without stats.

Stats are important at the banquet at the end of the year. They are also important at awards time for various all area teams. They are sometimes but not as often as people think to colleges. The primary importance of the stats is the credibility of the program and coaching staff. Some school gain a reputation of "padding stats." We had one school accuse us of that last year. They brought thier ace in and he lasted 1/3rd of an inning. The score was 10-0 when he left. I think that level of competition is also more important than stats to colleges. They know quality programs when they look at schedules and so, they know the validity of stats. JMHO!

bb4life,

The original question was about stats' importance to college coaches and pro scouts. While stats are important to Jr. (I agree), coaches and scouts virtually ignore them.

tt53, as your 20 yr streak is already broken - my 2 cents - - without seeing the play, if a wild pitch was thrown and the baserunner advanced 2 bases, I'd have to think the runner was going with the pitch (credit the SB), then credit the 2nd base advanced to the WP - why not give "benefit of doubt" to players as scoring rules provide?

not sure ya could justify scoring a 2 base WP without an error unless something unusual happened

Bee,

Sorry, I should have been more specific. Runner had gotten to second base on a SB and on a subsequent pitch he moved to 3rd on the WP.

redbird5,

In my post I gave my opinion that scouts don’t put a lot of weight on stats. However if you recheck the thread it is titled "High School Stats; Does Anyone Care" and therefore the thread is open to a general discussion of stats and is not limited to just scouts and stats. As a matter of fact limiting the discussion to just scouts would be pretty boring since it looks like almost everyone agrees they don't use them much anyway when evaluating high school talent.

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Stats are important at the banquet at the end of the year. They are also important at awards time for various all area teams.

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This is what is very troubling when you have a kid from the HS keeping the book and a coach who doesn't crosscheck it after each game. I have seen many times in our box scores reported in local paper where hits were given for routine errors and RBIs credited to batters on WP, PB, or errant throws to home where runner crossed the plate before the batter's hit. Then the coach looks at it near the end of season to get some kind of stats to base awards on.
Not a true reflection of some players on team.

Son goes to Div1 college and plays ball there. Because of all the talk while he was in HS about how much emphasis is placed on HS stats that a HS coach gives to a prospective college coach, thought I'd ask his college coach. He said that college coaches know that most books are kept by a "bench" player or a kid carried along who volunteers to keep the book. Thus they do not place much emphasis on what is given to them stat wise by the coaches. However, when we went to our first college game and in any media we saw therafter, there were the HS stats published by each player profile and the higher the stats... well on paper it sure made their recruiting look good. What I didn't understand was in one breathe he says he basically knows HS stats for a player aren't truely reflective of that player...yet uses those to enhance Freshman players when they start their career as a college player...Why not just mention notable accomplishments in HS like All- conference, chosen to All-State team, played x many years in State Games, selected to East-West game or whatever recognition there is in your area where other coaches beside your HS coach makes an evaluation and selects you and wait until after his college freshman year to start publishing "real" stats.

Sorry if I spoke in the wrong forum...just saw this is a forum for "info exchange between coaches"...not a coach but have sat thru alot of baseball games thru the last 18 years.

BB9er,

Most colleges provide a questionnaire to their players for the media guide. Players provide their own HS stats in 99% of the cases.

TT53,

When the runner advanced, was there a throw to third?

redbird5

Even if the players do provide stats in a questionnaire, they had to get them from somewhere...probably their HS coach unless they just create their own stats for 4 years. I just feel why publish HS stats for college freshmen in media sources if (what seems to be the general agreement here is that) college coaches don't put much weight in them. Wait until after their freshmen season and you have some credible stats.

I am sure there are HSs out there that keep very accurate scorebooks, but I suspect these are exceptions rather than the norm.

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Originally posted by KidCaro21:
TT53,

When the runner advanced, was there a throw to third?

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Kid,
Sorry, been out of town and at games. The runner moved to third when the ball squirted away from the catcher. He was sliding into third when the 3rd baseman muffed the throw allowing the ball to go into LF; runner then continued on to score.

Heard of a high school COACH who gives kids a "sac fly" when they advance a runner from 2nd to 3rd.

Stats are meaningless in high school. I could show you programs that have no emphasis on baseball and if you go 4-5 against them, you've hit against a kid who is being "coached" by the coach with each windup!

Go watch a game and see who they play and what the big names do in quality match-ups and against competitive teams.

Had tons of wind-blown "hits" yesterday in CHicagoland with the 30-50 mile gale out of the North/Northeast. How about the kids that DRILL the ball on a line to someone in all 3 or 4 at bats and the parents say "Wow, he hasn't had a hit today!"

(Not my son.)

"We have had kids that feasted on the clown pitching and got destroyed against the good pithing and ended up hitting .375. .Then we have had kids that struggled against the clown pitching and crushed the good pitching and ended up around .275."

I say that is baseball, thats where hitters get there stats. You are not gonna bat .500 against quality pitching, its the same no matter where you play. Some days you face a good pitcher some days you dont. Hitters get stats from thye mediocre pitching and mix in a hit hear and there with the quality on the mound. Every level of baseball is relative. But the answer the question about does anyone pay attention to stats? I believe a high batting average in an area with quality pitching is looked at and in all areas power is looked at. If you can hit bombs people pay attention because bombs equal batspeed. My 2 cents. Jacking one in the trees is one stat that cant be padded.

dwill6413:

You'd be surprised. There are some short fences around here, so a HR isn't always a "bomb" but it looks like one in the newspaper. I've even seen a double with a 2 base error show up as an HR, and the stats show more HR's than were actually hit. In other words, while I agree that a 450 ft. HR off of any pitcher shows some pop, not all the newspaper HRs are in that category. And some didn't even clear the short fences!

As for batting average, I don't know why HS and the media still use it. No MLB team pays much attention to it. High Schools should report obp, and slg, since doubles and triples are not only valuable, but might be HRs on the smaller fields. The other problem is the HS season is short so a hot streak (or a cold one) tends to get blown out of proportion.

With regard to publishing stats:
Two cities of equal size, approx. 100 miles apart publish stats for their area.
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BATTING
City 1 states Hitting Leaders: (Minimum of 45 at bats)
City 2 states Batting: (Two plate apperances per game)
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PITCHING
City 1 states Pitching Leaders: (Minimum 35 innings pitched)listing W-L_IP_H_R_ER_BB_K_ERA
City 2 states Pitching Winning Percentage (Minimum 3 decisions)
separate list: Strikesouts
separate list: Earned Run Average (Minimum 22 innings pitched)
*
If a player is a DH and gets only 1 at-bat in most games, hits over .400, should they be listed?
What is an error & what is a hit? Who decides, the batter's coach or the pitcher's coach?
If a player pitches against weaker teams, is that truly deserving of a high ERA?
If a pitcher records high strikeouts, against weak teams, does that earn a spot on the list?
*
What criteria is important? Are they factual? I get soooo confused ! ! !
They are not important unless you find a way to remove the "Spin".