My son will (hopefully) be playing 9th grade Highschool baseball , this Spring. Are Stats recorded at that level? and if so, who records the Stats?
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The book is kept by anyone from a girl in the dugout who is flirting with the guys while half paying attention to the game to a parent who is padding his son’s stats. Or you could get someone who takes the job seriously. He pisses off parents who harass him to change scoring until he decides it isn’t worth it.
in JV ball a kid on the bench who didn’t like my son kept score. He recorded half his hits as errors. The coach eventually did the stats and discovered his best hitter was hitting .200 and not .400.
The moral of the story … Swing the bat well. The coach makes the lineup. Don’t worry about stats.
At our high school, they read out every player's best stats at the award banquet. The freshmen team always had the best numbers, the j.v. less good, and the varsity the worst. But, the best freshmen were put on varsity or j.v. Hm.
Ok, thx , folks. I guess i'll just make up stats for my boy. I'm sure the stats will get better each time I tell of the story-LOL
As stated above somebody is sure to keep stats. Is it important, not really. Will people try to use inflated stats to justify why their kid should play, yep.
I volunteered to do GC for son’s HS team last season. I figured if the school banned spectators because of Covid being scorekeeper would ensure I was able to attend. Horrible experience. Arguments over passed balls/wild pitches, earned runs, hits/errors, parents from other teams bitching because I had the wrong number/name/whatever for their kid.
If you have the time and can do it discreetly, you should try to video his ABs. Being the sitting away from the parents in the OF dad afforded me opportunities record his ABs. This was helpful to the kid and also useful for his recruiting even with poor angles. I guess his future hitting coach wanted to evaluate his approach and timing.
HS stats are of little use for recruiting. level of play varies drastic. The smallest schools often don't have enough skilled players, so balls that would be outs against competitive teams are hits. The velo is slow. The defense is poor. The field surface is not smooth. Etc. Which is why summer events are more credible for scouts.
KISS Method.
Freshman - who cares (parents)
JV - same as Freshman
Varsity (check out above)
Note, the coach knows who he wants on his varsity team and should get necessary feedback from the assistant coaches.
Coaches might also be recording stats on a website like maxpreps.
Note, IMHO I don't think colleges look at HS stats in detail. They would want to see you perform at a showcase or camp and determine if your son can play said level of baseball.
As stated by @2022NYC just record in your sons AB and if he pitches his outings.
Benefits:
- It keeps you quiet and not fall into the parent comment trap
- provide the feedback to your son without directly providing him feedback. A video is worth a thousand words.
- supply insights to his hitting or pitching coach for small tweaks
- you have a lifetime of memories
Note, in the 4 years of HS varsity baseball, I very rarely initiated comment on my sons HS games.
All that I told the coach was by junior year, the team would vy for the state championship.
Keep everything in perspective and enjoy your son's journey.
@Adams Baseball posted:My son will (hopefully) be playing 9th grade Highschool baseball , this Spring. Are Stats recorded at that level? and if so, who records the Stats?
In my experience, high school coaches who value high school stats for their team and other teams (competitive data) will have someone qualified to do so. My youngest son's high school coach did value these stats and had a retired former coach (with no sons on the team) keep his stats. His team was ALWAYS in the hunt for the regional and state level playoffs.
Contrast that with my two older sons who went to a different high school than youngest son. A student volunteer (usually a cute girl) was taught how to keep score, and was given the scorebook. In my two olders son's combined 8 years of high school baseball, their team made the regional playoffs twice. Never to the state playoffs. IMO they had talent, the coaches just didn't know how to use the talent they had.
I think that tells an interesting story of high school scorekeeping. The data is right there and can be used to make competitive game decisions (youngest son's coach) or the data can be ignored and left to chance.
I hope your son makes the high school team and he has a Coach like my youngest son.
Again, just my experience
When I coached I had the Pitcher from the previous day keep the scorebook. This duty keeps him in the game and he can evaluate the weakness and strength of his team and the opponent. In the scorebook are his notes for the Coach to read. Another pitcher role is to "steal" the opponent signals. The baseball field is a classroom and the Coaches are teachers.
Bob
@Consultant posted:When I coached I had the Pitcher from the previous day keep the scorebook. This duty keeps him in the game and he can evaluate the weakness and strength of his team and the opponent. In the scorebook are his notes for the Coach to read. Another pitcher role is to "steal" the opponent signals. The baseball field is a classroom and the Coaches are teachers.
Bob
@consultant
That's old school.
My coach had us doing the same.
You definitely get to appreciate the game and pick up on the little details.
Everybody has a role, every game. There are no days off.
Good stuff.
@Consultant posted:When I coached I had the Pitcher from the previous day keep the scorebook. This duty keeps him in the game and he can evaluate the weakness and strength of his team and the opponent. In the scorebook are his notes for the Coach to read. Another pitcher role is to "steal" the opponent signals. The baseball field is a classroom and the Coaches are teachers.
Bob
I wonder how many kids on my son’s high school team knew how to keep score. I did the book, posted stats, maintained the website (along with a lot of recruiting information) and wrote the first draft of the newspaper article for the coach for two years.
After two years of calls after posting the box score on the website I gave up. Another dad took over the book and the website. His son led the team in hitting. From LL through high school and travel his son led every team in hitting he played on and dad kept the book. It was so blatant most other parents just laughed at it. At least the kid was a good player.
@RJM posted:I wonder how many kids on my son’s high school team knew how to keep score. I did the book, posted stats maintained the website (along with a lot of recruiting information) and wrote the first draft of the newspaper article for the coach for two years.
After two years of calls after posting the box score on the website I gave up. Another dad took over the book and the website. His son led the team in hitting. From LL through high school and travel his son led every team in hitting he played on and dad kept the book. It was so blatant most other parents just laughed at it. At least the kid was a good player.
Good one
@bandera posted:HS stats are of little use for recruiting. level of play varies drastic. The smallest schools often don't have enough skilled players, so balls that would be outs against competitive teams are hits. The velo is slow. The defense is poor. The field surface is not smooth. Etc. Which is why summer events are more credible for scouts.
In threads like this there’s always lots of dunking on HS scorekeepers, no doubt justified. But the inflationary effect of “level of play” as Bandera notes here is more important IMO. For example, let’s say you have a speedy kid. A weakly hit slow roller to short is usually by definition a base hit against “ordinary effort” by an average HS player. It’s usually a 6-3 putout at any college level I’ve seen.
I think HS stats are interesting more as a disqualifier.
Hitting 300 in HS doesn't mean you are a college prospect but if you hit 150 with 30% strikeouts there probably is something wrong with you.
If I was a recruiter I would only look for two stats:
1. K%
2. ISO
That doesn't replace seeing the player in games and level of play does matter but I would still look at those two stats to see if they are at least OK.
If the player has a low K rate (under 10-15%) and a decent iso (150+) it is likely that he at least can somewhat hit and if he has 25% Ks and a sub 100 iso I think there is something wrong.
That of course doesn't replace seeing the swing and watching live action against good pitching but it is at least a hint.
The k% and iso thing works great in pro ball too, sub 20 k rate and 200+ iso and you 99% have guaranteed a good player even without seeing average, ops or obp, however at that level I would also include bb rate.
Years ago I created a Stat with k, bb and iso that almost perfectly predicts hitting performance at the pro level
Being in charge of the GC last year forced me to be more engaged when other kids are hitting. Some things I noticed; there are strikeouts and there are bad strikeouts, there are kids 0-10 but hit it hard every time, then there are kids who are just plain lucky.
My son started out hitting .600+ the first half. Parents were saying coach should move him from 8 to 1-3. I said he is just where he needed to be. Ended the year around .375, which is more where I expected him to be. I give the coach a lot of credit, he uses stats for decisions when they make sense and uses the eye test where it makes sense.
True story. At the end of the 2021 HS season, a news outlet had a wrap-up feature and selected players as being outstanding based on their stats. A neighboring HS had quite a few kids mentioned and honored. And, I know these kids. I couldn't believe the numbers. Fat, slow kid with 15 triples in 22 games. Another kid who has always been a B team player batting .750 on the season. Another kid who was a bench player having 30 steals.
Something was fishy. So I asked my son who has a buddy on the team. He told me that one of the kids messed with the stats after the last game and the coach didn't notice it when he submitted them.
@Francis7 posted:True story. At the end of the 2021 HS season, a news outlet had a wrap-up feature and selected players as being outstanding based on their stats. A neighboring HS had quite a few kids mentioned and honored. And, I know these kids. I couldn't believe the numbers. Fat, slow kid with 15 triples in 22 games. Another kid who has always been a B team player batting .750 on the season. Another kid who was a bench player having 30 steals.
Something was fishy. So I asked my son who has a buddy on the team. He told me that one of the kids messed with the stats after the last game and the coach didn't notice it when he submitted them.
It was funny to see my son on the top of the list for hitting, OBP, and OPS for all of Palm Beach County for a few weeks (as a sophomore!). Palm Beach is loaded with talent. On one hand I was a little relieved when he came back down because I didn’t want people saying I was cooking the books. On the other, he earned those numbers. Thankfully none of his hits were questionable.
Before I found hsbbw, I went crazy over newspaper stats, which were, as Francis7 says, cited in All Area listings. The numbers were often flat-out wrong, as in, they would list hits and at-bats, but the listed BA would not match those numbers. Something was going on, but I never figured out what.
In the bigger picture they do not matter at all, but on a local level they do matter. No-one who reads the newspaper cares what a pitcher's top fastball is. It's about winning, and it's about which kids, who played together from the age of 5, were the best at age 18.
Do not matter after HS...i did track son's K's and follow that within Cobb County schools. I announced the home games and one or our mom's kept the book, she is an attorney and she was good.