In high school, stats mean nothing

Well, stats never mean anything in a vacuum.  You need a context. And HS stats are mostly never going to come with a context that's well enough defined to be especially useful.

 

I think any organized league that keeps complete enough stats can provide useful predictive information. I've no idea how internally consistent stats are at the college or college summer ball levels, but I do know there are people using college numbers predicitively. How big the error bars are as you go down the ladder from MLB I don't know, but given that they're pretty big at the MLB level, pulling the signal from the noise at the college level's got to be pretty tough.

All I'm going to say about this is that in hundreds of conversations with college coaches about my players/their prospects, I cannot recall the last time I was ever asked about a player's stats, other than...

 

GPA, SAT, ACT!

 

they ALWAYS care about those stats.  

06catcherdad,

Check around and see how many players got a ship with poor performance stats.

I hate slideshows so I haven't read them all, but here's a list.

 

http://bleacherreport.com/arti...r-win-a-championship

Originally Posted by jacjacatk:

I hate slideshows so I haven't read them all, but here's a list.

 

http://bleacherreport.com/arti...r-win-a-championship

 

Having a weak or even poor player on a championship team isn’t at all the same as a weak or even poor player getting a ‘ship.

So the poor players on championship teams don't get championships. OK....

He means scholarships...  but stats I think what people are alluding to more is the inflated stats.  True if a kid hits .150 his senior season he more than likely is not a prospect.  Even then there are exceptions but your point is valid.  Its the kids who hit .500 in a terrible conference with a coach that marks everything as a hit that make hs stats meaningless.

I think that this highlights the difference between a false positive and a false negative, which means, in my humble estimation, that not all players who excel in High School will excel at higher levels of play (as the quoted scout suggests), but, all (or most players) who excel at higher levels have excelled in High School.  

 

  

From Wikipedia (certainly not statistically significant or demonstrative by any means, but, just interesting food for thought):

 

• Mike Trout hit .531 as a high school senior, with 18 home runs in 81 at-bats and 20 steals.
• Andrew McCutchen hit .474 during his varsity career—and better than .700 as a senior with 45 stolen bases. 
• David Wright attended Hickory High School in Chesapeake. Wright was the 2001 Gatorade Virginia High School Player of the Year. Wright also earned All-State honors in 1999, 2000 and 2001 and was named Virginia All-State Player of the Year in 2001. Over his four-year career at Hickory, Wright hit .438 with 13 home runs and 90 RBIs. 
• Troy Tulowitzki graduated from Fremont High School in Sunnyvale, California.^[4] He earned four varsity letters in baseball and two in basketball. He was twice named second team All-State in baseball, and was a 3-time team Most Valuable Player. As a junior, Tulowitzki had a batting average of .536. He also went 15–1 on the mound. As a senior, he batted .519 with 6home runs. In basketball, Tulowitzki won league MVP, and was second team All-State and team MVP, averaging 22.6 points per game during his senior year. He was named Fremont High Athlete of the Year in 2002.^[4]
• The list goes on and on when you google HS stats for an MLB player. 

Originally Posted by 2020dad:

He means scholarships...  but stats I think what people are alluding to more is the inflated stats.  True if a kid hits .150 his senior season he more than likely is not a prospect.  Even then there are exceptions but your point is valid.  Its the kids who hit .500 in a terrible conference with a coach that marks everything as a hit that make hs stats meaningless.

 

You’re correct. Sometimes people don’t actually see what’s written.

 

Actually, what people are alluding to is that there’s absolutely no way to weigh the stats as to whether they came against what they believe is “quality” opposition, and it frustrates them, especially if their kid plays for a team that doesn’t play games with the stats.

 

 

Ah, my bad.

 

In that case, this is the more appropriate link, http://www.baseball-reference.....cgi?id=green-002sha. Along with http://www.maxpreps.com/athlet...t/baseball-stats.htm.

 

18th round isn't a scholarship exactly, but I'm sure there are more like him out there.