TW.
I snuck a peek and see you’re an old poop the same as me. In fact a whole year older, ;-)
I’m really looking forward to talking mostly about HS ball when the season starts. As I noted, its not that I have anything against any other level of ball, but I really enjoy talking about the level I have the most to do with, and this season at least, it’ll be HS ball.
Now that we’re down to 12 days out here, things are startin’ to pop. Not for me, but the coaching staffs are all out there trying to clean up the winter mess. Luckily for baseball, around here, its been a very dry winter, so the cleanup should be pretty easy.
My writing finger is twitchin’ though, and if you took a look at my site and checked out the stats and the Newsletters, I’m sure you got the idea that this stuff is a very important part of my life, and I truly do enjoy it!
In fact, I really was hoping someone would go there and take a shot at any or all of the stats. I love to discuss them and never mind being corrected about any of them, or throwing some new on in for someone if I’m able.
Now for the real question.
I am curious as to whether you think "errors" is the best criteria to determine the value [or detriment] of a defensive player to his team? The short answer is NO! But I think you’ll find I’m not much for short answers. ;-)
If you go to
http://infosports.net/scorekeeper/images/opps.pdfYou’ll see my meager attempt at trying to come up with some way to use fielding to determine the contributions a player might make to his team. Pages 1 and 2 are a combined total of all my son’s games in HS which kinda skews things. Pages 3 and 4 only consider the league games which is a slightly better measure.
That should give you the idea that I’m a real fan of the underdog, or in this case, the kid who doesn’t get a lot of accolades because all he does is a good job of fielding, while some other kid is touted as the next coming because he the only 5 balls he hits all year happened to go out, but he has hands of brick and costs the team more than he provides.
If you closely at how I come up with some of those goofy numbers, and at the different reports in
http://infosports.net/scorekeeper/images/def1.pdf I’m pretty sure you’ll also see that I do believe there are other things that need to be considered.
At the very end, on pages 55 and 56, you’ll see that I track defensive playing time. Its one of the oldest stats I do, and started way back when my boy was 9YO and playing LLI Majors. At that time we used it to show the kids and parents how much actual time the players actually spent on the field. Most people only look at innings, but that never made any sense to me, and judging by the response of the parents in that the complaining about PT was almost non-existent, at some level it didn’t make much sense to most other people either.
I didn’t think it would be very important as a stat once we got into HS and travel ball, basically because PT is earned, or at least that’s what we’re all told. Well guess what? The griping and sniping in tournament/travel ball was many times worse than anything I ever saw in rec ball, and when I got into the HS situation, it was something no one really discussed openly because the coach forbade talk about PT.
But rule or not, it was definitely something whispered about in the stands. In fact, it wasn’t strange for the coach and some parent to be heard goin’ at it hot and heavy about Jr’s paying time. And, since I spent so much time around the players, they’d talk like I was just one of the guys or like I wasn’t even there, an believe me, they talked about it too!
The difference was, most of the time they weren’t wanting someone else to lose time, it was just that they mostly felt they were out there bustin’ their butts at practices just like the big stars were, and they at least wanted to get more than a PR or PH chance one a week.
When I started doing the PT by Position and Player, initially it caused a great stir because some folks used it as a bludgeon on the coach, but in the end, he modified his ways just a little bit and started to give more of the players a little more time. The result was, much happier players, far more placated parents, and the team couldn’t have lost all that much since the V made the playoffs 2 years running, and those were the 1st time in school history the played in the post season.
So, although errors are certainly important, other things definitely need to be considered. Also, the way errors are considered is pretty important too.
FI, One could look at page 1 of
http://infosports.net/scorekeeper/images/opps.pdf and see how the individual player fare as far as fielding goes, but that doesn’t really mean other than its easy to tell who had the best FP.
But looking at the stat on page 6, it becomes pretty easy to see where there is a fielding problem, and hopefully who’s causing it. As you can see, one of our major problems was that we had a left side of the IF that killed us!
What ended up happening was the kid who played VSS as a JR, was moved to 3rd as a SR, and a SO started at SS. Our errors went way down that last year as a result. What was happening was, the kid who was playing short had been groomed to play there, but the coaches didn’t want to admit he was never gonna make it. They moved him over, and he was a much better 3B, and the kid who took over was a much better SS. Win/Win!
Those things are even more meaningful when one also considers the report on page 10. With that one can see that it might be just a certain kind of error rather than overall poor play. An good example was a kid the coach moved from LF and tried at short during summer and fall ball, which aren’t part of those numbers.
Anyhoo, he was making errors up the kazoo and was just about ready to get put back out in the OF, but one of the coaches noticed that almost all the errors he made, were throwing errors, both in left and at short. The tried him at 2nd and darned if things didn’t change! He still made errors, but it became much more balanced, and they cut down some too. Another win/win.
What people need to understand is, there really isn’t just one way to look at anything and come up with the right answer! Things don’t happen that way. You have to look at as many things as possible, then make a decision based on not only the numbers, but how they relate.
Was that answer complete enough? LOL!!
