Ref to my last post on stats..

Again, doverbird, I will ask...who are you referring to? You obviously took offense to someone shortchanging your son of a hit or two, which is OK. If that is your beef, I understand. Could the omission have been an honest mistake? Could the newspaper gotten it wrong? Or are you sure it is a conspiracy to make one player look better than another?

As for stats not mattering, the only context in which they do matter is for the HS coaches who do not pay attention to opposing players during the games. Most coaches know who the players are after seeing them at least twice during the season.

You infer there is daddy ball in HS baseball. I know of only 2 kids playing in Hampton Roads who have dads on coaching staffs - both kids are pretty darn good (1 D1 signee and another is talking to ACC schools).

As far as I know, there is no award for Area's Best Hitter. Lord knows that would be debated ad nauseum.

I dont have a son playing that the stats matter about..It was just a wild hair I had up my a** and just wanted to vent about it.

I know there is no best hitter award,,just making a reference, but still i didnt get an answer as to how the kids make the all district teams

As far as the stat being an omission, i was told by 2 seperate kids on the team that if the hitter got on base whether it was a hit or error that they gave always gave the kid a hit

Also,,im not here as a driveby as I was called,,just dont come here much,,I will make a better effort of staying current

I haven't been part of All-District selections but I would wager they are already known (for the most part) prior to the ballots being cast. For the most part, we are lucky in this area to have pretty good coaching. They can identify the best players after seeing almost every team twice during the season.

You said you were told by kids on "the team"...which team? It sounds like the problem lies in whomever is keeping score. Some teams use managers (aka students) and some use volunteers (aka parents). The stats are only as reliable as the person marking the book. If they don't know the rules of scorekeeping, then the stats aren't very reliable. Much like me trying to fly a plane without training...I would crash even though I had every intent not to.

Your initial post insinuated the coaches were conspiring to misrepresent the stats. I don't think that is the case.

Not saying this in a bad way but I think this is anotrher area where stats can be misleading:

one thing that has always interested me here in the Central Region is when you start to talk stats how each District is so different.

For the last few years the Dominion District has been stacked with quality teams and pitchers...it has lost two programs- Huguenot and George Wythe, meaning hitters get few opportunities to pump their stats up.

In the Central District meanwhile you have just the opposite...2 or three good teams with strong pitching - Matoaca,Thomas Dale, and Dinwiddie -that is pretty much it...rest include Meadowbrooke,Colonial Heights,Hopewell,Petersburg---That means the three top teams play 8 games that are pretty much walkovers.

Point being when you evaluate kids across the Districts it is pretty lopsided... A .400 hitter out of the Dominion means alot more than a .400 hitter from the Central.

I know these trends come and go and maybe this will change over time, although..this year it would seem the Central has slipped even more with TD and Matoaca losing alot of strength. Can also see the Dominion for now is more of a 3 or 4 team District than it has been in the past with Monacan and Midlo struggling.

Not as familiar with the Colonial or Capital situation but it would seem from top to bottom they fall far short of the Dominion

Of course this is baseball and there are other sports like football where the Central is DOMINATE

Thoughts?

doverbird...

I understand where you are coming from on the stats piece. Not sure if it is on purpose or simply bad record keeping. I know that there have been a number of discussions in my area about player stats being "adjusted" to justify All-District selections but since I don't score the games I couldn't tell you that was fact. I do know that when I hear the stats discussed at the end of the year they don't seem to line up with what I felt that I witnessed all year but again, I didn't keep my own book.

I agree that colleges may not look at stats but you're right, they do matter to a lot of the kids. I have heard so many of the kids talking stats over the years so to think that it isn't important to them is simply not true. But I also feel that there is almost no way to really fix the issue so when I run across it I simply have to shake my head and just chalk it up to "it is what it is".

I will say this though. While my son was going through the process of moving to the next level he had to fill out a lot of bio pages where they asked about things such as All-District selections etc. and since my guess is that many of those awards can hinge on stats I would believe that it sort of does matter. The flip side is that my guess is that many of the coaches already know who the studs are so if someone comes at them with weird stats on a player that didn't impress on the field when they played that school they might raise an eyebrow so...

I completely agree. We had a similiar post in the Central Region thread. While baseball is a team sport, individual stas matter to the players and should be an accurate portrait of what took place during the year. Outside of baseball, LIFE is a competition and the salesman(player) with the highest sales (BA) gets the biggest bonus (scholarship). The players would be well served to learn that lesson now....JMO

Stats do matter. Are you kidding me??? Our coach says that that is all the All-District Selections are based on. Hitting stats. You could have Ozzie Smith at SS, but if he isn't hitting .450 + he aint making all district.

Unfortunately there is no one out there doing anything to make sure the stats are at least somewhat accurate. Coaches aren't required to post them ever...so what's to stop them from tweaking a hit here or one less AB there to raise the averages of one of their players? Nothing. Why would a coach do that? Because it makes him look better as a coach.