Stats Scenerio

My husband is the official score-keeper for our hs team and as such reports the stats from home games to our local message boards. It is interesting how often other coaches change the stats or pad their stats. My husband refuses to pad our stats and of course our high school coaches agree. If this leaves some of our kids out of contention for all league, so be it.

What's interesting is one school is deleting ALL their stats, even when they're not the home team. Apparently anyone with an administrators password can go in and change/delete things. This school has absolutely no stats listed on-line. We wonder if it's so that parents don't complain???

I started the season as the official scorekeeper and the local stats website entry point for our school (I have since passed on the duties to another dad as my son is out for the season with an injury).

I too have noticed stats getting changed and padded and went to the admin of the board to let him know what really happened and he cleaned it up and locked it. So, at least for my games, the stats were clean. In general, I did NOT post stats for the other team - so our pitching stats did not always match their hitting stats - e.g. what I called an error the other team might have scored a hit. As long as my side stay clean, I decided not to worry about the other teams stats.

I will say that one of our local schools has some really interesting stats

1)Team Batting average is .793
2) they have three kids with more hits than at bats
3) In over 100 innings pitched, they have 1 earned run allowed

Whew....

08

08Dad, now that's an impressive team.

Hard to believe they lost three games isn't it Seriously, they are a good team and are 10-3 - but something is really lacking in their input (like quality control)...

Spending a few minutes looking at how another team inputs the stats on a game that you also scored can tell you a lot about both your scorekeeping and theirs. In general, I found that I kept a slightly stricter book than most and a much stricter book than a few.

And then there were those I never could explain - how did that kid who had 4 ABs, grounded out to second once and struck out three times end up 2 for 4 with a double???

Oh well, I am retired from this now - and will move on to keeping score only for my own amusement in the future...

08

Oh - and back to the original question: When I was doing youth baseball we had a similar problem with one coach who was known for padding his stats.

When it came time to pick all stars, I made sure that I had stats for all of my players - as well as those who played against us (at least for those games where we played them) all in one big spreadsheet. I then sat down with a couple of other coaches who were also "honest" scorekeepers and consolidated their similar spreadsheets into a master spreadsheet. By doing so, we had probably 60% of the games covered. The master spreadsheet was then emailed to all of the coaches two days prior to the coaches meeting with the games that were not covered indicated - with an invitation to call me to add in any additional games. By the coaches meeting, we had all but a couple of games in one spreadsheet- and the "stats padding" coach was playing with the same numbers as everyone else. Sure there were some conflicts on H vs E in a few cases - but it made it hard to really pad things...

08

I would talk to the newspaper or whoever the central place that is getting the stats and check to see when and who logged in and turned in stats. They should be able to account for each school that logged in and if there is a discrepancy then have the teams turn in scorebooks.

Then see if the place you turn in stats will make it to where you only allow the home team to turn in stats since that is the official book. This way you only have to worry about one set of stats. This should help police itself since I would say each team plays a home game against the others. If team A pads stats against team B then team B will probably do the same against team A when they come calling.

Not perfect and not a great system but overall most people are honest. The honest people will keep the dishonest people in check using this system.

That is what I would do.

Well, I said I'd return with my advice. Years ago, I saw an old veteran coach give a young coach a real butt chewing. The thing is, when it was done, the young coach left not realizing he was chewed out AND he probably like the old coach more. That older coach was a major Manipulator. He looked my way as the young coach departed and gave me a wink. We both knew what was up. I've learned a lot from that old guy. My advice for this young first year coach was to email the other coach and apologize for the scoring descrepency. I told him to say that he called the stats in correctly but somehow someone accessed the game stats and made changes. I told him that I'd be sure to include a sentence stating that while I'm embarassed that it has happened, I know it couldn't come from a coach such as this old coach because he would ever pad his stats. I'd compliment him on how accurate his stats are and then I'd tell him that people talk and I would want him to know that I will mention that he isn't padding stats and some other error occurred. Finally, I told this young coach that'd I'd mention in that email that there is a slight possibility that someone on his staff might have changed the stats in error and so he should be aware of that. Certainly he didn't want people talking about his program in such a negative light as padding stats. You might wonder if I've ever been there? Well, let's say I know that my suggestion will have a big impact on that other coach.

It is my belief that there are two coaches always at work. The one coach is open and friendly and generally a good guy. The other coach is a serious competitor who is always looking for chinks in the armor of the opponent. The trick for many coaches is to know when to be each of the aforementioned coaches.

Edited to add:

Coach with sports stats at the ST. Louis Post, each game is prelisted and each coach's access code will open that game. I really don't think that they can track which coach was first or second in line to fill in the data.