How would you attempt to rank the best 50 TB teams in the country?

So, let's say that you were assigned the task to rank the best 50 travel teams in the country.

How would you do it?

What percent of the best 50 played in one of the following - PGF nationals, ASA nationals, WFC nationals? Are any other nationals worth mentioning?

Are teams consistent/stable enough in their makeup from tournament to tournament to make rankings meaningful? In other words, is the Firecrackers/Smith team that shows up at PGF Nationals the same one that played 3 other lesser tournaments leading up to it?

How? By how much $$$$$$ the parents are willing to pay. Top 50, how about top 10 or 5? Most of those teams are really good don't get me wrong, but there are teams out in the world, that don't have the $$$$$$$$$ to go play at these tournaments. Sorry coogansbluff, but a rank doesn't mean crap. It would just make parents and players egos swell and could cause spontaneous cranium explosions.

nanotech14 said:

coogansbluff, but a rank doesn't mean crap. It would just make parents and players egos swell and could cause spontaneous cranium explosions.

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I'm not saying that it would mean anything or be worthwhile. It probably would only serve to swell egos. But I'm simply asking how one would go about doing it. If you were contracted to identify the best 50 teams in the country, where would you start? Whether you thought it was worthwhile or not. If I paid you $10,000 and asked you to come back with a list in 15 days, how would you compile it?

nanotech14 said:

... there are teams out in the world, that don't have the $$$$$$$$$ to go play at these tournaments. ...

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That's the kind of info I'm looking for. The best 50 teams in the country do exist out there somewhere. How many of those play these nationals? How many don't have the $$$$$ to go play these tournaments?

Ouija Board or Magic 8 Ball is as accurate as any other method. The exercise is like nailing jello to the wall. It would actually be pretty straight forward but the data required to compile such list is either incomplete or does not exist. Unlike the NCAA, travel teams are not compelled to report information and what information that is available is highly suspect.

CoogansBluff said:

So, let's say that you were assigned the task to rank the best 50 travel teams in the country.

How would you do it?

What percent of the best 50 played in one of the following - PGF nationals, ASA nationals, WFC nationals? Are any other nationals worth mentioning?

Are teams consistent/stable enough in their makeup from tournament to tournament to make rankings meaningful? In other words, is the Firecrackers/Smith team that shows up at PGF Nationals the same one that played 3 other lesser tournaments leading up to it?

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Wouldn't waste time on an impossible task

riseball said:

Ouija Board or Magic 8 Ball is as accurate as any other method. The exercise is like nailing jello to the wall. It would actually be pretty straight forward but the data required to compile such list is either incomplete or does not exist. Unlike the NCAA, travel teams are not compelled to report information and what information that is available is highly suspect.

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By 'information,' I assume you mean every team's results of all tournaments? As in scores?

IYO, how many of the elite teams will show up at the major nationals (ie, PGF, ASA, etc.) and how many really good teams sit them out? How hard is it to identity the main suspects?

MTR said:

Wouldn't waste time on an impossible task

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What makes it impossible? Not disagreeing with you. But what do you see as the main obstacles? Lack of reliable scores? Not enough inter-play among the top teams? Transient rosters that make identifying teams difficult?

I wonder how many teams have a fixed roster, seems to be a fair amount of movement for the big tourneys.

CoogansBluff said:

By 'information,' I assume you mean every team's results of all tournaments? As in scores?

IYO, how many of the elite teams will show up at the major nationals (ie, PGF, ASA, etc.) and how many really good teams sit them out? How hard is it to identity the main suspects?

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Yes, by information I mean results of all tournaments. Unless your sole criteria is to rank them based on performance at a handful of random national tournaments the data does not exist. PGF is very problematic as the teams are often collections of players from various other teams. Some players are flying in from parts unknown to take to the clay for the first time with their team. Players on the same PGF team could end up playing against each other at another national tournament. Even in ASA you have the ability to pickup players but it is more constrained. You also need to consider the various classifications used by the organizations such a platinum, premier, gold, A, etc. Using ASA as an example, how would you compare 18 Gold vs 18A? Not only do they not play each other at nationals, 18A includes college players. Then how do you fold in 16 Gold and 16A? What about summer college TB teams? Do you include them? These are local teams that you will never hear of, comprised of 18-19 year old college players that typically do not travel out of state. I suspect many of those teams would do very well at any national tournament against less experienced HS players.

This is why I always call the various national tournaments a "mythical national championship". Win one and you are not a national champion. Rather you are the best team, at that tournament, on that day. Still a worthy accomplishment, but claiming a national championship is certainly a stretch. You just cannot do an apples to apples comparison when you have a mix bag of fruit with some vegetables thrown in for good measure.

CoogansBluff said:

What makes it impossible? Not disagreeing with you. But what do you see as the main obstacles? Lack of reliable scores? Not enough inter-play among the top teams? Transient rosters that make identifying teams difficult?

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Player movement and who people bring to these tournaments is the #1 issue. We played what you would probably consider the top 16U team on the east coast in reputation twice in one month. There were minimally 8 different girls on the team the second time we played them. And guest players mess you up - bringing a pitcher or two into a team for a weekend and the team can outperform their core roster easily. Some orgs are sharing girls across multiple teams so Big Org - Coach John and Big Org Coach Joe could be basically the same team some weekends - other weekends not so much. Some girls are playing on one team locally and another nationally (in and out of the org - my DD plays locally for one team who stays local mostly, but also basically her and two of her teammates also play on a bigger team very regularly when they go to ASA qualifiers for example)

Secondly is that teams are playing across age groups - so you not only have all the issues with PGF v ASA v USSSA versus whatever, but you also have to figure out how the various age groups and divisions worked. And then there is NSA, ISA, USFA, TCS, etc, etc... I am sure there are others.

Pitching depth - there are teams that can beat the best but only if one particular girl is in the circle. That makes may be able to be taken into account, but good luck. Because it can rely so much on one player specifically (since the evening effect of bullpens in baseball doesn't exist) it would be tough.

Team identification and categories - since this is self identifying, that makes it challenging. An A team in Texas is not an A team in Iowa. I know the idea is to help identify this, but the data needed is going to be tough to gather.

Data collection - apart from USSSA who do a good job, most of the other orgs make it impossible to gather data - and often the data never evens gets inputted or reported. Also there are various leagues that just don't get reported (for example we have a Fall Travel League locally - only the playoff games get reported - the 8 weeks and 16 games of league play never get uploaded anywhere decent). I am not sure some orgs even keep results in a database or keep it historically.

Isolated groups also. In a country this size, with so many teams, there can easily be a group of teams that have a lot less contact with other teams. This messes up the whole leveling and deciding what is what. It is also possible that there can be some great teams with NO COMMON OPPONENTS. Lets say two great teams exist - one plays PGF in California, one plays ASA on the east coast and both play the nationals of both. With over 100 teams in both events it is possible that there are teams have no common opponents or you are trying to link them through 2nd or 3rd link opponents.

One off teams - teams that take a bunch of players and just play together for a couple of tournaments. Teams that come in from out of country or are just a bunch of friends playing together getting ready for college or whatever.

Showcases - do you count results or not? With a significant amount of games especially in 14U up being in showcases you would need them for your data - but showcases games are meaningless. So good luck there.

And that is just the obvious challenges.

Another one - 2 seasons in a year and aging up. I can have a great team one season, and then either a weaker team or stronger team right at season cross overs as forced roster changes happen.

Look at it this way - with a limited number of teams, set rosters, limited games and unlimited resources - the College Football Poll is a disaster. Computer polls were all over the place, expert polls were worse. And so on. And they have a whole lot less variables than you would be dealing with. It would be a massive problem to do even remotely well.