Objective vs subjective stats.

[Elk Grove Hurricane]

Just to give you an idea of what a real game scored using that method looks like, here’s a scoresheet from one of our games from last season.

http://www.infosports.com/scorekeeper/images/7Davis.pdf

It shouldn’t talk a lot of work to figger out what’s going on, although I had to vary a bit from the original standard. It really works well for me when I write the newsletter because it has so much detail. Here’s the newsletter from it. If you read the newsletter and look back at the scoresheet, you’ll see how it works.

http://www.infosports.com/scorekeeper/images/EYE1310.pdf

I’m on the complete other side at PG. Often when I post on boards like this and try to use my experience, it causes problems because there aren’t a whole lot of areas or even school districts like ours. One of the reasons I still look forward to each new season, is because I know its gonna be another knock-down drag-out battle.

Maybe you can give me some insight into what the distaff side of the spring equation’s gonna be in the 2014-15 year when the DVL and DRL combine. Us baseball nuts are doin’ a lot of deep breathing exercises to keep the excitement down. My son and daughter went to Sheldon during the years when Ms. Trusdale had them as national powers every season. To this day I never miss the chance to go get my hug and shoot the breeze about the team. I haven’t talked with her yet about the realignment, but knowing her as I do, my guess is she can’t wait either.

Great, great stuff!
My DD's are only 11 and 7 so I haven't followed the new alignment as much as I should, but I do have friends with kids who are playing, so I'll get the insight from them and let you know what their thoughts are. I know the neighbors with kids playing baseball are thrilled.
My DD's hitting coach is one of your DD's former teammates- Jolene. Great kid (I say that based on my age, not hers. My DD just loves working with her and I appreciate everything she has done for her, more than anything she has rebuilt her confidence, taught her so much about the mental game, and really "stoked" the fire in her. And her technical knowledge is fantastic, wish my DD pitched as I have no doubt she would excel with this training. I can't say enough good things about her.

 

[VirginiaDad]

Does anyone know if either gamechanger or Iscore lets you put in a class for your opponent?

I.E. A team versus B team or Elite. I would love to have the ability to do a breakout of stats against A teams only. Or maybe a Saturday versus Sunday stat line.

The "League" function is iScore would let you do this. Each game can be assigned to one or more Leagues and stats can be calculated for just the games in a specified League (or combination of Leagues). It's a very powerful sort tool.

 

[Scorekeeper]

If I'm doing it I can pick who I think are A teams. It's not perfect but it makes a difference. I actually believe the better MLB teams do something to determine how a hitter hits against the top pitchers to give an idea of who might be more valuable in the post season. I would bet if you looked at it, but the guys who always have bad post seasons.

I'm not a fan of getting 100 page reports weekly, but if I can find an edge to setting a lineup it's worth at least looking at. That's why we score on computers so we have that option to crunch numbers easily.

If you’re the coach and you’re going to use the results of your determinations to make player decisions, its fine because its your responsibility to make those decisions. But if the stats are just so people can see them, its something else. I don’t want you making the determination because you and I likely have different criteria.

Yes, any number of people make that comparison using MLB data, but there’s no way to compare what any amateur has for data on all opponents to what’s available on MLB information on all players.

Actually, I generate more like 200 pages of reports after every game. The reason I do that is because I want to make the most up to date information available as possible. But, I don’t expect anyone to sit there and try to analyze all that. Heck, I seldom look at each page for more than making sure there’s data on it.

What I’ve found is much more likely, is that everyone will look at a “general” report that shows pretty much the “standard” numbers. After that, different people look at different things that go along with their beliefs. FI, I happen to be a big fan of MRUs for hitters and WHIP+ for pitchers. Others like OPS for hitters and BB:K ratio for pitchers. So what I’ve done over the years, is generate reports someone has asked for, for whatever reason they want.

Anyone can go to Welcome to the Baseball and see the different stats. There are team history stats, team year to date stats, and team record stats. The team history stats don’t contain all the stats in the team year to date, and the team year to date don’t have all the team history stats because they do different things. Then on top of all that, the coaches get about 10 different report that show only what took place in the last game. I’ve been doing that since long before anyone ever heard of GameChanger or IScore.

Out of all that, the coaches have access to a tremendous amount of data in hundreds of different formats, that they can pick and choose from. From what I’m told, they’ll usually fixate on just a few different reports regularly, then look at the entire packed maybe once or twice a month.

 

[Scorekeeper]

The worst scorekeepers are pitchers parents, all hits are errors on the defense or passed balls on the catcher!

HEY! I resemble that remark! That’s prolly a bit of an exaggeration, but it does have a lot of truth in it. But any time a parent/relative of a player is scoring, there’s gonna be some bias toward their child. All anyone can do is try the best they can to keep that bias to a minimum.

The reason I asked about how players faired from one list (objective) to another list (subjective) was that I look at all of the stats to come up with trends for the players. Over time, you can fairly accurately gauge the performance of players as long as the scorekeeper is somewhat consistent in recording the book. One of my DDs former coaches said that he doesn't really care about stats but I don't agree, while they may have some limitations they are one set of many factors that make-up coaching decisions, why not use them to your advantage?

You are correct in that consistency is the secret to good stats, and its why comparing stats from team to team doesn’t work very well.

Lots of people, coaches, parents, players, and fans say they don’t care about stats or that stats mean nothing, then the 1st thing they do is tell you what a good hitter Billy is or great pitcher Johnny is. Well, if stats don’t matter or mean nothing, how can they do that? There has to be some kind of measure for a comparison to take place.

I believe its more that those people don’t care about certain statistics, or realize that just about everything is some form of a statistic. Here’s an example. I produce a metric called “Percentage of Balls in Play that are Outs By Batting Position”. Most people don’t even understand it, and of those that do, not many consider it something they need to look at on a regular basis. But I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from people who have taken the time to actually look at it and give it some thought, because its very interesting.

Then there are the people who say stats don’t mean anything, but they like to see QABs because they’re a more accurate measure of a hitter. OOOPS! There’s that “M” word. QABs measure something, and therefore are made up of different statistics. So its not that stats mean nothing as much as certain stats don’t have a lot of meaning compared to others.

 

[Scorekeeper]

Great, great stuff!
My DD's are only 11 and 7 so I haven't followed the new alignment as much as I should, but I do have friends with kids who are playing, so I'll get the insight from them and let you know what their thoughts are. I know the neighbors with kids playing baseball are thrilled.

When your kids are in HS, the whole alignment thing were about to see will not only be old hat, chances are it will have been changed again! I may be wrong, but I think the SJS realigns every 4 years. Here’s the link to the CIFSJS site. Take my advice and begin looking at it now so you’ll be familiar with it when its your turn in the barrel. There’s a lot of neat stuff there.

My DD's hitting coach is one of your DD's former teammates- Jolene. Great kid (I say that based on my age, not hers. My DD just loves working with her and I appreciate everything she has done for her, more than anything she has rebuilt her confidence, taught her so much about the mental game, and really "stoked" the fire in her. And her technical knowledge is fantastic, wish my DD pitched as I have no doubt she would excel with this training. I can't say enough good things about her.

Jolene’s brother was the 1st starting SS on this team. Talk about a fighter! Trouble was, He was overshadowed by his sisters. Great kid who only needed to be a few inches taller to get all kinds of attention. We had a couple team end-of-year parties at their home. Those people take sports seriously! The next time you see her, she if she remember the SK for the baseball team. In any case, tell her I said “Hey”.

 

[Osric]

I like this thread and am a big supporter of stats AND letting the girls know what their stats and what we look for in them. Unfortunately, the HC is of the mindset that stats don't matter. He's agreed that I can talk to the kids about "quality at bats" (even though he has no idea what makes up a quality at bat...I think he just likes the term) but I can never mention what the player's batting average is.

I know there is a faction out there that thinks girls shouldn't know their stats and that argument usually centers around "girls can't handle statistics" or "it causes cattiness in the dugout". I hate these arguments. As a comment was made earlier in this discussion, I have rarely seen an instance where a girl knowing her stats makes her a worse player. In fact, with many of the girls I coach, them knowing that they need to work on something helps motivate them to focus more on that aspect of the game.

So, when I do get to talk to the girls about stats (my daughter and I go over EVERYTHING), I focus on things like, 'yes, your ave is a little low, but you are drawing a lot of walks, so your OBP is good...don't worry about the hits, they'll come in time. Just keep getting on base." or "Your strike outs are a little high because you are watching too many 1st and 2nd pitch strikes go by and then you only have 1 strike to swing at. Open your strike zone up after you have 1 strike on you. If you ground out, that is fine...we want you to swing at at least 2 strikes per at bat." This gives them workable goals to strive for during their plate appearance.

I also have a view that coaches that rely on 'subjective' stats over objective stats are just a little too set in their viewpoints. There was a mention an instance of a coach thinking of one catcher being the better blocker than another and therefore would get the playtime. This is exactly the situation a team I assisted with a couple years ago. The HC (being influenced by another AC whose daughter was a catcher) believed that that girl was the better blocker and therefore should get the bulk of the starts. After a few games where (IMO) the catcher was just not doing her job I started tracking pitches blocked/missed. We found that when it came to blocking, the catchers were within 1% of each other, so basically we had 2 mediocre catchers. But by bringing this stat to the attention of the HC, he started giving more play time to the secondary catcher which caused both of the players to try harder to get the start.

Stats is a tool and imo, those who refuse to use that tool or who think their own judgement is 'better than stats' either just don't understand stats or have an inflated opinion of their own knowledge base. Stats may not make or break a team, but they can give direction which will allow more efficient play on the team.