How important are stats?

[Westwind]

Forgot this part:

When the team dd was on broke up, she played up a year on a different local team. We had played them a fair amount every other year. I was nervous about it because they were considered to be a good team for the area. Before we tried out for them, I dug out the trusty iPad and looked at the stats I had for their players and dd’s stats against them. Turns out, dd hit well against them. That fact alone made me feel better about her moving up in age.

My dd tried out for that team. The head coach made us an offer, but he seemed like he had no idea who dd was. This is in spite of the fact that he had a parent dedicated to doing fancy computerized stats. She never put names in for opposing teams.

Dd hit in the 7 or 8 spot on the new team at first. The coach kept moving her up eventually she hit in the 2 or 3 spot. She got in the truck after a tournament and says “coach asked me if I ever hit this high in the lineup. I told him, ‘yes, every time we played you I did.’”

Stats could have helped that coach. We did leave at the end of the season.

 

[MNDad]

Really? You don't think the coach considered that to judge performance?

Nope. New coach came in and raised her scholarship before the season started in spite of it.

 

[bobkat]

I'm keeping the book. And I know how. Stats are really not a mystery if you have kept book for 40+ years. You name it, spiral bound or gamechanger, I've done it.
And back to the discussion, Why wouldn't you use a players' stats to set a lineup and/or batting order. ???

 

[_MIA_]

And back to the discussion, Why wouldn't you use a players' stats to set a lineup and/or batting order. ???

Last game's stats? Last tournament's stats? Last 2 tournament's stats? Last 2 months? Last year?....Stats
against similar caliber pitching you are going to be facing for the game you are setting the batting order for or
all stats? Which stats? OPS? BA? (assuming we are only talking about batting order)

Honest question, interested in your answer and your reasoning.

 

[Westwind]

Coach that dd played for kept a set of games “competitive games” that I think were a final score of less than 5 runs difference (might be wrong it’s been a long time) and kept “last 10 games” to identify hot streaks along with season cumulative.

He set his lineup by stats and it was interesting to me that he would do it by “eye test” until he had enough season stats and then he would adjust. He was usually pretty close without stats.

He also kept track of % of innings played and every player on a roster of about 11 played at least 75% of time except state and nationals. This would be easier now because gc can tell you that. This was updated weekly and he kept a website the parents could look at it at any time. We didn’t let our kid look at stats or playing time.

This was 10’s and 12’s. He did it partially to keep the parents off his back but he also was ahead of his time I thought.

Side note, He ran a station based practice that usually involved 3-4 pitching machines and garbage cans full of balls. Parents shagged and were trained to feed. Most of his coaching was in the 40’ rubber era and his teams could hit fast pitching. He used parents in practice because he thought it cut down on parent problems.

Sorry I got off in the weeds, I always thought this guy did a lot of smart things and stats was one of them.....

 

[_MIA_]

Sounds like a guy who knew how to coach and knew the game and hence not coincidentally

He set his lineup by stats and it was interesting to me that he would do it by “eye test” until he had enough season stats and then he would adjust. He was usually pretty close without stats.

I don't coach and don't keep a book or anything. At the end of the year this year (actually prior to the last tournament) I was curious to see what DD was hitting so I signed up for the free 7 day trial on GC to see the stats. If I had ranked the hitters beforehand by OPS, it would lined up almost exactly as I would have thought it would have. Now at the 10U level this is probably easier to do since there typically is a larger disparity between the good hitters and not so good hitters but anybody who has seen players swing through 2 full years and two offseasons (there is very little changeover on DD's team at this point) and has any clue isn't going to have a hard time figuring out who needs to bat at the top of the order and who needs to be at the bottom..it isn't that difficult.

I was a bit surprised at DD's BA until I realized that the GC lady was giving hits for FC ( ) after that was figured in she was pretty close to what I had expected.

 

[Westwind]

I can’t ignore the facts my brother!

 

[Westwind]

Also he would have rather coached a basketball team. Gym time was too hard to find.

He learned how to coach softball by reading books.

You’ll be proud to know he was an engineer and thought it was great comedy to ask every kid who mentioned college if they were going to study engineering and would pretend the kid was letting herself and society down by studying something less beneficial to the world, lol

 

[_MIA_]

You’ll be proud to know he was an engineer and thought it was great comedy to ask every kid who mentioned college if they were going to study engineering and would pretend the kid was letting herself and society down by studying something less beneficial to the world, lol

There are too many lousy engineers out there tbh..

 

[julray]

Just because somebody has the insight to make unbiased decisions without stats does not mean a biased coach with relatives, DD and friends DD on the team will do the same. And I like what Westwinds coach did in regard to competitive stats. I do something very similar by cross referencing games played against the top ranked teams in our region. Statistics get very interesting when you look at players performance when playing weak teams vs strong teams. Our own coach was surprised when I provided this break down and it was an eye opening moment for him. So the simple eye test is not always accurate and when you slice and dice the data you can find some really hidden gems.

Can I tell you our top 4 hitters on the team without looking at stats? Absolutely! I thought they were the same against great pitching.. but they aren't.