What defensive positions are the hardest to fill for HS coaches?

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Jun 6, 2016
2,714
113
Chicago
The “great hands/smoothness” of a good SS is due to them always getting the right hop for every ball..which is not easy due to the myriad of different types of balls they get. For the most part that has nothing to do with athleticism.

I honestly have a hard time watching most SS play (especially younger ones) , including my kid a lot of the time, because I physically “feel” it when I can see they are going to get an in-between hop just from watching their footwork.It is like a PTSD thing 😂

You can see an error coming long before the ball gets to an infielder sometimes. Even with decent fielders. I've always wondered how I could tell, but I think there's something about seeing many thousands of ground balls that your brain is processing the bad/mistimed footwork and you just know the ball is going to eat up the fielder.
 
Aug 5, 2022
361
63
P SS….you don’t see many CF converted to infielders in college but lots of ss playing elsewhere. Also lots of former infielders now catching in college although my personal opinion would give C and ss a tie


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Oct 4, 2018
4,611
113
Drove myself crazy looking but can't seem to find it even though I could swear I saved the PDF. I'll keep looking and post here if/when I find it. The data was interesting and completely surprised me as it was contra to everything I assumed being a baseball fan for 45 years.

The basics of the argument are the data shows LF fields significantly more balls over a greater distance than CF part of this was foul territory. The primary reason for this difference in softball vs baseball:

Slappers. A significant portion of the LH batters in softball are slappers and they are trying to hit the ball to the left side. With the increased emphasis on power and HR hitting in both baseball and softball traditional hitters are pulling the ball more than ever (hence the rise of the shift) So RH trying to pull to left and and a significant portion of LH trying to hit there as well. Baseball nearly all LF trying to pull ball to right.

Also depends on the team of course. Our RF gets far more action than our LF because our pitchers tend to have players swinging late. And with the 9-3 putout that you can get on a sharp hit ball and a solid arm in RF we've put more emphasis on RF than LF.
 
Sep 22, 2021
382
43
Sioux Falls, SD
Obviously no way to test this, but it seems pretty obvious to me that the 1B Correa would become a great 1B long before the SS Correa could be great at short.

If for some reason the Twins (wait, is the ink dry on that contract yet?) decided to play Correa at first this year, I'm confident he'd be the best defensive 1B or very close to it after a single spring training.
But our team will still fail as the season goes on, or get swept in the first playoff series. :p The curse of us being Minny fans.
 
Apr 13, 2015
179
28
With this topic, how about which position is the most vital to fill between a 3rd baseman or a 1st baseman?
 

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