Visibility of Stats: Baseball vs. Football/Basketball

[30middle]

Does anyone else share the opinion that High School Baseball statistics and information are for some reason not made as visible as HS Football or Basketball. Football and Basketball statistics are seemingly plastered everywhere while baseball info is locked up in a closet and the key swallowed. Now I admit Baseball does not receive the same coverage its counterparts do but the lack of information shared by the coaches to school webpages, and outlets such as Maxpreps and other online publications is puzzling. In most cases basic rosters or schedules are hard to be found much less statistics of the athletes be shown. Baseball people are stereotypically more superstitious but I have to ask who are coaches hiding from. If in the other major sports you have Rosters with Height, Weight, Positions, and Starters listed, Statistics submitted to multiple outlets, Video is shared between teams, and Play by Play of events broadcast over the internet with no fear of competitive disadvantage then why not Baseball. To me only the kids are being cheated with limited exposure in already less media covered environment which hurts their opportunity to be found by a college or scout due to what i consider to be silly superstitions. This thought first came to me selfishly last year as i looked to just get simple Roster info from opposing teams (Name and Number would have sufficed) in order to not have to scramble last minute to input them into my Digital Scorekeeper but no info was provided anywhere for a majority of the teams we played. Even trying to email opposing coaches got no results. However when i would arrive for football games I would have any and all information laid out on multiple pages for opposing teams. The more i thought about it and researched online the more it bothered me and thought i would open up a conversation here to get the opinions of you guys and what you think could be done to enhance the visibility of HS Baseball in these parts.

I have included the link below to the digital scorekeeper that I used last year that will save you alot of time and frustration in recording and computation of statistics

iScore Baseball Digital Scorekeeper

 

[COHAZE]

This has been a problem for years. Some schools are great about providing information, but many are slack as heck. Even the Diamond Prospect guys have complained about the difficulty of just getting a roster when they go to scout games. When I was a HS parent we put together a little flyer/brochure that listed all of the players, their numbers, their PHONE numbers, and GPA's and SAT's (when we could get them). Can't remember if we did height/weight or not. We put the flyers on a table at the gate so reporters, scouts, parents, etc. could pick them up as they came in. Our official scorekeeper also compiled a stat sheet for awhile, but that never got a lot of interest. Scouts really don't care much about HS stats. The player bio flyer was a lot more popular.

The ultimate responsibility for the failure to provide this information falls on the head coaches. Maybe they have reasons why they don't/can't provide the information. I really don't know. But that doesn't mean the parents group can't step in. There's no reason why SOMEONE can't step up and do this.

 

[COHAZE]

I went back and looked at the flyers/brochures we did. In addition to player number, player phone number, GPA, and SAT, we also put Year of Graduation, height, weight, home address, e-mail address, and class rank (when we could get it). I don't know how many scouts and reporters actually picked these things up and looked at them, but I talked to several that did and they really appreciated them. We could not get all of this information for every player, but the parents of the players that hoped to play in college were eager to provide it.

This post was edited on 2/7 10:52 AM by COHAZE

 

[DiamondKing32]

Another reason stats are not as important as the other sports mentioned is that in Basketball and Football stats are Black and White. In baseball you might have one team with someone that knows what they are doing keeping a score book for the team and doing it correctly, and then you might have "Little Tommy's" mom or dad in the stands doing the book.

 

[COHAZE]

Yep. Definitely can't trust a lot of HS stats. In some places identical balls are often scored as a hit for the home team and an error for visiting team, unless the home pitcher is working on a no hitter, in which case EVERYTHING becomes an error. Won Loss records are particularly suspects. I've seen multiple published box scores that listed a starting pitcher as getting a Win even though he only threw 1, 2, or 3 innings. Unless something has changed in the last couple of years, there is no designated short start rule in HS ball like there is in college. HS starters must go 4 innings in a 7 inning game to get a win. Unfortunately, some HS coaches and scorekeepers don't understand this. I have also seen some botched ERA numbers in HS. We had a guy who kept stats on his Palm Pilot. He gave me a copy of the stats and they were clearly wrong. The software automatically calculated ERA based on a 9 inning game. However, In HS you have to calculate it based on a 7 inning game. A few weeks later he passed out some more stats and they were wrong again. He had installed updated software which again defaulted to a 9 inning game. I assume the current software works a lot better.

 

[SC Phan]

Personally, I think some coaches see releasing stats as more of an advantage to opponents. Football trades film which makes game-to-game stats less important to planning. Film exists in basketball, also.

So, seeing a progression of stats could possibly be somewhat of an advantage - might make it slightly easier to find the holes in a lineup. (If I see a guy's average has gone down 50 points in the past three weeks, I'll probably be more inclined to pitch to him)

I'm not sure it's that much of an advantage, but that's a possible suggestion.



Additionally, I've seen just as many incompetent statisticians in football and basketball as I've seen in baseball. Home team "decisions" happen in each of those sports, too.

 

[30middle]

Unfortunately there are many teams where scorekeeping duties are passed on to a parent where things can get crazy. I have seen an instance where a pitcher throws three feet over first yet the first baseman gets credited with an error. As you can guess the pitchers parent did the book that game. I get the competitive disadvantage but you can also see where a receiver may have not caught a pass in three weeks and decide not to focus as much coverage on him. You can see where a shooter may be hot in basketball over the past two weeks and decide to double team him. A wealth of information not just statistically is given for each of these with no though but baseball wants to hide in a cave sometime. I've known coaches who didnt even want photos of players especially in a batting stance put online because they thought someone would be able to beat them. To me baseball people can be way too paranoid. We already at a popularity disadvantage, IMHO we should be doing more to promote and put more info out and hopefully be able to increase attendance, fan following and hopefully draw some scout interest from college/pros instead of working so hard trying to cover our own tail.

 

[30middle]

Of course these are just some examples that I have heard from people I have struck up conversations with over the years. If anyone out there is doing more to promote teams, games such as team sites or social media I'd love to get some for a project im working on to promote our own games. The team I have worked with already has done a good job at providing schedules, rosters, etc but trying to find ways to increase attendance and interest.

 

[DiamondKing32]

This could be a stupid question but how can you have bad stats for football or basketball?

 

[SC Phan]

That's acually a really good question.


Football: many "scorers" don't really know the rules on how to calculate yardage. On most plays it's pretty cut and dry, however on plays where there are penalties you only get credit to the yard where the play is marked off from. Many teams give the players the full yardage and then subtract penalty yards from team's totals. Also, defensive statistics are TERRIBLE, as most defensive coaches like to define solo and assisted tackles. I've seen teams report that in a game they had more solo tackles than the other team ran plays (including special teams). That's not even dealing with the assisted tackles.


Basketball: many "scorers" will give steals and assists pretty liberally. Shots and rebounds should be pretty cut & dry, but the rest isn't always so pretty.


For all sports, I think people would be amazed at how little the general fan actually knows about how to score a game. Knowing the "rules" of the game and the "statistician's rules" are two completely different things! I'd say it's definitely worse in baseball where the scorer is able to exercise some discretion, but all sports have issues.

 

[DiamondKing32]

So 30...

Coaches don't post stats because 99% of the time they are B.S.

Also it depends on the area of SC you are in that will determine the popularity of Baseball instead of the others. Baseball is certainly not #3 or #2 in some places.

Finally, As for Scouts, Good players will generate more college/pro exposure. So you are looking for more scouts to come to your games, find better players.

 

[JB_a_Rivals]

Agreed; stats are mostly inaccurate depending on who's doing the books.

 

[Lefty's Dad]

Real life case in point. In the late 1980's I was the head football coach at a Class A school in the upstate. One Saturday morning I read that an upcoming opponent had a player rush for well over 300 yards. When we traded film and I got to watch that game the kid had a pretty good night running the ball but nowhere near 300 yards. He did, however, return a kickoff for a TD, a punt for a TD, and had a fairly long interception return. When you did the stats correctly, he rushed for about 150 and had about 175 in return yards. The school reported it as a 325 yard rushing game.

 

[30middle]

I agree that depending on the scorekeeper it can be suspect. I tend to be harsh. If you bobble for a sec and the runner beats it out by a hair then in my opinion you should have recorded an out therefore its an error. But still why is stats or any other info not presented or shared as widely as in baseball. We can argue about accuracy but fact of the matter the effort and depth of info does not match that of its counterparts. Neither does attendance. At least here in the upstate

 

[Jhawk4]

one other problem is baseball coaches for the most part tend to teach actual classes as opposed to many football and basketball coaches who coach PE and have more time in their office not grading papers, making out test, checking homework and other things that take up major amounts of time.(not saying football and basketball dont have coaches who teach academic classes but most teach pe) also football and basketball tend to have multiple coaches involved who can do stats or put stats on the computer where as baseball may be limited to 2 or 3 at most. Also many coaches in this area have gotten so frustrated with the lack of covereage by the newspaper who doesnt even print box scores for any sport BUT basketball and football. Totally amazing they can print a box score for football for twteams from the charleston area but cant manage to put a single box score for 20+ Greenville county schools in baseball, softball, soccer, or track!

 

[LeftyTosser]

There is another very important issue that has not been mentioned in this discussion. With baseball, the stats are so much more in depth than in many other sports. It is important to know how someone hits against lefties vs. righthanders. How does a player hit at home vs. on the road? Especially where, in some cases, the opponents fans are less than 50 feet from the batter. While I would love to see stats put out by someone, with the different types of folks keeping track of the book, the stats themselves would be almost worthless.
30middle, you asked who coaches are hiding from and I can answer that question for you. Coaches are hiding from everyone. They are hiding the one or two weak sticks in the lineup from every coach they will face. They are also hiding their signs from being stolen by opposing coaches. Most coaches don't change their signs during the year, or even year to year for that matter. It might surprise you how many high schools coaches around the state are still using the same signs they used 5 years ago. I would think that far more would be gained by swapping game film than by swapping stats. But even college coaches will tell you that they don't learn much from film in baseball.