What stats do you look at????

Just a thought for you coaches out there. What stat do you look at when looking for players? Do you look at Batting Avg., OB%, Slug % or do you have a combination that you use?

 

How accurate are they?

My favorites are RBI's (clutch hitting), stolen bases/extra base (speed) and WHIP for pitchers.

 

On base % + slugging % can be useful, provided the official scorers aren't consistently biased towards the hitters as the tend to be in HS.
It's not a conventional stat, but I like;
# of doubles & (especially) triples per AB for a hitter.
Indicates gap power (which could later develop into HR power), or a combo of speed and hustle.
Strikeout to walk ratio is a great stat, because it tells you alot about pitchers and hitters.

 

We have a stat guru, Gene Hollowell, a teacher at the school, who keeps a meticulous book and makes scoring decisions that don't just benefit us. In other words, no stat padding. For this reason, some of the "traditional" stats are useful, i.e. BA, OB%, fielding %. However, some of these stats have to be judged against who the opponent was or the opposing pitcher, because you see such a wide variety of pitching quality in a high school season. With only 90-100 plate appearances, 20 AB against poor pitching can make a BA inflated. I don't need overall stats to know who can swing it against good pitching.
For pitchers, I love the WHIP and the K/BB ratio as well as K/IP and BB/IP.

 

Nice Post Coach

I dont need to see David Sappelt's or Thomas Sappelt's stats before we decide how we are going to pitch them. No more than we needed to know what Matt Ellington was hitting on the year before we pitched to him. The fact is hs stats are pretty much meaningless. A kid can be hitting .600 on the year and a buck against good pitching. A pull hitter this week against inferior competition and a backside bleeder guy against good pitching.

Take a look at the way the guy approaches the plate for his ab. Take a look at his stance and his approach. Take a look at his swing. It doesnt take long to see who can hurt you and who probaly can not. And depending on who you have on the mound that can change alot as well. Someone once said stats are for losers. Stats can be fun kind of like polls. But polls dont win games and stats dont get you on base and score runs.

We have had guys that hit for a high average that couldnt get a sniff of a mid to upper 80's fastball. They absolutely mashed against the average hs pitchers and were blown away by the good ones. Then we have had guys that were very good against the good pitchers and were average against the average pitchers.

And lets not even talk about era at the hs level. First of all who is keeping it? How is it being kept? What kind of defense is behind that pitcher? What is scored a hit and what is scored an error? What is the level of the competition? There are conferences in this state where the #4 team would run the table in some other conferences. Stats at the hs level are very misleading to say the least.

Some guys are pitched to extremely tough and rarely see a good pitch to hit. Some guys are fed on a routine basis. Some guys face quality arms many games a year. Some guys dont see a quality arm the entire season.

For me I will just take obp - k/ab % for hitters
strike to ball ratio for pitchers

In other words - put the ball in play - find a way to reach base
throw strikes there is no defense for walks.

Dont K put the ball in play and try and hit it hard somewhere. Walk if you dont get a pitch to hit.

Throw strikes and let your defense work.

 

That's just a great post. One of the best I've seen on TBR.

 

Stats

Great post. The Oakland A's can't afford to amke mistakes - small market with limited funds. They look at OBP, walks and number of pitches taken per at bat.

If you want to read a great book on baseball and stats I think one of the best is "Money Ball." It goes through a seaon with the A's and how they evaluate players and make trades. The book is a couple of years old now, and several of the college guys they were looking at are now in the bigs...

 

At that point in time, Oakland was almost exclusively drafting college players.
Stats for collegiate players are much more reliable than HS players because of the competition level. They also get to see them swing wood in the summer.

 

FWIW, sport, the moneyball approach was a disaster, which is why Oakland is rebuilding with prospects from other teams, but it was a good read.

 

I agree that HS stats can OFTENTIMES be very misleading, in that some kids can look good against average pitching, but they can't sniff the better pitching,,,,, plus you figure in WHO is keeping the stats. Over the years, I have had conversations with more than one coach who had difficulty understanding the differences between hits, sacrifices and fielder's choices. Heck, we have one local newspaper guy who theres NO TELLING how he will score things, in fact oftentimes he just doesn't bother to put a boxscore in the paper, because I think he realizes that he struggles with many of the rulings.

Bottomline, good baseball people can look at a batters approach at the plate and after just a couple at bats, you can tell how good a hitter he is. How aggressive he is, how disciplined, what does he do with the outside pitch, how he handles himself with 2 strikes, how he handles the better pitchers in general (or is he overmatched ).

More than numbers, I just like hitters who I can count on WILL ALWAYS give you a good at bat.