Refining what's available during a game.

[scorekeeper]

Continuing work.

ssheet.pdf

[scorekeeper]

Had The occasion to sit and chat with a couple of the area’s top coaches before yesterday’s game. One has been a very successful HS coach for about 20 years, and the other just had his team win the Ca JUCO title.

Sometimes I forget just how different the language of baseball is from person to person, but its times like this I get snapped back to reality. My question to them was pretty basic. During the game, If you had access to any information on your batters that you wanted, what would it be? I made it clear that I was talking about HS, and that for the moment I was sticking with their own batters because the chances of having access to the numbers for the other teams was slim and none.

The HS coach answered pretty quickly by giving me a chart he had one of his people complete during each game. It listed each hitter, and had a place for each at bat’s result, and the results were “keyed” by descriptions such as “weak GB”, “hard GB”, “weak LD, “soft “LD”, etc., and a location such as 5-3 hole, LCF gap, etc.. Then he went on to explain how the reason he was dong that was to get away from BA as much as possible, and work on keeping track only of “productive at bats”.

I had to think about that one for a few seconds because I’m used to hearing discussions about “Quality ABs”, and about Clint Hurdle’s “Productivity”. After finding out a bit more about it, this seemed to be more about a QAB than a Productive AB, the difference being that Clint’s Productivity doesn’t include a hard smash that was caught, just because it was hit hard. If it didn’t produce anything other than an out, it wasn’t very productive.

I think there’s a fine line of distinction between the two, where a QAB and how that coach was defining “productive at bat” are intended more to pat players on the back for doing something, rather than actually producing something to improve the team’s chances of scoring runs. Although that thing might help the team in some other way.

But while I understood what he was talking about, I didn’t see how that helped him in any way, during a game, and I said so. He agreed that it was something meant more to give him a better overall picture of his players than for making on-the-fly management decisions during a game. That’s when the JUCO coach offered his input. He said the most important thing he wanted to know about his hitters, was their BAWRISP.

He went on to say how a player with a .350 BA with no runners on was not as good as one who batted .300 with runners on. I know that’s a common belief in many people, but I ain’t one of them, for reasons I’ve stated may times over. But I wasn’t asking because I wanted to argue, but rather because I was looking for something I could add to my program that might help someone looking at it. So I said the same thing to him that I’d said to the other coach, that I could see how that would help him set a lineup, but not how it helped a whole lot during games.

That’s when he said it would be a lot more helpful to have information about the opposing hitters than his own, and I tried to explain that even in JUCO ball there wasn’t much of a chance to get detailed information about opposing hitters, although at least there was info available for each player, unlike in HS where there is no requirement to post stats. So having things available like spray charts was just about out of the question, as were tendencies on certain counts or situations.

So, while I enjoyed the conversation, I’m afraid I didn’t get a whole lot out of it, other than to consider throwing in the objectivity of a “weak” grounder as compared to a “routine” or “hard” one. Its not that I don’t think that wouldn’t add some precision to the numbers, but I get bothered when subjectivity is added to any mix. I’ll keep lookin’ around to see if I can find anything “better” than what I’ve found so far.

[JCincy]

Objective...

How about a radar gun on the ball after it's hit. I guess that's an objective number, telling you something about the at bat.

[scorekeeper]

Objective...

How about a radar gun on the ball after it's hit. I guess that's an objective number, telling you something about the at bat.

That would be fine with me. But judging by how many HS coaches have radar guns available for that purpose, and people to man them and log the results, I’d say that wasn’t very likely. Heck, I don’t recall any HS we played this season who gunned and charted their own pitchers, let alone the hitters. There was one that tried to do it for their home games, but it was pretty much a bust.