HS baseball in California

[scorekeeper]

Well, I finally have no choice other that to admit the best HS baseball hitters are in California’s Southern Section! Get this. They have no less than 18 TEAMS with a cumulative batting average of over .400!

What I find a bit troubling though, is that they’re also supposed to have the best HS pitching in the country down there too!

I guess the first liar hasn’t got a chance in HS baseball stats. :hyper:

[Jake Patterson]

Well, I finally have no choice other that to admit the best HS baseball hitters are in California’s Southern Section! Get this. They have no less than 18 TEAMS with a cumulative batting average of over .400!

We should verify this with the California Interscholastic High School Baseball Scorekeeping Commitee..... Oh that's right there isn't one...

HS statistics are meaningless and will remain so until there is an agreed upon method of scoring and board certified scorekeepers. The problem with the above is the worse it gets the worse it will get.

[scorekeeper]

Anyone with even an ounce of common sense has to laugh at some of this stuff!

The one I had to laugh at was the one team in the SJS section that had these 5 hitters on its team.

.484
.541
.552
.629
.667

The tragic thing is, there are some people who see junk like than and don’t really know any better. Those are the parents who will spend untold amounts of money sending the kids all over the country to get them “SEEN”. :noidea

[Jake Patterson]

What do they show as SP's and OBP's??

With a .667 BA that must mean he has a .900 OBP.

[TG Coach]

Anyone with even an ounce of common sense has to laugh at some of this stuff!

The one I had to laugh at was the one team in the SJS section that had these 5 hitters on its team.

.484
.541
.552
.629
.667

The tragic thing is, there are some people who see junk like than and don’t really know any better. Those are the parents who will spend untold amounts of money sending the kids all over the country to get them “SEEN”. :noidea

Aside from fudging stats, are these teams into conference play yet? Are they padding stats playing the Little Sisters of Mercy High School in non-cons?

[scorekeeper]

Are you kiddin’? ;)

The only one I’ve taken the time to look at was the team in our section that has a team BA of .462. They also show an OBP of .554.

The reason I got my panties in a bunch, was because some twerp reporter for the local rag did an article about the team I’m scoring for. I got kinda PO’d when he actually called the team ‘LIGHT HITTING” because our team BA is only .269.

Is that weak compared to “ALL” other HS teams? You bet. But is it really bad? I think not, but that’s because I know how strictly I try to follow the rules for scoring.

We’ve got a team that’s now 10-4-1, and has beat some pretty fair teams. 9 of the 12 different team we’ve played, are “better hitters”. In fact here’s how we stack up. The teams we've played who have better team BA’s are this much higher. 16 points, 30 points, 33 points, 42points, 56 points, 58 points, 79 points, and 100 points!

Remember, our team is 10-4-1, and 2 of the 4 losses have been to the same team. We’ve outscored our opponents 90-39, out hit them 93-69, and left more runners on 95-64. We’ve played better defense too, making only 21 errors compared to 32 by our opponents.

Even if I was a terrible SK and all 32 of the errors we had made against us were really hits, our team BA would still only be .361. And considering our opponents are only hitting .218 against us, you gotta figger that if their numbers are even close to real, they’re really kickin’ the snot out of somebody, but it sure ain’t us!

I can’t believe how bad it is, and its gotten worse over the last 10 years or so too! The only people I can blame it on is the coaches. Obviously not all coaches subscribe to the thought that cheatin’ is ok, but there are enough that they skew things for everyone.

After all, what HS coach could possibly believe a team could have a team BA of over .450? C’mon! Having a player in HS over .450 does happen, but even in our section, for 24 leagues, there’s only 64 players over .450!

This ridiculousness starts back in t-ball when nobody wants to make the kiddies feel sad, so everhting they get a bat on that isn’t an out is usually marked as a hit. So by the time they turn 13, they think its normal for half the team to be batting .500+. And it doesn’t get much better in HS either!

Its all pretty darn sad!

[TG Coach]

Are you kiddin’? ;)

Remember, our team is 10-4-1

Remember your team is 10-4-1. How much does batting average matter?

[Hardball]

Sadly, the state of scorekeeping is a joke; happily, hardly anyone takes it very seriously. :shrug:

Well, OK, :rolleyes: some of the Moms and Dads take it seriously, but nobody else.

OK, OK, OK, so almost all of the Moms and Dads think the H's and E's marked down by an Assistant Coach or someone else's Mom or Dad matter. :ughh Hey, at least they are getting the score down right.


A couple weeks ago after hitting a ball into the gap and beyond, a ball that should have been handled by the left fielder for no more than two bases, my kid came home and asked how I liked his “inside the park HR”. “Your Coach scored that a HR”, I asked? “Nah”, says he, “&*@%'# Mom did, she had the book”

I just smirked.

[Baseball gLove]

The cumulative batting average at my son's high school is .324 BA. They are 11-4-1 including a win against a top team out of highly ranked Marmonte League in the Southern Section. The coach had coached for a D-1 school and doesn't fudge. They are currently in a tournament in San Luis Obispo.

[chesspirate]

Anyone with even an ounce of common sense has to laugh at some of this stuff!

The one I had to laugh at was the one team in the SJS section that had these 5 hitters on its team.

.484
.541
.552
.629
.667

The tragic thing is, there are some people who see junk like than and don’t really know any better. Those are the parents who will spend untold amounts of money sending the kids all over the country to get them “SEEN”. :noidea

I played HS baseball in So-cal not very long ago, played against a couple teams where i'd believe those BA's. Rancho Bernardo being top on my list, Eastlake being another both produced recent MLB players, couple starters to boot.
You must remember that just because there are some good HS pitchers doesn't mean that the good hitters are always stuck against them. Many many at bats will come against sub par pitching.
And the idea that the OBP would be astronomical isn't quite straight thinking, mainly because most of the 'elite' HS batters won't walk much, they just hit anything/everying and usually early in the count, not a lot of working the count in HS ball unless the coaching staff as a whole stresses it for the entire program.

[Jake Patterson]

I played HS baseball in So-cal not very long ago, played against a couple teams where i'd believe those BA's. Rancho Bernardo being top on my list, Eastlake being another both produced recent MLB players, couple starters to boot.
You must remember that just because there are some good HS pitchers doesn't mean that the good hitters are always stuck against them. Many many at bats will come against sub par pitching.
And the idea that the OBP would be astronomical isn't quite straight thinking, mainly because most of the 'elite' HS batters won't walk much, they just hit anything/everying and usually early in the count, not a lot of working the count in HS ball unless the coaching staff as a whole stresses it for the entire program.

Chess, are you suggesting we should take HS stats as truth?

[scorekeeper]

The cumulative batting average at my son's high school is .324 BA. They are 11-4-1 including a win against a top team out of highly ranked Marmonte League in the Southern Section. The coach had coached for a D-1 school and doesn't fudge. They are currently in a tournament in San Luis Obispo.

That’s great, and totally believable. Heck, our team has been over .300 as a team a couple of times this season too. But a .324 team BA is a far cry from a .450 team BA!

BTW, the coaches credentials don’t have squat to do with the quality of their team’s stats! I can’t tell you how many ex-ML players and coaches I’ve talked to that I wouldn’t let near a scorebook! Its not that scoring is so hard, but it does require something different than coaching, playing, or just watching.

[Three A's baseball]

I think men's arc softball has more accurate stats

[scorekeeper]

I played HS baseball in So-cal not very long ago, played against a couple teams where i'd believe those BA's. Rancho Bernardo being top on my list, Eastlake being another both produced recent MLB players, couple starters to boot.
You must remember that just because there are some good HS pitchers doesn't mean that the good hitters are always stuck against them. Many many at bats will come against sub par pitching.
And the idea that the OBP would be astronomical isn't quite straight thinking, mainly because most of the 'elite' HS batters won't walk much, they just hit anything/everying and usually early in the count, not a lot of working the count in HS ball unless the coaching staff as a whole stresses it for the entire program.

I don’t dispute that there are great hitters in HS. And if you knew much about me, you’d also know that I don’t believe the stories about the average HS P being a 85MPH FB guy, throwing 2 other quality pitches with great accuracy, or the ones that tell of teams in your section having 4 90+ guys on the team, with 1 riding the pine.

I agree that its possible for a few teams to display the kids of numbers we’re talking about, but not the number of teams we all see! But look at what it means for a team to bat .400+. A HS team will get about 100 PA’s and maybe 700 BA’s in a normal season. That means they have to get 280 hits to bat .400. That’s a hit every 4th PA, for an entire season! That might be possible, but it strains probability.

But none of it really matters because not too many scouts I’ve ever heard about take HS stats as gospel, or anything close.