Episode 15 - Coaching Behavior and Statistics That Matter

As a coach, controlling your behavior (what you say, how you say it and what you do) can be an incredibly effective coaching tool. If your behavior during competition complements your team mission and philosophy, then good things will follow. However, if there are conflicts between your behavior and the team mission, then things get pretty complicated.

I have personally spent a lot of time researching and thinking through the application of statistics to youth baseball. This started with a lot of analysis and reading in the field of Sabermetrics, as applied to professional baseball. But, several years ago, Josh Levey and I were coaching a team together and decided to start developing the field of “sabermetrics for youth baseball”. For youth baseball, you want to develop statistical measures that accomplish three goals:

1. Teach players to play the game the right way using statistics

2. Focus on statistics that were within the control of the player

3. Still provide a means of measuring which players are doing well and which players need improvement.

We just start scratching the surface of this topic in Episode 15. There is a lot of material on both individual and team stats that accomplish all three of these goals.

For the most part, traditional baseball stats are not good for youth baseball. First, there is too much inconsistency in applying the definitions of stats like hits vs. error, RBI’s and ERA. Second, these traditional stats require literally hundreds of at-bats and innings pitched to be statistically significant.

For example, right now, Albert Pujols is hitting .160, two weeks into the 2007 season. But, what sane person would drop him from the lineup, or even move him from the #3 spot to the #8 spot. But, he already has 40-50 at bats, which in youth baseball could be 1/2 the season. Most youth coaches would have Albert Pujols sitting on the bench right now because they do not understand that stats like batting average are only relevant after 50-100 at bats, when all the bloop singles and line drive outs finally balance each other out.

The most important offensive stat for any player less that 18 years old is simple - it is Quality At Bat %. There are four ways to get a Quality At Bat:

1 - hit the ball hard, regardless of outcome. A line drive caught by the centerfielder is a Quality At Bat. A bloop single over he first baseman’s head is NOT a quality at bat (unless it fits the criteria below).

2 - take a walk

3 - execute a sacrifice bunt, hit & run, advance the runner, a squeeze or score the runner from 3rd.

4 - force the pitcher to throw more than 5 pitches, regardless of outcome. At 16u+, this maybe needs to be adjusted to 6 pitches. But, for 12-16u players, any time the hitter forces the pitcher to throw more than 5 pitches, it is a quality at bat. So, any 3-2 count is a quality at bat. A pop-up on the first pitch is the opposite of a quality at bat.

The definition of Quality At Bat is totally consistent with what you should be teaching young hitters to do:

1 - hit the ball hard, consistently

2 - lay off bad pitches,

3 - execute in key situations, like advance a runner or scoring a runner from 3rd.

Hitters should be encouraged to achieve quality at-bats in 50-67% of their plate appearances.

Of course it is possible to achieve more than one of the criteria on any given at bat. For example, a hitter could hit the ball hard on a 3-2 count and score a runner from 3rd with 2 outs. This would be great at bat based on three of the four criteria. But, the batter only gets credit for one Quality At Bat in this scenario.

For pitchers, we want them to do two things. First, we want them to get outs. Or, said another way, we want them to prevent baserunners. Without baserunners, the opposing team cannot score. Second, we want them to throw strikes. This keeps their pitch count down, keeps the defense in the game and makes the game a lot more fun for everyone.

So, the two statistical measures that are the most important are:

1. Opposing team on-base pct. This is (walks + hits) divided by number of batters faced. Errors are not counted against the pitcher. Pitchers should hold opposing team on-base % to less than .350.

2. % of pitches thrown for strikes. This is simply (strikes + foul balls + balls in play) divided by total number of pitchers. Pitchers should throw 60-75% of pitches for strikes in youth baseball. In youth baseball, it is rare to throw around a hitter.