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Numbers Game
by Dave
Friday, June 20, 2008
It is going to come as a shock to you but baseball and softball are not really strict numbers games. I guess it is more accurate to say that they are not always strict numbers games. Certainly from a fan or fantasy league perspective, numbers are important. And sometimes players and coaches have to "play the percentages." But, for the most part numbers are not what rules decision making in this game.
I was very amused once when someone tried to tell me, "In softball, a good batting average is .500 and up. It isn't like baseball where .300 is considered a good batting average." What was most amusing to me is the fellow telling me this was comparing up high school fastpitch softball batting averages with those of MLB baseball. It never occurred to him that batting averages were indeed higher in youth, high school, and even college baseball than they were up in the big leagues of baseball. Also, in college softball, batting averages are quite a bit lower than they are in high school.
In our local high schools, once upon a time there was a girl who hit .700 for the season. I watched her play a couple games against some of the better teams and her results were not quite as good. She had an outstanding swing, made good contact against even the better pitchers, but I would say that in top level competition, she was about a .333 hitter. It is relatively easy to impeach a player's high school stats because these are often reported to newspapers by coaches who really do not take this function particularly seriously. often, the kid or parent who keeps the book doesn't really understand how scoring works or how errors should be assigned. They are well meaning but they just don't know.
For example, we see that in high level NCAA play, balls that are struck back to pitchers who apparently boot the play generally do not result in the assignment of an error because it is rather difficult to field a ball hit in the 90s when you are just 37 feet from the contact point. Usually, sharply hit balls are given hits when the pitcher fails to make a play. But most people do not appreciate that.
Secondly, I have heard more misconceptions about when to assign a stolen base, a passed ball, a wildpitch, etc. than I have heard folks bragging about their daughter's .450 batting average. For example, I have seen "WP" written in books on pitches which hit the dirt directly in back of the point of homeplate and which bounced true. I won't argue the point but to me that's not a wildpitch. Similarly, I have seen "PB" written into books on curveballs which bounce in the dirt a foot in front of the plate and fly past the catcher a full two feet outside of their wingspan. I have seen books which reflect a stolen base for the runner from first on double steals on which the lead runner was thrown out at third. I don;t wish to debate particular plays but my point is, the books do not always accurately reflect what has transpired.
Even if books are perfectly kept, high schoolers sporting those .700 BAs do not usually run off to college and repeat their monumental successes at the next level. In Div I college softball, girls who hit .500 and up in high school generally don't come close to that. A .500 batting average is quite rare in Div I play. Anything above .400 is rather stupendous. .300 is often a quite good BA.
On a related topic, I am often amused by youth softball managers and parents who try to use the numbers to make or change decisions with respect to the lineup. One manager once told me that so and so has a really good on-base percentage so we're going to bat her first this (elimination) game. She had been in the 7th-9th spot all season, had maybe two basehits in 40 games, and proceeded to strike out every time up from the first spot in that important game. During the year, she had walked quite a bit, particularly against weak teams. She had walked a lot mostly because, after the first couple of games, she didn't hit and had gone up there trying to get walked. I worked to make her more aggressive at the plate, but she refused and continued to go up looking to walk. Against better teams and pitchers, she often struck out looking. Still, those 4 walk games against weak opponents had her on-base percentage pretty high and the "by-the-numbers" folks were convinced that this mattered. The kid she supplanted at the top of the order, by the way, went 2 for 3 that game. But because she was deep in the order where some of our weaker hitters were and she was left on base every time.
When I try to make out a line-up, I have my own philosophy and I don't want to really get into that. Some coaches try to spread out the real hitters. Some coaches use a traditional baseball approach. But whatever way you try to craft a line-up, the way you evaluate hitters should not be based on the numbers. Lots of kids get most of their stats compiled in games against weak pitchers and the numbers look really good. But when they face better pitchers, their numbers drop off precipitously. Some girls don't get a lot of hits when the team is up 8-0 after two innings. Yet they are the only ones who hit or otherwise get on base in the later rounds of the tourneys. A coach has to use more feel than that.
Once upon a tryout season, a father came to me to tell me that his daughter had achieved a .300 BA and .450 OBA during the previous season. The idea was I should take her and probably bat her in one of the top 4 spots. But her swing was terrible and she went after a lot of bad pitches when the stress was high. I can judge a kid's potential and swing for myself. I don't need to look at her stats. I'm pretty sure other youth coaches, not to mention HS, college and bigger time coaches, feel the same way.
A very long time ago, I played on a baseball team which produced a kid who had a decent major league career. He had a great swing and was an exceptional defensive player. When all was said and done with our summer travel league, I had a better batting average, more RBIs, etc. than this fellow. I know this because the manager compiled stats at the end of the year and went over them with us. You know, that other fellow batted fourth for us in every game while I batted 5th or 6th. There was never any thought of moving him off the clean-up spot. No coach ever contemplated it. I never contemplated it. Nobody in their right mind would have even considered it. It was a far superior hitter than I. Stats be damned. Anyone, especially the MLB scouts, could see he had something and I didn't.
So the moral of this part of the story is, please don't tell me about, or manage your team, exclusively by, compiling the stats in your scorebook and basing your line-up by your hitters' batting averages or other numbers.
I've gone astray from what I originally wanted to do with this piece. Where I wanted to take this is in the direction of some numbers which are actually somewhat important. The numbers which are actually important, though not controlling in the decision making process are those numbers which college coaches use, at least in part, in their evaluations of players. We are at a time of the year during which players go to these NFCA recruitment camps to show their stuff and some of the numbers which are recorded there can have an impact.
Also, recently, I have received a number of e-mails inquiring about some numbers. Folks want to get some idea of where their daughters stand with respect to other players around the country and, in particular, the "typical college player." I'm afraid I can't do anything for you there. I am unaware of any statistical table which shows pitch speed, catcher pop times, infielder/outfielder throwing and running speed, or anything like that for the country as a whiole at a particular age group or at the high school or NCAA levels. The best I can offer is a proxy, an easily available link to some numbers recorded at an NFCA recruiting camp.
Recently, the NFCA administered recruitment Pennsbury camp in Yardley, PA took place with a couple hundred college scholarship hopefuls and over one hundred college coaches from all levels in attendance. The campers were not necessarily the top prospects within these United States but there were some pretty good players there. The 2008 camp results can be viewed online. And now for my take on these numbers.
First of all, keep in mind that the players who performed these tests are not all juniors and seniors in high school who are headed to play in college. There is an application process by which kids are admitted into the camp. Many seniors who will play ball in college have already performed at these camps. They likely won't participate in the testing if they already know where they are headed. Even many recent juniors are already armed with pens, waiting for July 1, when they can sign NLIs or otherwise formally commit to schools. I can't seem to locate the list of participants at this camp but, in years past, I have seen a good number of middle schoolers, freshman, etc.
Secondly, Pennsbury represents one area of the country. There are five NFCA administered camps in various corners of the country, of which Pennsbury is but one. There are also numerous "NFCA endorsed camps." I cannot speak to the relative talent levels at the various camps. What I can tell you is that conspicuously absent from this camp were any representatives from the PAC 10, Big 10, Big 12, SEC, etc. And while there certainly were some reasonably competitive college programs in all divisions there, even many Big East schools were not in attendance. In short, I'm pretty sure that the best kids across the nation as a whole are not reflected in the test results.
The first thing which interests me is the pitching results. Of just less than 140 girls who had a couple fastballs recorded, the average speed was about 56 mph. The fastest speed recorded was 63 and the slowest (on a fastball) was upper 40s. I don't know about you but upper 40s is shocking to me. I wonder why someone throwing in the 40s would participate in such a camp regardless of what else they might bring to the table.
Of greater interest to me was the disparity between some of the fastballs and other pitches. One girl threw a 60 mph fastball and a 38 mph change-up. Another hit 63 on her fastball and 65 on her curve. While a 63 fastball might not garner a kid a ton of attention in and of itself - not all that many true fastballs thrown at the college level - a good breaking curve at 65 should. You cannot judge a change-up purely by its speed or lack thereof since all change-ups are not equal. But a 22 mph gap between fastball and change is at least noteworthy.
What strikes me in all this is loads of people like to use 60 mph as the measuring rod for their pitchers. I have heard a number of claims that this or that pitcher throws 60. My 13 year old daughter's coach has frequently said something to me along the lines of "how fast do you think she throws, I'm guessing 60." I tell him that I cannot judge pitch speed with my rather poor eyes but I do believe she's mid 50s, maybe 57 on occasion." He usually gets upset with me but I know what I know and 60 is somewhat rare, particularly with 14U players. Apparently, these claims by others are just not valid.
Understand that I'm not dissing everybody on pitcher's speeds. I'm just suggesting that when we stand there along the sidelines and claim this kid throws 60 or whatever, we might be wrong. Also pitch speed is not the only evaluation tool that is relevant to evaluating pitchers. Let's face it, even if the fastball were the only pitch available, some girls might throw a flat 60 in the middle of the plate or not be able to hit corners. Other girls might throw a 58 with sharp break due to good wrist snap, be able to hit corners at will, and have a very crafty approach to pitching in games. Which would you start in your most important game of the year?
The pitching number which intrigues me most on the chart is the rotations per second. Obviously, break on whatever plane is to a high degree controlled by spin. There are other factors but spin is undeniably important. I have no way to evaluate these numbers because this is the first time I have seen them. But I am intrigued by these. I need to get a gun which can give me that. That's got to be my next toy!
Still, you can't evaluate a pitcher simply by measuring her spins. Lots of girls get over-adrenlaized and then overthrow their movement pitches in big games. And aside from not getting the right amount of break, some girls are just so crafty with their curves, drops, rises, and screws, that the pure amount of spin or break is not nearly enough to judge them. The best HS pitcher I have observed is a girl who throws a nasty curve. The stuff itself is nasty but what is more nasty than her stuff is the way she uses it. She throws a drop curve on the outside corner and batter's usually sit and watch it only to go down 0-1. Her next pitch is usually 6 inches off the corner, basically unhittable. Then she's typically up 0-2. the next one might be further off the plate, a backdoor version, or possibly some other pitch in a location which causes the batter to go fishing. She never gets batters out purely via her speed or the amount of rotation on her pitches. She gets batters out by pitching - with her mind as much as her body.
Enough about pitchers. Let's move on to catchers.
The metric most often used to evaluate catchers is called "pop time" which is basically the time between pops - the pop of the catcher's mitt and that of the infielder covering second. Another somewhat though less important measure is overhand throwing speed. At Pennsbury, overhand throwing averaged around 56 and pop times averaged just above 2. I have heard some coaches claim that the cutoff for pop times is about 2 seconds. This is so because average runners get to second in about 2.7 to 3.0 seconds, pitches take about a half second to reach the first pop, and if you're going to throw out a reasonable percentage of runners, anything over 2 seconds isn't going to get the job done even with an accurate throw.
The fastest throwing speeds were around 60 - 64 and most of these girls, though not all, had sub-2 pop times. It is interesting to note that several catchers who were in the top 10 or so of pop times had throwing speeds beneath 60. Also noteworthy is the fact that several girls with plus throwing speed had pop times above 2 and were in the bottom half of all participants in the record. That goes to show you that throwing speed is not everything when it comes to evaluating catchers.
To be fair, pop times and throwing speed, even when combined are not sufficient for evaluation. There are girls who once they are in games, throw a lot less hard or have trouble matching a dry pop time. There are also girls who thrive so much on real competition that when they are in game situations, their pop times and throwing speed can go up. Let's face it, some people are gamers and some are not. And that's why, despite the availability of numbers, coaches still want to see kids in games.
As a final view of pure numbers, several times over the past year parents have written to me inquiring about running speed. What I usually tell them is it depends on position and age / physical maturity, and good times are usually something like below 3 seconds to first. Unlike in years past, I believe, the Pennsbury results do not show running speed to first by position. One speed measurement that was published was home to home and these figures weren't published for all positions. The next best number to home to first was the SPARQ 20 yard dash.
SPARQ stands for Speed, Power, Agility, Reaction and Quickness. It is supposed to be a measure of overall athleticism. I know very little about it and so I won't bother to get into it. If you want to do some research, here is this venture's website: SPARQTraining. I'm not sure how they measure the 20 yard dash but it stands to reason that this should be a close approximation to a run to first. If anything, I would expect the times to be somewhat faster than times to first since, from what little I know, you should get a better start when doing a sprint. Yet, I saw no sub 3 times in this record. And that surprised me.
My kids do some speed/agility stuff, though not officially SPARQ. I'd say one of my kids runs at an above average speed and the other is about average. My 11 year old regularly runs a 3 or just below 3 20 yard dash. She's hit 2.9. My older kid sometimes has trouble getting below 3.1 but on rare occasions she has just barely broken 3. Maybe I better go check the stopwatch of the guy timing them. Maybe there is something flawed about the way they have been measured.
Still, I have always understood that times to first of good runners generally run in the 2.7 to 2.9 range. I'm a little shocked that of all these girls at Pennsbury, some of whom are very good athletes, nobody broke 3. I've seen some of the girls run before and they are quite fast. I cannot explain these numbers but maybe it has something to do with the way SPARQ testing is performed.
Of all the relevant numbers used to measure softball players, I believe running speed might be the best one we use. Batting average depends on who batters are facing, who is keeping the book and other things. A girl can pitch 70 mph but if she throws it flat and down the middle, she isn't going to make a big splash on the pitching scene. A pitcher can really spin the ball when she wants to but she has to find the right speed to throw each breaking pitch, has to have command, and needs some craftiness if she is going to get people out. Catchers can throw very hard but if they are slow to get the ball out of their gloves, if they do not rise to the adrenaline rush of real base stealers running, they are not going to get people out and coaches are not going to be as interested in them. Fast girls can and often are taught how to run bases. yes there is a discernible skill with respect to baserunning. But more and more we are seeing at the college level a type of kid who might be described as a designated runner. She might play soccer, basketball or run track. But she is undeniably quick and college softball coaches seem to feel that they can take these girls and make them pinchrunners.
I suppose people are always interested in some objective measure with which to compare themselves or their kids against others. We throw numbers around pretty loosely. How many pitchers in your corner of the world supposedly throw 60? How many .500 batting averages are bragged about? How many people claim that their kid runs sub 3 home to first, sub 13 home to home? How many people tell you that their daughter throws the ball overhand at about 65-70 mph? How many really good softball players are there? We need numbers to describe things but we should never become slaves to them.Labels: coaching, hitting, pitching, players
Permanent Link: Numbers Game
 
Breaking Away
by Dave
Thursday, June 19, 2008
I think I receive as many questions having to do with attitude than just about anything else. Usually it goes something like "My daughter is a really good player. She is a pitcher who also plays ... She has always loved the game but now I have trouble getting her to practice. When I can get her to practice, she doesn't practice hard. I go out of my way to make myself available to go out to the fields and hit grounders and flyballs, to pitch her batting practice or take her to the cages, or to catch her pitching practice. We bite the bullet just to afford her regular lessons. She's a very good player but she could be better. I think maybe we are wasting our time, effort, and money to try to pound a round peg into a square hole. Can you offer any guidance or advice?" My reply is, "I wish I could help you with that but I can't. If you find someone who can, please give me their name and contact information."
Here is my situation: I have a couple daughters who pitch and are decent ballplayers. The older one has physical strength which could lead her to find a pretty good deal of success in this game. She has been provided some very good pitching instruction. As a result, she's a pretty good pitcher but hasn't been invited to play for Team USA yet. If I've ever given you the impression that she's the greatest thing since the yellow ball, I've misled you. She's good but she's not all that.
When she practices, she improves quite a bit. She has 6 good pitches if we include the fastball. Practicing gives her pretty darn good command. Practicing gives her better speed and movement too. If I could put the fire in her belly and make her want to practice every day, she would be a very good pitcher.
When she practices, she gets high on practicing. That is, when I get her to throw, she really enjoys it. Her mood improves immediately. She, the girl who doesn't bother to tell us when she gets a 100 on a school test or an A for the marking period, actually becomes talkative, smiles, wants to be friends again. She becomes more than a good pitcher during practices. She becomes a human being.
The trouble is the initial push to get her away from the computer, Wii and cellphone, is a very difficult push. We've tried everything in our dysfunctional arsenal, threatened to take away the electronics, threatened to stop playing travel ball, threatened to halt the pitching lessons, etc. We've searched and searched for anything we can find that will get her motivated to want to practice more, and with more effort, but nothing seems to work. The only way she'll practice is if I ask her to do it and then get mad when she wants to push it off until later. the only way I can get her to really work is to find something that motivates her like losing a game. But what motivates her today will not motivate her tomorrow. I have to keep looking and looking for things to get her to work really hard. She's become too comfortable with practicing at a certain level.
It isn't that she never practices, she does. In fact, she generally gets about a total of four sessions in per week. And long ago I made it clear that I would not answer questions like "how long are we going to throw for" or "how many more pitches do you want me to throw." We have a policy which is that if those questions are asked, practice is over right there on the spot.
The sessions usually last about an hour. I try to gauge the degree to which she is genuinely tired from pitching a lot of innings in games or from genuinely working hard at one of her physical training sessions. There are times when we go to our pitching dungeon with the idea that after one half hour we are done. Then there are times when I would like to have her pitch until she drops. Many times we go longer than I plan because we haven't finished working through all the pitches or because one pitch needs more today than usual. Since the initial discussions regarding her not asking me when this practice is over, she's pretty good about keeping on point throughout these workouts which average between 100 and 200 pitches. That's not the problem.
The way I view practicing for any sport is, I believe you must exert at least *95% of game effort in order to get better. There's nothing magical about *95%. It's really just a number I picked out of the air but I think you can understand what I'm saying. If you disagree with *95% or any other number I use here, change it. We don't disagree in principle. Our numbers are just out of sync.
Further, I believe that any practice which is done at let's say 75% to 95% is a holding pattern. You're not going to get better but you will keep the skills you currently have. Less than that level of effort and all you are doing is wasting time and fooling yourself. You've got to raise your level higher if you want to get even maintain your skills.
To me, the way to get really good is to find a way to bring your game level of effort to the practice session and to increase the number of practice sessions at which you bring your best effort. If your game effort is called a 200 and your practice effort 180, bringing your practice effort up to say 185 will result in your game level being made into maybe 210. If you were able to say bring it to 200 in practice sessions, your game would go up to 225. From there, if you could bring your practice to 225, your games would jump to 250. And so on.
Are you with me? Do you understand what I'm getting at?
Another point I want to make is when kids start out at some activity, everything is new and difficult. They have to expend full effort in order to do the thing right. In sports, maybe in everything, I follow what I call a "three year rule" which basically says, you make regular, routine improvements for the first three years you do something just by working at your skills, regardless of the real effort level. What I mean is, the first three years a kid tries pitching, goes to batting lessons, or just plays softball, she will improve regularly through ordinary effort. After about three years, she has become a pretty good player, and after that, the only way she's going to make real improvements is through bringing the effort level to practice sessions.
The three year rule is not something I invented. It is something given to me by a coach when I was around 13. He said that whenever you do something new for three years, you will find yourself becoming very competent towards the end of the three years. You'll know your way around the block. You'll be able to discuss things involved in the activity. But you won;t get any better unless you drive yourself at that point and, at the same time, you'll also learn how to really dog it through workouts.
The three year rule is kind of a catch-22. You;ve earned a level of competence which provides you probably more enjoyment than you had at any time since you started. Now you need to turn it on, if you want to get better. But now you really now how to get through workouts without really putting anything out.
This is the point at which I find myself with my daughters. They've been doing this for longer than 3 years. But they know how to get through workouts without really pouring themselves into it. They have reached a plateau and the only way over it involves losing the dog it work ethic.
It's not just my kids. Every kid I have ever coached in any sport follows this pattern. The kid who is hardest to motivate is the kid who has been doing it for three or more years. You can try to push them but they don;t generally budge.
And it isn't anything to do with age. It doesn;t matter if I'm working with a kid aged 4 or 14. If this all is new to say a 14 year old, I have no problem pushing her to the next level. But give me a 9 year old who has been playing a sport for 3 years and I know there are going to be issues.
Just about any parent of a pitcher knows what I'm talking about. She used to do everything I told her and do it with a lot of effort. Now she gives me trouble about practicing her stuff and even when she does practice, the effort is just not there. She's not getting better, or at least not getting better at the rate I want to see.
Now, I don;t have any answers for the problem. I do believe I have identified it in a way which most people can understand. But I do not sit her with the idea that I have the answer which will solve everyone's problem of this nature. Instead, what I do believe I have are some tips which might help you break through the plateau.
First of all, think about how you were when you got to a similar point in some activity. It may not have been softball or baseball. It may not have been even sports related. But with something in your life, you most likely began it with no knowledge or skill set, worked at it for a couple years, attained a level of competence, and then got somewhat bored or lacked motivation to really improve yourself. Hopefully, at some point, you refound your mojo and got busy again. What I want you to do is get real introspective and try to remember how you were able to motivate yourself anew. Maybe it was some external event like a loss to a rival, a work raise somebody else got, or an inspirational speech you attended by someone in your field of endeavor. Maybe it was a realization which struck you like lightning. I do not know all the possible things which may have motivated you but I want you to figure that out.
Then think about times when you were unable to get out of a rut or overcome a plateau. What happened to your sense of self, your confidence, your life, when you sat at some point for a long time? How did your brain react to it? If you could avoid that in the future, would you? Was that enough to get you over the hump or was something else required.
Now picture your child and know that their mental makeup is not all that different from yours. Understand that, in an experiential sense, they don't know what you know. They do not fully appreciate that a superstar like Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods routinely pushes themselves beyond their pain threshhold. They don't understand that Jordan brought his game to practices. They don't understand that when you sit still and take a break while you are firmly on some plateau, you may never be able to get off it.
One of the tricks I think which helps people overcome plateaus is interaction with others, particularly good motivators. This is the chief attribute of a really good coach, whether at the professional, collegiate, high school, or youth sports level. The really good coach is the one who thrives in circumstances in which their primary work involves motivating others.
We see this sort of person in Vince Lombardi or Bill Parcells in football, Phil Jackson, the late Jim Valvano, or Pat Summit in basketball, Sue Enquist or Mike Candrea in softball. These folks may be very knowledgeable in mechanical stuff, may really know their games and how to make their teams do great plays to win games. But more than anything else, they are outstanding motivators who not only can help their teams do the mechanical things but also teach their charges how to be motivated and what it takes to play at the highest levels.
You can disagree with me that these people are primarily motivators, if you like. But when they retire from their sports and want to do something else, more often than not what they end up doing is motivational speeches. And there is high demand for these folks to come talk to business people, government employees, etc. precisely because what they have to say in this regard is extremely valuable.
To take this a bit further, I think many of us fall into a parental trap with respect to our kids' sports careers. At early stages, we recognize that the kid needs instruction and practice. The kid most definitely does not recognize this. So we set to pushing our children to do some kind of practicing in the same way that we supervise them and make sure all their homework is done. They are too intellectually immature to take care of business or to recognize that if they skip a homework assignment or whatever, things are only going to get much more difficult. Young kids very seldom, if ever, are self-driven.
We raise these kids up from the time they can't pick up their heads to the day they start getting speeding tickets or sit down with some guy with 50 years experience to tell him how he should run his business ... at a $400 per hour rate. We teach them to walk and to speak, to eat with a spoon or fork, to keep their fingers our of electrical sockets, to not be afraid of flies, to swing a bat.
Other aspects of life have rights of passage which tell us when to pull back some, if not completely. High school graduation lets us know that our kid has arrived at the point at which he or she must get a job or head off to school in a place at which we can't adequately tell them how to deal with all the dangers they may encounter. Marriage tells moms they aren't the most important woman in a boy's life and dad's that they can no longer threaten to shoot the boy driving the car with your daughter riding in it if he goes one mph above the speed limit. Softball has no rights of passage at which it is abundantly clear for dad and mom to move away from the dugout for good and just let her take care of herself.
I've seen parents of 18 year olds say in sugar coated voices, "Here you go baby doll, her's your power bar and some water, now eat it and drink up, you don't want to faint." I've also seen parents of 8 year olds pull up to tournaments and say, "here's a jug of water, a sandwich and five dolalrs you can spend at the snack bar. If I'm not here at the end of your last game, call me on your cell phione and I'll be here within a half hour. Stay with coach Bob, if I'm not here. If he has to leave, stay at the snackbar." Someplace between these two extremes is the optimal time to let go some.
Understand that I'm trying to discuss how to get a kid 10 - 14 years old to overcome plateaus by being self-motivated and I've digressed into a discussion about when to stop treating your child like a, um, child. The reason I've gotten to this spot is because I think the two seemingly different things are related. It is their game and they are the ones who really do the practicing. If they are going to get better, they need to find motivation from within or without. We cannot give them that though we certainly can and do try. But in the end, they need to fucntion outside our purview and find their own motivation. Otherwise, we are truly living vicariously through our kids.
I think it is fair to say that every year at a number of colleges, some kids return home, relinquishing their scholarships in the process, and evirtually ending their careers because they are incapable of finding motivation within themselves to overcome some hurdle, some plateau. One thing a kid can get out of sports, if we let them, is a certain level of self-confidence and competence which prepares them for that inevitable time when they are going to be truly on their own. Eventually they are going to be on a job, working on a school project, or p-laying for some coach in a situation in which our input is not merely discouraged, but rather completely forbidden. At that point, the kid who has been coached completely by the parent, who has never learned to go out their on their own, is at a decided disadvantage.
So, where I have come to with this issue of how to get your darling daughter motivated to practice and pratice hard so she can improve and overcome a plateau, is teaching the kid to be self-motivated and self-sufficient, to break away from taking care of everything, to allow her to fail of her own lack of effort. It isn;t an easy thing to do. And we don;t just throw her into the swimming pool and hope that she learns to swim before she begins gulping water and falling like a stone to the bottom of the deep-end. We have to talk to her and explain what it is we are doing and what it is she should begin doing. Otherwise we fail as parents.
Once I was at a clinic with loads of kids of varying talent levels around. A very smart father of a very gifted ball player struck up a conversation with me. Somehow he brought the subject around to issues of coaching your kids. He said, "At some point you can't coach your kid any more. At some point, if she is to progress as a ballplayer, you have to let her be coached by other people. She needs to learn to deal with other people including some she has never met before. She needs to break away from you and that's hard to do. If she doesn't break away from you, she'll never grow up in this game. She knows that. &mnbsp; You know that. But its hard for her to do. And if you hinder the process or if you put up obstacles to her breaking away, she won't be able to do it. She doesn't want to hurt your feelings. You have to let her know that its OK, really OK."
So that's my advice piece for the day. Having trouble getting your kid to practice? Having trouble getting your kid to practice hard? Don't make her. Let her make herself work. All you can do is try to explain the way things work in the real world. That other kid over there, she works really hard at her game. If she continues to do it and you continue to sleep through your limited workouts, she is definitely going to get better than you. You have to decide for yourself how much or little you are going to practice. I'm here to catch for you anytime you want. But please don't waste my time.
*95% = Originally this number was posted at 75% but I got some pushback on that. please understand that the number is drawn out of thin air. It is a concrete, objective way of expressing something which is neither concrete nor susceptible to objective measurement.
We Americans are fond of saying that you have to give 110%. But, honestly, that's just not possible. If you have 100 of something to give, you might be able to give 100 but you are incapable of giving 110.
Further, I sincerely doubt that anyone ever gives 100% while doing anything. If you gave absolutely everything you had on say a pitch or in a run, at the end of the line, you should be collapsed. I don't mean you would be on the ground with a smile on your face, knowing that you gave everything you had. I mean, you would be on the ground in pain, trying with all your remaining might to stay alive. In truth, nobody ever gives anything near a real 100%. They simply give what the effort requires or something short of that.
Most of what I know about training comes from a completely unrelated sport, swimming. Back in my youth, baseball and softball players never worked nearly as hard as they do today. Runners, swimmers, wrestlers and others trained in a serious fashion using scientifically proven techniques. Now just about everybody does that.
In a swimming training regimen, you usually overwork for much of the season and then gradually come down in something called a taper in which you taper off the distance and work towards developing fast-twitch muscles. But say you swam 100 yards of some event in 50 seconds during a race. You might, for part of the practice, work a sequence of 10 times 100 yards in which you try to repeat your sprint at an average time of under one minute with 5 to 15 seconds between sprints. This is, to my knowledge, one of the ways in which sprinters in all types of sports work out. And to me, this represents a 75% effort level. That's really where the 75% came from.
I have gone ahead and changed 75% to 95% so as to avoid further push back. But I don't really mean 95%. The numbers are unimportant.
So, please don't get hung up on numbers. The concept is there is an effort level associated with games and a different one with practice. I don't care who you are, you just cannot get the adrenaline flowing in practice that you can in games. But the idea is to bring your practices to as close to your game level as possible. If you don't, if you learn to dog it, you will never see the amount of improvement you are seeking and this will make your practices mostly a waste of time, your own and that of whomever is coaching you.Labels: parenting, practice
Permanent Link: Breaking Away
18U or H.S.U
by Dave
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Is it 18 and under or high school and under?
There is a growing chorus of those who are angered by the presence of girls who have already played college ball on 18U teams. Added to this is a dislike of showcase tournament teams with girls on the roster who have either already signed on the dotted line of NLIs or who have "verballed" with a school. Part of me understands the concern and part of me doesn't. So, let's explore some of these thoughts.
As far as I can tell, ASA rules regarding who is and who is not eligible to play 18U ball, whether at Gold or A levels, pertain only to when a particular player was born. If you were not 19 as of January 1, 2008, you are eligible to play 18U. If I'm missing something there, please don't hesitate to correct me.
Secondly, ASA 18U ball is competitive play. As in any sport at almost any level, there's always more to it than meets the eye but essentially teams exist for the purpose of trying to win games, tournaments, berths, and even the national championship. Obviously, many of these teams exist in order to get exposure to college coaches for their kids. But basically the teams are out there to win unless they are playing some showcase. I understand that college coaches want to see competitive play, not just showcases, and that this requires them to go watch competitive ASA tournaments, particularly at very high levels. And these coaches do so knowing full well that there are girls playing who are already enrolled at other colleges, who have ongoing relationships with schools who may be recruiting them, or who have already signed to go someplace. Still, they come to watch because they want to see the highest levels of competition they can.
If ASA wanted to, they could change rules to prohibit 18U eligible girls who have already played college ball at any level (or at particular levels) from competing at 18U. That might make it a more friendly kind of competition for girls seeking scholarships and opportunities to play. They could mandate that these off the market women move up to 23U. Heck, maybe that would expand the number of 23U teams out there.
But the ASA doesn't do that. Their objective is to have the most competitive tournaments possible, not to market unsigned, unrecruited high schoolers. That's not their function.
I suppose many in the community would like to see 18U play limited to girls who have not already had their chance - to show their stuff in front of college coaches. There's also a little of that competitive edge in there someplace too. Some people want their team or teams from their area to have a greater shot at winning berths or titles. They lose to this or that team with some superstar college pitcher and complain that, were it not for her, their team would have succeeded. That seems kind of crass to me.
I understand that the growing chorus hopes to begin the process whereby 18U might be cut down to girls not already in college. They'd also like to remove girls who have already signed NLIs from the showcase circuit. There's no way to deal with girls who have verballed since, while not exactly a secret, verballing does not exist to the rule making bodies. The idea is that the girls who are working so hard to get noticed by college coaches ought to get their shot to do so. Therefore, showcases should be closed to those signed or ready to sign. And ASA 18U ball should be limited to girls in high school since getting NLI signees out would be considerably more difficult.
The reasons I object to this way of thinking is because I feel that the showcase circuit should be open to anyone who wants to play and who can make a team. Sometimes girls who already have verbals in place aren't quite so sure they want to go there. Also, some girls have small partials or less than an iron-clad verbal from a school or learn that the coach they have been courting for several years has been fired or has left. I can think of some girls who believed they were going to this or that school for their freshman years and then changed their minds after interaction with a coach at some showcase. Showcases can't be expected to police out everyone who has a verbal. They could exclude NLI signees but that would reduce the playing level.
As far as 18U ball goes, I look back to my childhood and wonder why there is any fuss. The best amateur baseball I ever watched was something called county ball. In county ball, teams would form up with some good high schoolers, some college players and some older guys - there was no age limit. I recall a team which had some guy pitching who they referred to as "Doc. Doc was so called because, I think he was a dentist or other MD - obviously in his thirties and well beyond professional baseball aspirations. Also, he had this nasty habit of doctoring the ball! The team had some kid from a local high school catching and he was destined to shoot up like a rocket in the minors and then fizzle. Several kids from a well respected college program also played their summers for them. I remember seeing more than a handful of guys who would do something in the big leagues. A select few had noteworthy careers in the bigs. But what strikes me is the younger kids most likely benefitted tremendously from playing with the older hands.
So when discussions turn to whether high schoolers should be playing competitive ball with college kids, I'm afraid I'll have to fall on the yes side of the fence.
Aside from the prejudices, formed in my youth, I also wonder what would happen if you took all the college players out of ASA 18U ball. Wouldn't the level of play fall? In my county baseball context, play definitely would have been hurt by the absence of guys who already played college ball or had otherwise moved out of the recruitment world. If I were the college coach looking for recruits, wouldn't my take on the level of play diminish with the removal of college players? If I came to watch kids play against the best possible competition, wouldn't I be better served by watching competitive 23U ball and focusing on the few 17s and 18s who chose to play that level instead?
Now I do understand that college coaches probably like to observe 16U ASA A level nationals to get recruits. That's so because they have little doubt that these girls are not yet signed. But wouldn't removing talent from 18U result in the class becoming a wasteland where only girls who are less desirable would play? That's not a definite but doesn't excluding the better college-experienced kids create that possibility?
I believe I have a full appreciation for the thoughts of those who would like to see college kids removed from 18U ASA ball and those who would like to see signed and verballed girls removed from showcases. But I am going to have to respectfully disagree with them. I believe it waters things down to an unacceptable degree and makes things worse rather than better.
Tom writes in response to this post as follows:"You missed a very important fact in your recent article about college players playing u18. These u18 players are very likely to be freshman. They may or may not have seen playing time on their college team. Most of these players will have only seen limited time as they are playing behind upper classman that have played for 4 years, gone through the conditioning and are simply stronger/faster/smarter.
A college freshman has a hard time finding a summer team because of her limited availability and limited number of teams playing. She will not be available for any winter tournaments or even early season play. These girls should be strong at the u18 level and would get a lot of innings (helping the college player). If they were on a u23 it could look a lot like their college teams and their playing time could be limited. The difficulty of finding a slot on a u23 team is compounded by the few tournaments that a u23 can play and the limited number of sponsoring organizations.
A case in point is my daughter; who is league age of 18. She was severely injured last summer and was in rehab through December. She was pitching behind seniors, and other underclassmen. In the field, she was behind a senior that was on pace to set a new school career hits record. She saw no pitching innings and no fielding innings although she was at all practices and games. She needs this summer to get up to game speed and to have a shot at an open slot. She was fortunate to land on a good u23 summer team. She will get sufficient playing time and innings on the mound. Our backup plan was to get on a u18 that needed a pitcher/player and work that route.
I can't imagine the ASA/NSA being able to govern a 'No College Player' policy at the u18 level. Next year my daughter will have to play u23. Next year she will be a sophomore with some playing experience. However, I think that if a u18 player struggles against a college freshman pitcher or a college freshman takes their daughter downtown; then maybe that scholarship should be in jeopardy. If however that high school player tees off on a college pitcher or that high school batter humiliates that college freshman pitcher then their darling daughter's prospects go way up. What is truly the difference between an 18 year old college player with maybe one year of experience and an 18 year old high school senior?
The few girls that qualify in this age group have always been playing up in order to play with their grade. I don't see any reason to penalize them one more time. Play the game with and against the best competition you can find. The college coaches are pretty smart about filtering the information. I suspect that most college coaches would rather see a prospect going up against a college pitcher and having success than that same prospect teeing off a weak high school pitcher.
Tom, thanks for the perspective of an 18 year old college player. It is highly relevant and hopefully will show some of those who are looking at it only from the high school players' point of view that there is more to the issue than they see.Labels: asa
Permanent Link: 18U or H.S.U
Act Your Age (Real or Artificial)
by Dave
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
There's a lot of bragging and crying going on. What I mean is, it is not all that unusual for teams to play up a class in tournaments as a means of preparing or hardening the kids for competition in their own age class. This is a perfectly fine practice. But where it breaks down is in places where the younger team which wins, throws it in the face of the older team, or where the younger team complains at the older team to take it easy or tries to diminish a victory by yelling that "you just beat an (under-aged) team."
I make no bones about it, I think girls who are capable of playing up, ought to do that unless they find a team their own age which suits their needs. I have personally seen several younger players who could compete with girls two or more years their seniors. This is definitely the case at the highest levels of the youth game and less so as you work downwards through the brackets.
A December 9 or 10 year old looks and acts quite a bit younger than a January 11 or 12. If you go to extremes and pair up the December 9 year old with the January 12 year old, you see a very stark difference. Yet many talented 12s can play with a good degree of success with 14Us, particularly those which include 13s. When you jump up to 16U and 18U levels, it is clear that the cream of the crop younger kids can be quite good while playing up. I have seen quite a few 8th graders out there playing 18U showcases. There is a whole host of social, personality, interaction issues which might arise but that's too big of a subject for today. The bottom line is the right younger kid can play up and look like she belongs on the field with the older ones.
Similarly, whole teams of younger kids can compete with whole teams of older ones. At say the 12U and 14U levels, I do not believe that the top teams are in the same class. You take a team of girls who turned 15 in January - March, who have played together and won big tournaments since they were 8, and put them against another team of say girls who turned 13 in January - March but who have only played together for a couple years, whether successful or not, and you are probably going to run into a mismatch. But if you take a top level team at 10U or 12U, they can probably kick some butt against mid to low level 12s or 14s, respectively.
I have seen some tournaments where 12U teams defeated the field and claimed bids against pretty good, but not outstanding, 14s. I've seen 10s play very competitively with 12s. I have seen probably more times when 14s were able to effectively compete, perhaps win entire tournaments on more than one occassion, against 16s and 18s. This is a skill game more than it is a size or strength one. Size and strength can be important assets on the softball diamond but technique, drilling, and skills rule the day.
I have known several teams which make a practice of playing up. There are many reasons why this is done. One important reason to play up is preparation for the following year. We were involved with a team of girls considering playing up at 16 during their 14 year old year. They played a high school team fall ball league just to show everyone on the team what they were getting into before throwing the switch on playing up, and to get the girls ready for their first years of high school ball. My then recently-turned 13 year old played with the team because she was likely going to play for them the following year. I would never say that this was a mistake but there were times when she looked over-matched. She pitched a little without any real success and played the field reasonably well. She got a couple hits, even one or two game winners. But many of her at-bats weren't real good and I think this may have broken her down a bit. Still, we'd do the same again without hesitation.
Our team played against others which ranged from similarly constituted teams to last year's complete JV team, to partial varsity teams missing their star players, to full blown high school varsity teams. We did well enough and I suppose, in the end, everyone was satisfied. During one game we lost, I heard our side's voices proclaim that "you are beating a 14U team." There's nothing about that comment which is any good to anyone.
The older team which is scheduled to play the younger one in a tournament or league setting did not sign up so they could be harrassed by a bunch of young kids. They most likely signed up with the idea that they were going to play other teams like themselves. Who, in their right mind, with any experience at all in this game, would sign themselves up to play against a younger, smaller team? There's nothing to be gained. If they beat you, they can make you feel bad about yourselves by telling you loudly that you just got your butt kicked by a bunch of little kids. That's nice! And if you happen to beat them, all you get for your efforts is, "don't be proud of yourselves, you just beat an inferior team." Again, that's nice and all you get for your trouble is a bad feeling about a game when you could just as easily have played against a team like yourselves and maybe walked away from that with a win. Why would anyone want to play a younger team?
The trouble is many of these younger teams do like to throw age up into the face of older ones. I suppose it is something of a natural response. You're getting killed (really watching your darling daughters get killed) and you feel bad. Everyone dislikes the team beating them right now. So it is natural to try to diminish what the people you don't like are accomplishing. Also, if you happen to be a parent on the younger sideline and your team is ahead or just won, you are probably bursting with pride and want to exclaim to the world that your kids can play with the big girls. So you cheer "way to go 12s, way to beat up on the 16s!" or something along those lines.
I was recently involved with what boiled down to a weak 12U tournament. The lion's share of 12U teams were either entirely younger (had another year of 12U eligibility) or were mixed-age. Several had one or more 10U eligible kids playing for them. Late in the team registration process, a 10U team from a well-known, pretty high quality, organization called to ask, "please let us in because we want to play up." The tournament reluctantly permitted the team into the tournament. They most likely will never permit a younger team into another tournament as a result.
The younger team struggled in the preliminary round losing to two mixed age teams and, possibly beating one town team of indeterminant age - I don't know for sure. After each loss, the parents of the younger team informed the older victor that they had just beaten a 10U team. During each game, when one of the really young kids came to the plate, got a hit, walked or whatever, the parents of the younger team and sometimes even the coaches would announce so everybody knew what was going on, "hey great job for an 8 or 9 year old." Did they think for a moment that their opponent was not eminently aware of the youthfulness of the team?
Later, in the first game of the championship round, the younger team beat our team which includes one or two kids who are currently 10U eligible, mostly first year 12U players, almost all of whom have never played intense travel ball before, and a couple of 12s including several who turned 12 in December. That's not an excuse about losing. It is reality. Also, our team is sort of in disarray with fewer kids on the roster than we would like, an inability to get the kids together to practice for a variety of reasons, and some very bad tournament experiences under our belts. We can compete with better teams but we are certainly not one of them.
During the game, on a couple of occassions, our girls did what they do in tournaments against girls their own age, like slide hard into second, tag aggressively on plays at bases, etc. On more than one occassion, our players, some as young as 10 even now, were screamed at by opposing parents for "playing too rough with these 10 year olds." On one occassion, a coach from the younger team complained at one girl in particular that she had deliberately tried to hurt one of his kids. You'd have to know the kid to understand that she is emotionally incapable of doing that. If she is involved in any play during which a kid, even a much older kid, goes down, we have to pull her aside and tell her repeatedly that she did nothing wrong and that's the way this game is played. Yet this coach wanted us to call off the dogs in order to be nice to his little girls.
The result of all the yelling and other strife was, our girls were completely taken off their games. We played worse than a 10U team. We played like a 10U all-star team. And we lost 4-2. To add insult to injury, the other parents congratulated their little babies for having beaten up on the big, bad, mean team. That's completely uncalled for.
So we stayed and watched the 10U team get beaten in the next round by a team which can only be described as under-age 12U. Heck, this team which beat the younger team had difficulty drawing enough kids before things froze up for the winter. They practiced with what they had through the winter months and finally pulled together a complete team relatively late in the spring. By the way, the younger team had been in full 3-a-week practices, including some which had college level coaches teaching the kids to hit, since December. The "older" team included at least one girl who was 10U eligible playing third base and batting leadoff. She's a mighty-mite but she is unquestionably under-aged for 12U. They may have had other under-age kids as well. I'm not really sure. But I'm reasonably certain that if they did have anyone who was legal aged 12, there were just a handful of them, and those on the team who were older had no more experience than my team's girls did. But this team has pretty much jelled over the past couple of weeks. They played a very good game and shutout the younger team. Then they went on to win the championship.
During the semi-final game, there was any number of catcalls from the stands throwing up into the face of the "older" team the fact that they were beating a much younger one. I didn't hear any admonishments about playing nice with the little girls and not hitting too hard but I was out by the outfield fence, not able to stomach the parents of the younger team, so I can't be sure. I expect there were such bush league comments made, most likely directly made to players. The whole thing left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths and this team will have a very difficult time ever getting any of the teams in attendance to play with them again.
The truth is, younger teams are finding it very difficult to gain entry into older tournaments. It shouldn't be that way but teams like this younger 10U group have caused that. If there is nothing to be gained by permitting a younger team into your tournament, why would you? Why not just pat them on the butt and say, "go away little girl, run and find someone your own age to play with or go to ASA Nationals and see how you do there?"
At this point, I want to end this little piece. I'm not getting anything out of writing it. It's time to move on. But I want to leave you with some words of advice.
Play up if you can. It's a great experience, if you are ready for it.
If you play up, act your age, your league age, the age you signed up as. Guys who joined the military while under-age during World War II were not cut any slack by the Nazis. That was even true when the Nazi dude happened to be some 13 or 14 year old Hitler Youth member who had been handed a gun and told to point and shoot. If you want to go play with the older girls, show that you belong, and not just by the score in the book.
One of the advantages of playing up is to experience what girls this age play like. Don't ask them, don't even think about asking them to tag nicer, slide easier, or just play as if they know you are underaged. You came to their tea party. They'd never come willingly to yours. They didn't sign up so that they could play with one arm strapped to their backs. Don't even ask them to. Don't you dare try to bully them into to it.
When you win, show that you have at least some class. Don't throw up into the face of the losing team that they were beaten by a younger group. They already know that. Trust me on this. Even if you disguised your team name by dropping off the age, everyone can see about how old you are. There's nothing to be gained by telling the other team that a bunch of little kids kicked their butts. So, why open your trap and tell them something which gets you nothing and just makes them feel worse?
You want to play up? OK. But promise that you will try your hardest to earn the right. And don't ruin things for the next group of girls who want to rise to the challenge of playing up and who are mature enough, have enough class to recognize the responsibility which goes with the privilege.Labels: attitude, Conduct, Tournaments, youth tournament teams
Permanent Link: Act Your Age (Real or Artificial)
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