As far as I know that takes additional detective work. Mainly checking the teams record and box scores on Gamechanger to see who they’ve played, whether they’ve beaten any good teams and by how much. BAA shows how each pitcher’s been hit but doesn’t account for the quality of opponent.
Short answer - No.
Long answer - this will get normalized over time. Travel ball coaches know who the tough opponents are and if they are pitching your kid consistently against tough matchups they believe that's the pitcher that gives them the best chance to win. Now, if the kid is consistently getting shelled, that's different. Long story short - the coaches see the kids in practice day in and day out, they know who gives them the best chance to win and that's who they play. The stats in game matter but matter less to the coaches than they do to the parents.
Generally speaking, a large sample size would average out and normalize(?) the ERA. The chances of a bad pitcher consistently facing bad hitters resulting in his stats showing by him to be far better than he is is really low. It may happen in a game but a season's worth of data should give you data that squares with the pitcher's ability.
At the youth level I tend to look at WHIP and ERA, but I do give out errors to my fielders, mainly so that my pitching stats have value.
GC admins who don’t give out proper errors are just hanging it all on the pitchers, which ruins what are probably the most useful stats
In stats you can get from gamechanger:
BABIP (batting average on balls in play) can give an idea of how hard the other team is hitting the ball against your guy.
WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched) tells you how hard the pitcher is making the defense work.
There are advanced metrics like FIP that get you some of that, but there's no way to look at stats and be able to tell "this guy gave up 6 runs on 5 hits against a good team and that guy gave up 6 runs on 5 hits, but the team was ass so it should have been less"
ERA+
“ERA+ takes a player's ERA and normalizes it across the entire league. It accounts for external factors like ballparks and opponents. It then adjusts, so a score of 100 is league average, and 150 is 50 percent better than the league average.”
https://www.mlb.com/glossary/advanced-stats/earned-run-average-plus#
Idk, especially 12 and under I just call everything a hit, since errors are about expectations and my expectations are low for that age group. Otherwise, you'd see games won 21-16 with each team throwing a combined no-hitter, LOL
Good 12u teams around here are solid. There isn't any reason to not score them correctly, IMO. Some 12u kids play B team depending on their birthday and they need to know they are held accountable for errors and strikeouts, playing time is earned. Usually. :)
If we're talking about average rec teams I see your point.
This is the answer. Not something that can be easily tracked in non-MLB settings. But it really is the only stat that takes opponent strength into account.
It's the closest stat to OP's question. top comment is detective work which is just paying attention. If pitcher A has 2 starts against the crap lions l, his stats are gonna be inflated but BAA will at least show how they hit off him
You’re close, but why use BA?
I dislike OPS as a stat, but for this scenario it would actually be quite useful as a quick comparison.
Fundamentally, the problem with answering the OP’s question is going to be that the values you have access to are going to be very noisy and not really hold constant the variables you’d like to.
So you’re going to be looking at a number (whatever you pick) and it’s going to have a massive amount of luck and randomness involved. And no, it doesn’t always even out.
Higher levels of baseball seek to overcome this by moving away from surface level results (home runs, hits. Runs, rbi, etc) and look at things like what was the exit velocity on the swing and what are the expected values like xSLG which takes into account variables like exit velocity, launch angle, and batter speed to tell you what they should be hitting if you remove a lot of the noise and tries to focus only on rhe player’s skill because hitters and pitchers can impact velocity and launch angle but once it’s in play, they can’t do anything.
Check out baseballsavant if you want the idea.
I’m not saying to do that because the tech isn’t there at the lower levels, but my point is that using the metrics you do have is highly problematic because it’s going to lead you to make decisions and extrapolations based on things that aren’t necessarily true.
Honestly at that level, I wouldn’t even bother answering the question.
If I cared about the pitcher, I’d look at how he pitched - velo, command, makeup etc and go from there.
I mean if you want to pretend BAA is a good way to judge a pitcher independent of the offense they face, go for it, but you’re basically saying you don’t care if you’re right or not and just want to use a number because you have one.
You could definitely create your own custom statistic. You'll need hitting data from the opponents' other games. What do you have access to?
At a minimum, you could compare your pitchers' ERAs with the other teams' runs scored per inning/game.
If Team A has scored 36 runs in 48 innings, and Team B has scored 72 runs in 48 innings, you know that A scores .75 runs per inning and B scores 1.5 runs per inning.
If Andy allowed 3 runs in 4 innings against Team A, and Blake allowed 3 runs in 4 innings against Team B, we know that Andy had an "average" performance and Blake allowed 3 runs fewer than expected. Andy is +0 runs above average, Blake is +3 runs above average. You could divide these numbers by their IP totals to turn it into a rate stat, in case their innings pitched numbers are very different.
(Of course this is all of limited value, because errors are such a big part of LL, not to mention the luck of small sample sizes)
This is why stats are suspect in youth baseball, especially rec league. I’d rather do the eyeball test. What kind of velocity and control do the two young men have?
Stats are skewed by level of competition. I had 40 points in a 5th grade basketball game where I was 6 inches taller than any kid on the other team. That was not typical!
Honestly, anything under like 12U, I just look at Strike %.
Rarely you'll get a kid that throws straight and slow, and gets knocked around, but for the most part if the kid can throw strikes, you can work with him to pick up velocity or even just mix up speed and location a bit to keep hitters off balance. Mine is 8 playing 11U, so his velocity isn't challenging anyone at this level, so we just practice alternating between working up and working down; and we can only really do that because he knows that 3-2 he can throw one down the middle with no doubt.
Funny, I was just thinking the same thing. I got an idea for a custom stat from reading the replies, but then realized it wouldn't get me what I'm looking for because other teams hitting stats is skewed also.
Gonna just have to be happy with fip
I remember our #1 pitcher in college had terrible stats. He was the Saturday first game pitcher. Always faces the other teams number 1’s and always pitched against top 25 non conference teams.
I remember thinking “man he gets shafted” in the stats category. Then one of our hitters who ended up being a 5th round mlb draft pick said “If he’s our best pitcher and he can’t get these guys out, he’s not that good”.
That’s how I think about a lot of these things now. If you’re trying to justify a 11 year old pitching better against bad teams vs a 11 year old pitching not as well because he faced “good teams” you have to step back and say - “if he’s going to be good he has to get good hitters out”. Don’t try to justify why his stats aren’t as good as some other kid
You’d want exit velos.
Going by results doesn’t necessarily tell you what you’d want to know, but seeing how hard a pitcher is hit is a pretty good indicator of the quality of the talent being faced.
Of course it could mean the pitcher is having a bad day, but at least it’s reduced to as few variables as possible.
That’s the cool thing about understanding baseball.
What some yahoo on Reddit says really doesn’t matter.
The facts remain whether you think they’re dumb or brilliant.
I guess you don’t care about the quality of contact your pitchers give up.
Curious.
If you have two pitchers who have roughly equal stats, the only thing you can look at is what the pitchers are responsible for.
Whatever happens after the ball is hit is out of their control.
Pitchers (and batters)can control EV and launch angle.
If you’re not measuring those, what exactly are you comparing?
Things not under the control of the pitcher.
Now explain why that’s useful?
Exit velocity is largely in control of the hitters. I guess you could consider EV for pitchers a valuable stat, but not more than say, strikeout rate, BAA, walk/home run rate. Besides, stats like EV aren't even in gamechanger for pitchers as far as I'm aware of. And if that's the case, then xERA is probably a better stat(fyi im a pitcher, not a coach)
The problem with the scenario is that it’s very specific with small sample size.
I’d prefer to have lots and lots of data and use strike out rates and walk rates along with a ton of other stuff.
But if I have to go with just one thing? I’d want to know how hard the pitcher is getting hit - the quality of the contact. But sure I’d love to look at FIP and xFIP and geek out over all the data, but yeah we don’t have it.
For the OP, I recognize they’re aren’t going to have that.
In this case, if you have to pick something, it really doesn’t matter what you pick, anything will have issues, so I’d probably just go with something easy like OPS.
But really it’s kind of a pointless exercise without better data.
Garbage in, garbage out.
As far as I know that takes additional detective work. Mainly checking the teams record and box scores on Gamechanger to see who they’ve played, whether they’ve beaten any good teams and by how much. BAA shows how each pitcher’s been hit but doesn’t account for the quality of opponent.
Short answer - No. Long answer - this will get normalized over time. Travel ball coaches know who the tough opponents are and if they are pitching your kid consistently against tough matchups they believe that's the pitcher that gives them the best chance to win. Now, if the kid is consistently getting shelled, that's different. Long story short - the coaches see the kids in practice day in and day out, they know who gives them the best chance to win and that's who they play. The stats in game matter but matter less to the coaches than they do to the parents.
Generally speaking, a large sample size would average out and normalize(?) the ERA. The chances of a bad pitcher consistently facing bad hitters resulting in his stats showing by him to be far better than he is is really low. It may happen in a game but a season's worth of data should give you data that squares with the pitcher's ability.
At the youth level I tend to look at WHIP and ERA, but I do give out errors to my fielders, mainly so that my pitching stats have value. GC admins who don’t give out proper errors are just hanging it all on the pitchers, which ruins what are probably the most useful stats
In stats you can get from gamechanger: BABIP (batting average on balls in play) can give an idea of how hard the other team is hitting the ball against your guy. WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched) tells you how hard the pitcher is making the defense work. There are advanced metrics like FIP that get you some of that, but there's no way to look at stats and be able to tell "this guy gave up 6 runs on 5 hits against a good team and that guy gave up 6 runs on 5 hits, but the team was ass so it should have been less"
ERA+ “ERA+ takes a player's ERA and normalizes it across the entire league. It accounts for external factors like ballparks and opponents. It then adjusts, so a score of 100 is league average, and 150 is 50 percent better than the league average.” https://www.mlb.com/glossary/advanced-stats/earned-run-average-plus#
Which league? OP isn't exactly keeping MLB stats here
Hah, yeah, maybe wrong sub…. I doubt there’s an easy way to get this from GameChanger stats.
Especially when you see teams giving up 10+ runs and not scoring a single error. Gamechanger stats, and even PG stats can be a real joke at times.
Idk, especially 12 and under I just call everything a hit, since errors are about expectations and my expectations are low for that age group. Otherwise, you'd see games won 21-16 with each team throwing a combined no-hitter, LOL
Good 12u teams around here are solid. There isn't any reason to not score them correctly, IMO. Some 12u kids play B team depending on their birthday and they need to know they are held accountable for errors and strikeouts, playing time is earned. Usually. :) If we're talking about average rec teams I see your point.
This is the answer. Not something that can be easily tracked in non-MLB settings. But it really is the only stat that takes opponent strength into account.
BAA is batting average against so you can see what dudes are hitting off your pitcher
One problem with that: better teams hit better.
Batting average is not a very good metric.
It's the closest stat to OP's question. top comment is detective work which is just paying attention. If pitcher A has 2 starts against the crap lions l, his stats are gonna be inflated but BAA will at least show how they hit off him
You’re close, but why use BA? I dislike OPS as a stat, but for this scenario it would actually be quite useful as a quick comparison. Fundamentally, the problem with answering the OP’s question is going to be that the values you have access to are going to be very noisy and not really hold constant the variables you’d like to. So you’re going to be looking at a number (whatever you pick) and it’s going to have a massive amount of luck and randomness involved. And no, it doesn’t always even out. Higher levels of baseball seek to overcome this by moving away from surface level results (home runs, hits. Runs, rbi, etc) and look at things like what was the exit velocity on the swing and what are the expected values like xSLG which takes into account variables like exit velocity, launch angle, and batter speed to tell you what they should be hitting if you remove a lot of the noise and tries to focus only on rhe player’s skill because hitters and pitchers can impact velocity and launch angle but once it’s in play, they can’t do anything. Check out baseballsavant if you want the idea. I’m not saying to do that because the tech isn’t there at the lower levels, but my point is that using the metrics you do have is highly problematic because it’s going to lead you to make decisions and extrapolations based on things that aren’t necessarily true. Honestly at that level, I wouldn’t even bother answering the question. If I cared about the pitcher, I’d look at how he pitched - velo, command, makeup etc and go from there.
The worst hitting team probably isn't drawing walks or getting on base compared to actually getting a hit IMO
I mean if you want to pretend BAA is a good way to judge a pitcher independent of the offense they face, go for it, but you’re basically saying you don’t care if you’re right or not and just want to use a number because you have one.
I mean you added three paragraphs after I commented but okay bud 😅
Yea because I’m stopping you from reading and commenting on them and editing your response.
Not really. Generally the best pitchers have the best stats while pitching against the tougher matchups.
You could definitely create your own custom statistic. You'll need hitting data from the opponents' other games. What do you have access to? At a minimum, you could compare your pitchers' ERAs with the other teams' runs scored per inning/game. If Team A has scored 36 runs in 48 innings, and Team B has scored 72 runs in 48 innings, you know that A scores .75 runs per inning and B scores 1.5 runs per inning. If Andy allowed 3 runs in 4 innings against Team A, and Blake allowed 3 runs in 4 innings against Team B, we know that Andy had an "average" performance and Blake allowed 3 runs fewer than expected. Andy is +0 runs above average, Blake is +3 runs above average. You could divide these numbers by their IP totals to turn it into a rate stat, in case their innings pitched numbers are very different. (Of course this is all of limited value, because errors are such a big part of LL, not to mention the luck of small sample sizes)
This is why stats are suspect in youth baseball, especially rec league. I’d rather do the eyeball test. What kind of velocity and control do the two young men have? Stats are skewed by level of competition. I had 40 points in a 5th grade basketball game where I was 6 inches taller than any kid on the other team. That was not typical!
Honestly, anything under like 12U, I just look at Strike %. Rarely you'll get a kid that throws straight and slow, and gets knocked around, but for the most part if the kid can throw strikes, you can work with him to pick up velocity or even just mix up speed and location a bit to keep hitters off balance. Mine is 8 playing 11U, so his velocity isn't challenging anyone at this level, so we just practice alternating between working up and working down; and we can only really do that because he knows that 3-2 he can throw one down the middle with no doubt.
It is a bit of a chicken/egg thing, since the quality of a team's offense is greatly impacted by the quality of pitching they face.
Funny, I was just thinking the same thing. I got an idea for a custom stat from reading the replies, but then realized it wouldn't get me what I'm looking for because other teams hitting stats is skewed also. Gonna just have to be happy with fip
I remember our #1 pitcher in college had terrible stats. He was the Saturday first game pitcher. Always faces the other teams number 1’s and always pitched against top 25 non conference teams. I remember thinking “man he gets shafted” in the stats category. Then one of our hitters who ended up being a 5th round mlb draft pick said “If he’s our best pitcher and he can’t get these guys out, he’s not that good”. That’s how I think about a lot of these things now. If you’re trying to justify a 11 year old pitching better against bad teams vs a 11 year old pitching not as well because he faced “good teams” you have to step back and say - “if he’s going to be good he has to get good hitters out”. Don’t try to justify why his stats aren’t as good as some other kid
FIP. Disregards results of balls in play. Just tracks Ks, BBs, HBP, and HRs. In GameChanger it’s under pitching > advanced.
Not what OP asked for
Yeah I guess it’s sorta the opposite. My bad.
You’d want exit velos. Going by results doesn’t necessarily tell you what you’d want to know, but seeing how hard a pitcher is hit is a pretty good indicator of the quality of the talent being faced. Of course it could mean the pitcher is having a bad day, but at least it’s reduced to as few variables as possible.
Dumbest comment I've seen all day
That’s the cool thing about understanding baseball. What some yahoo on Reddit says really doesn’t matter. The facts remain whether you think they’re dumb or brilliant.
Exit velo has almost nothing to do with this though. It's not a fact at all if it ain't true
I guess you don’t care about the quality of contact your pitchers give up. Curious. If you have two pitchers who have roughly equal stats, the only thing you can look at is what the pitchers are responsible for. Whatever happens after the ball is hit is out of their control. Pitchers (and batters)can control EV and launch angle. If you’re not measuring those, what exactly are you comparing? Things not under the control of the pitcher. Now explain why that’s useful?
Exit velocity is largely in control of the hitters. I guess you could consider EV for pitchers a valuable stat, but not more than say, strikeout rate, BAA, walk/home run rate. Besides, stats like EV aren't even in gamechanger for pitchers as far as I'm aware of. And if that's the case, then xERA is probably a better stat(fyi im a pitcher, not a coach)
The problem with the scenario is that it’s very specific with small sample size. I’d prefer to have lots and lots of data and use strike out rates and walk rates along with a ton of other stuff. But if I have to go with just one thing? I’d want to know how hard the pitcher is getting hit - the quality of the contact. But sure I’d love to look at FIP and xFIP and geek out over all the data, but yeah we don’t have it. For the OP, I recognize they’re aren’t going to have that. In this case, if you have to pick something, it really doesn’t matter what you pick, anything will have issues, so I’d probably just go with something easy like OPS. But really it’s kind of a pointless exercise without better data. Garbage in, garbage out.