When looking for an opponent for a recreational baseball team, one thing that is a major concern is..."The strength of the opposing team"is.
If a team publishes its recent game results online, you can get a rough idea of their strength from the inning scores.
However, unless a team belongs to a league, it's difficult to quantitatively express its strength.
This time, let's consider how to represent a team's strength and what metrics we can use to do so.
A collection of articles on batting, fielding, and base running tips for beginners in amateur baseball.
Wins and losses, goal difference
First, a classic way to gauge a team's strength is by its win-loss record.
If you know which league the team belongs to and what their win-loss record is, you can get a general idea of their strength.
However, the problem arises when a team is not part of a league or when they do not disclose their performance statistics.
If they haven't made their grades public, there's really nothing we can do.
However, if they are disclosing their win-loss record, we can make some educated guesses, albeit somewhat vaguely.
If their record was something like "4 wins and 10 losses," they might not be that strong, but they might be losing because they're only playing against higher-ranked teams.
If a team has a record of "13 wins and 1 loss," it could mean that they're either playing against an incredibly strong team, or they're only playing against weak opponents.
"Which teams have they played against, and what kind of results have they achieved?" is actually quite important information.
Let's say your team has previously played against team A and lost.
And if team B, which is scheduled to play next, has beaten team A, then we can infer that B is stronger than A.
By gradually playing against various opponents and accumulating data on their strengths, even if it's just a little at a time, I think we'll be able to gauge the strength of unknown teams as well.
Not many teams disclose their goal difference, but it would be even better if that information were available.
In amateur baseball, the lower the skill level, the more it becomes a free-for-all with teams scoring runs.
However, at higher levels, the games become close contests where teams try to maintain a one-point lead.
Teams that generally allow three runs or fewer likely have very solid pitching, catching, and infield defense.
Individual performance
Next, let's consider the case where individual statistics are made public.
The first thing to look at is the number of walks given up by the pitcher.
If a pitcher throws a reasonable number of innings and walks less than one per inning, that's considered pretty good control for an amateur baseball player.
Having good control means it's difficult to force them to self-destruct through walks, so we also need to hit them to a certain extent.
If a pitcher is striking out more than one batter per inning, it's safe to assume they have good fastball velocity or a good breaking ball.
When looking at the hitters' statistics, the ones to pay attention to are batting average and stolen bases.
The reason we look at batting average rather than on-base percentage is that while walks can be easily accumulated against weaker teams, batting average itself won't improve unless you consistently get hits.
A hitter with a high batting average is a player with high skill in hitting.This means you can get on base without relying on walks.
Also, a team where all of the batters have consistently high stolen base numbers is quite troublesome.
Stealing bases in amateur baseball is easier than in professional baseball.
However, for someone who isn't used to it, the number of stolen bases won't increase very quickly.
If everyone has a high number of stolen bases, it means that everyone knows the weaknesses in baseball play and that many of the players are good at stealing bases.
A team that keeps running at full speed is a formidable opponent.
Number of experienced people
Now, the next thing we need to consider is the "number of people with baseball experience."
In most cases, you can assume that someone with experience in high school or college baseball is quite skilled.
It's important to know what percentage of the nine defensive positions are occupied by these experienced players.
First of all, having experienced pitchers and catchers makes a huge difference in a team's strength.
After that, if the shortstop, third base, and first base positions are also filled with experienced players, the infield becomes quite solid.
If the battery is made up of experienced players, there will be fewer batted balls to the outfield in the first place, so even if there are fewer experienced players, the impact will be minimal.
In other words, if you can ask the question, "Of the nine defensive positions, how many are filled by experienced players?", you can perform a fairly accurate analysis of the team's strengths and weaknesses.
If the opposing team has four or five experienced players who can cover pitcher, catcher, shortstop, and third baseman (and first baseman), you can consider them a very strong opponent.
conclusion
The easiest way to gauge the strength of an opposing team is to ask, "Of the nine defensive positions, how many players have experience playing college baseball?"
Team win-loss records and individual statistics alone are too heavily influenced by the opponents being played against.
I believe that if amateur baseball teams clearly state the percentage of experienced players in each of the nine positions, they will attract opponents of a suitable skill level.
If you include this notation in your team introductions, it might lead to better matchmaking against opponents.
A collection of articles on batting, fielding, and base running tips for beginners in amateur baseball.
