No sport relies on statistics more than baseball. But that doesn’t mean that they mean everything. One of the most frequently asked questions by high school players and their parents is: Do your high school stats matter to college baseball recruiters? Well, sometimes yes and sometimes no. Same for the statistics from your summer team. It depends on a variety of factors and there’s no clear-cut answer. Here’s the case for both points of view:
Why college coaches might not care about your stats:
There are several reasons why coaches might not look to your statistics during the recruiting process. The first and most important reason is that they may not trust those stats. High school players often send whatever their personal record-keeping is of their stats, so they are not verified at all. If your coach sends official team statistics, that does lend a little more credibility to them.
Statistics don’t tell your level of competition. You could be in the worst league in America and have great stats because of it. Or you might have good stats in a good league, but you crush the ball against the worst teams and worst pitching but struggle against the best teams.
Stats — the cliché goes — lie. For example, you might have committed only two errors on the year at shortstop. Sounds impressive. But maybe you only committed that many because you can’t get to the other balls in the hole or up the middle because you don’t have better range. A kid who made 13 errors at shortstop could be much better than you.
Statistics don’t measure your ability at crunch time — at least not the ones that are done for high school and summer leagues. How many times with a man on second and two out did you get that key hit? How many times did you move a guy over? Can you bunt? Are you great at the hit and run?
Stats don’t measure your heart, your work ethic, your personality and your coachability.
Why college coaches might care about your stats:
If you have nothing else to go on, then this often can be the only tool used to decide if a program wants to pursue you further or not. Certainly no coach makes a decision on stats, but they might make a point to get to know more about you.
Some coaches and programs are known for keeping good statistics and, thus, can be more trusted than others.
can be more trusted than others. n While coaches may not base decisions on all of your stats, some of those stats can be very telling. For pitchers, the number of starts, the number of innings pitched, your walk totals, your strikeouts — in other words, things that are totally within the pitchers control can be used to judge you. For hitters, strikeouts, power numbers and stolen bases can give a coach some insight into the type of player you are.
Now that all high schools will be going this year to the BBCOR bats, as colleges did last season, it is a more level playing field. We now will be able to compare your stats better to the current college game.
Regardless of your statistics on the field, that stats off the field that matter for sure are your grade-point average and your SAT and ACT score. Those always will be judged on a level playing field.