Box scores/line scores for baseball

Pretty good. I've never worked anywhere that wanted full boxes for high school or college games. Did them for Class A rookie ball local team, but never lower than that.

As some here will no doubt attest, it takes someone who knows what they are doing to accurately complete a full box when you are dealing with stuff like earned vs. unearned runs, stolen bases, fielding stats, etc.

 

Sounds a little too complex for high school. I'll run just about anything we get from coaches: Extra-base hits, RBIs, run scored. It gets more names in the paper, after all. Of course, since this isn't Little League, I'll draw the line at "Louie V.L. Slugger, great sportsmanship."

 

you've never covered higher than that. who do you think you're kidding?

 

i guess you must include hits as a luck stat as well, then.

 

Hits are a function of your own talent. RBIs are a function of luck because you need teammates to get on base (unless, of course, you hit a home run every time but we know that's kind of rare). It's not that complicated.

 

But there's an art to hitting in the clutch, with runners on base. So, yeah, part luck, but skill, too.

 

Baseball Prospectus, in its book "Baseball beyond the Numbers," actually agrees with you. But the conclusion was that the portion responsible for clutch was very small compared to talent of hitter overall.

 

Pretty much throws consistency out the window, though, doesn't it? From my perspective we are manufacturing results in the same sense that a widget factor manufactures widgets. And I want all widgets to be consistent and easily managed on deadline.

 

'Cause we always done it that way!

 

Here's what we settled on a few years back.

CRAP CITY 4, DORKVILLE 3
Crap City 010 020 1 - 4 8 1
Dorkville 200 100 0 - 3 5 2
Pitchers -- C: Jones 1IP, 4H, 2ER; Smith (W, 5-2) 4IP, 3H, 1ER; Brown (S, 4), 2IP, 2H, 0ER; D: Young (L, 4-4), 7IP, 8H, 3ER.
Leading hitters -- C: Johnson 2x4 (HR, 2 RBI); Doe 2x4 (2R, RBI); Green (R, 2B, RBI, 3SB); D: Ruth (HR, 3RBI); Gehrig 2x3 (2B); DiMaggio 2x3 (2B).

For hitting, we use x instead of dash for the 1x3 and then put the additionals in parentheses: Ruth 1x3 (HR, 3RBI). Seems easier to follow. Also no spaces between the number and the identifier, it seems to prevent hard-to-follow breaks. Smith (W, 5-2) 4IP, 3H, 1ER; Brown (S, 4) 2IP, 2H, 0ER.

We usually omit hitters who were 1-for unless it's special, i.e., broke up a no-hitter, winning hit, etc. If it's an extra-base hit we just go Smith (2B). Sometimes we'll list GWH if it was a seventh-inning situation and if it's unlikely to make the roundup that night. Ditto for team w-l records. This format also allows for us to work around coaches who don't have all the data they should (such as pitchers' W-L records).

We were quite attentive to details and tried many options using the same pool of data to compare space needed, readability, etc. Also, we showed it to people outside of Sports (advertising, front desk, etc) to see if they could figure out what the abbreviations meant. After fiddling, this seemed to provide the most info in the tightest space while also being easiest to follow.

 

Nice, but how many of these bad boys are you taking/running a day?

 

I think we should run everyone's name for high school box scores so everyone gets to see their name in print. They all work hard and should be recognized for their hard work even if it doesn't show on the field every time. And if they don't get a hit, just say they played hard on defense. The kids deserve it, and you don't want to make them feel bad for going 0-for-4 for the third game in a row.