Strikeouts question

Scenario: Last night a local coach calls in and says his starting pitcher struck out 19 batters in six innings of work. Also, the coach said the starting pitcher was relieved by his younger brother with one out in the sixth inning and came back later to finish the game. Brother pitches the last 2/3 of the sixth inning and 1/3 of the seventh inning, before starting pitcher comes back in for the final two outs.

Same coach in the preseason said the starting pitcher had 422 Ks last season, which would have more than doubled the Kentucky high school record. Said pitcher would have also broken the TEAM record for Ks in a season (record is 420ish) by himself.

Our problem isn't that the starting pitcher left then came back in. All I want to know is how is it feasible to strike out 19 in six innings. Starting pitcher also allowed two runs and two hits, so how does he get 19 Ks?

We've had problems with this coach in the past. He once called a score in and his team had 25 stolen bases, which would have shattered the stolen base record here.

Side note: We don't cover this school's games; we just include them in the roundups every day they have a game.

 

I realize that.

But I asked the coach if there were any passed balls, and he said no.

 

Of course it's possible, but it sure sounds like this coach is either a) a liar or b) doesn't know anything about statistics.
If the pitcher is putting up those kinds of numbers, he's got to be getting serious looks from the scouts.
I think I'd call an opposing coach and see how the books compared.

 

Hilarious. Who was catching? Matt LeCroy?

 

We had a coach like that in our coverage area. It was a small, christian school that played in the smallest division. The other coaches in the area complained because these crappy-ass players were leading the area in all the stat categories and they were obviously bogus.

But what do you do? Send a writer to every game to verify stats? Call the coach a liar? Making things more difficult was that the coach was a super nice guy.

 

They were stealing all four bases. DUH!

 

This coach is a nice guy, too. But we don't include them in our weekly stats leaders, so none of the other coaches complain.

Said school is a small Christian school (350 total students K-12) making the jump from the KY Christian Athletic Association to the KHSAA next year.

 

Sounds like the guy is full of shit, but, yes, he could get 19 K's in 16 innings with a passed ball or wild pitch on strike three. Of course, that would be an amazing game, recording all of his outs by strikeout.

Allowing two runs and two hits wouldn't have any effect on whether whether he struck out 19 hitters. They could score 10 runs and he could get 18 strikeouts.

 

Pern, last year things got so out of hand that we quit using his stolen base stats in our roundups. A few of the parents complained about it, but once they saw why we didn't use his stats, they quit complaining.

And if this kid struck out 422 hitters last year, don't you (or anyone else, for that matter) think he should be garnering attention from major league scouts or some big D-I schools?

 

My favorite was volleyball. One coach's team had just an outrageous number of everything: kills, digs, set assists, everything. Like a hundred digs a game for the team in a three-game match. And they weren't a good team or anything either. They were badly losing matches where some girl would get "50 kills." The other coaches were outraged, but, again, what are you supposed to do, go to every match? What we did do was keep those players off of all-area teams.

 

During college, I helped keep stats at some non-revenue events for the SID. At the end of one volleyball match, the opposing team's student manager came over and wanted to know how many blocks one of her players with, (because, as she said, people were always not crediting her with enough).

One of our guys was pretty sure this player didn't have that many. And we even asked one of the home team's players if one player had a ton of blocks and that player said no.