from Amazon
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Stopwatches
Rob at Batter’s Box used some high technology to figure out how fast a batter runs to first base. (Hat tip studes.) I love this stuff, because it’s so basic, and so easy to record. One of my favorite shows in the 80s was the skills competition (the NHL did a great job with those as well). From what I remember, they did bunting and getting to first base, stealing second base, scoring from second base, throwing from the OF to a cutoff guy, and a few hitting skills. I remember Tim Raines winning one of these competitions (in the Year of the Bo). I’d love to see more “getting back to basics” data recording. I’ll repeat here my call to get more scorers and stopwatches to record games.
Every chance I get, I go on a rampage on giving a stopwatch to the scorers. And the scorers always tell me the same thing: they are overworked, so how can I make such a suggestion? They are right. The NHL has something like 5 to 7 scorers recording tons of data. MLB I believe has one official scorer, and then a PBP guy. I think that’s the extent of it. The NHL revenue stream is less than half of the MLB revenue stream. If they NHL can afford 5 scorer, MLB can afford to have 10 per game. I’m *not* suggesting they have 10, for logisitcal reasons. But, they can certainly afford it. If logisitically the NHL can handle 5 to 7, then so can MLB. But, all I’m saying is to get 1 more, and give the guy a stopwatch. And maybe he can record the fielding location of all the fielders before each pitch.