true ranking system instead of popularity coaches

TheSoftballZone

Administrator
Joined
Jul 15, 2014
Messages
2,372
Reaction score
347
Points
83
Taken from another post.

Comment: true ranking system instead of popularity coaches vote like 10u & 12u. Those polls are always a mess. Close but a mess.
Problem is we would need ALL scores from all events along with a power index and a wat to calculate strength of schedule.

So what stats would you use to make a fair ranking system?

And let's don't forget we would need coaches that are willing to get off their ass and submit the stats. I believe it would be a complete waste of time and money to build a ranking system . Because people are just plan lazy.
 

yocoach

Super Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Jun 20, 2014
Messages
596
Reaction score
349
Points
63
Location
Youngstown, Oh.
As you said, in order to have a true ranking system, all scores from all tournaments for every team in the state would need to be reported. There are so many problems with this I won't even bother listing them all but here are a few. 1) Many teams play out of state so some common metrics for the unknown opponents would need to be established to judge the Ohio teams competitiveness. 2) Many TD's have enough on their plate with setting up, running and administering multiple tournaments throughout the year. They don't need nor want to spend additional hours reiterating scores that are kept on the various other sites or Apps such as USSSA, Tourney machine, Gamechanger, etc. Therefore, someone would need to go mine all of that data. 3) HC's may or may not be lazy but I know that I struggle to make time for anything other than SB and yard maintenance as an example. I have a SB field I need to maintain in order to use it for free. We practice 5-8 Tuesdays through Thursdays. Fridays we may play or not and all weekend long are tournaments every weekend through the first weekend of August. So, I work until 4 each afternoon if not until 4:30 some days. Monday's schedule goes something like this. work until 4, be at the field by 4:30, cut the field and surrounding areas until 6:30, fine drag the field to pickup errant weeds, finish drag the field to smooth it out by 7:30, weed-wack the entire fence-line and dugout area by 8:30, be home by 9 to shower and eat dinner just in time to go to bed so I can start over the next day. Fridays, if we're not playing, is the day where I need to maintain my yard at home and possibly travel to out of state tourneys. Over the weekend, the last thing I'm thinking of is getting on TSB to report my team's scores. If someone wants to call that lazy, then so be it. Sticks and stone and such. In reality, it really isn't important to my ego or my team's ego to know where we stack up against other teams in the state. I've been around long enough to know who the top teams are and can watch other teams warmups that I'm unfamiliar with to usually know if they'll give us a good game or if it will be a one-sided victory by either team.
 

Passion4theGame

Super Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Jun 30, 2014
Messages
1,178
Reaction score
657
Points
113
Location
Central Ohio
Website
www.cincydoom.net
*strength of schedule (we all know the big tournaments in state and some know the out of state ones.)
tougher tournaments gets more points.
*runs scored
*runs allowed
*opponent strength of organization and strength of schedule. (We all know the top teams & orgs in the state)

That's just some things I can think of off top of my head. Honestly I'm not sure how to calculate all that but I am with Shawn, I know whos going to give a a great game and whos going to get that butt whoopin. Many times by watching warm ups, or other games played by you opponent you can gage where your team stands.

I will admit sometimes as coaches we get a little cocky and take a team lightly and start a #3 pitcher and it back fires in our face and your playing catch up the rest of the game.
 

steve77621

Active Member
Joined
Jul 7, 2014
Messages
310
Reaction score
48
Points
28
I wish more people understood the last paragraph, a lot of times it’s not even being cocky it’s that you have 4 games in a day or 3 back to back to back and it’s really hot out. I have tried so many times explaining it to people and they never seem to get it. About 5 years ago we almost beat a Bandit team that we ran into down south at a tournament. Their schedule was Tennessee Mojo, Frost Falcons(Georgia), me, and then another powerhouse.( I think it was the Birmingham Bolts or Stangs from Florida but I don’t remember) Either way I knew that I was going to get their #3 if not #4 and of course I wanted to be able to say that we beat a Beverly Bandit team even if they were a year younger so I saved my #1 for them.(They ended up coming from behind and beating us by 2.). Had we have won that game doesn’t mean that we are nowhere near that level of team. The circumstances of the schedule just put us in a position to compete.
 

Passion4theGame

Super Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Jun 30, 2014
Messages
1,178
Reaction score
657
Points
113
Location
Central Ohio
Website
www.cincydoom.net
It’s always awesome to play best 9/10 vs best 9/10 but nothing and I mean nothing feels better than batting roster and whoopin a team you shouldn’t when they are batting 9. Love it!
 

Passion4theGame

Super Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Jun 30, 2014
Messages
1,178
Reaction score
657
Points
113
Location
Central Ohio
Website
www.cincydoom.net
Already done if you play USSA or ASA events...


Laughable. Have you looked at the rankings for USSSA lately?
Those teams would get SMOKED if they would play some of the top tournaments out there.
Nothing against USSSA or those teams at all. I think Mike has done a great job over the years.
Issue is most those tournaments at 14/16/18 are for B and C level teams. Teams that are out there to play competitively and wins some trophies. If USSSA would hold Showcase style events in Ohio and get the teams and coaches there I think you would get more A class teams at the upper age groups. Mike and I had this discussion a year or so ago.
Hopefully one day that happens. I think Mike Craig is one of the top Tournament Directors out there. Unfortunately our team is not playing any of his events this year.
 

CARDS

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 19, 2014
Messages
1,311
Reaction score
349
Points
83
Location
COLERAIN
Website
www.wearecolerain.com
Laughable. Have you looked at the rankings for USSSA lately?
Those teams would get SMOKED if they would play some of the top tournaments out there.
Nothing against USSSA or those teams at all. I think Mike has done a great job over the years.
Issue is most those tournaments at 14/16/18 are for B and C level teams. Teams that are out there to play competitively and wins some trophies. If USSSA would hold Showcase style events in Ohio and get the teams and coaches there I think you would get more A class teams at the upper age groups. Mike and I had this discussion a year or so ago.
Hopefully one day that happens. I think Mike Craig is one of the top Tournament Directors out there. Unfortunately our team is not playing any of his events this year.
Not playing in any particular sanction body event is team choice, it does not diminish the system a sanctioning body may have in place to rank teams because a team does not chose to play in their events or, make any less the points earned by teams playing within the sanctioning body.
Not to say any team is better than another but if a team decides to play USSSA schedule and they end up at top of the rankings that may come with more favorable positioning in a national that is what the system is for.
Our last year of 18U (2013) ASA was still the big dog as far as quality events that brought in teams from a wide area and there were several Nationals teams could compete to play in.
NSA was on its way out and PGF was working to get tournaments in Ohio. (Not sure how successful they were though), I think they had Stingrays at one point but not sure if the event is still PGF) PGF did get organizations to put premier after their name though LOL...

If you go to the USSA Ohio page you will see 25 of of the top 16U programs in Ohio are registered USSS A and over 200 teams registered B. Now many of the top 25 have not played USSSA to date thus they have no points but they did feel the need to register their team so I would think at some point there may be a plan to play USSSA.
Here is the link of organizations registered A USSSA @ 16U you can filter to B for the others

https://www.usssa.com/fastpitch/TeamSearchResults/?teamname=&regionID=937&classID=1020&seasonID=25


Another way of seeing where a team stacked up in Ohio (at one time) was playing in the ASA state tournament. No need for ranking here; like the WCWS it is determined on the field who is the best.
As teams go on to Nationals there are many factors that come into play. Did the team qualify for an event, did they take an at large bid/buy in are they wanting to use it as an end of year vacation etc. At the end of the day if you look at the team final list in any national event you can see where teams and organizations fall. On a side note:
Over the years I have found that most of the better teams/organizations don't really care about rankings they know their good and play a competitive regional or national schedule. These organizations also do not struggle come tryout time...
 
Last edited:

TheSoftballZone

Administrator
Joined
Jul 15, 2014
Messages
2,372
Reaction score
347
Points
83
Two thing we would need to make a ranking system that would be used.

Keep it simply so coaches would be motivated to put the information that's needed.

Take less then 2 minutes to fill out form.

I believe a simple ranking system would be the only way to go. And you would only need three or four pieces of information from coaches.

1.) How many teams were in your tournament?
2.) What place did you finish?
3.) What sanctioning body did you play?


You could easily come up with a mathematical formula that could rank teams based on performance.

Here's a example on how a simple system would work the example below is based on 20 teams. And its something I would be willing to build.

PGF = 3pts x 20 teams = 60 points
ASA = 2pts x 20 teams = 40 points
USSSA = 1 pts x 20 teams = 20 points

So if your team played a PGF tournament

Winner 60 points
Second 59 points
Third 58 points
Forth 57 points
All Teams would be awarded points bases on how they finished.

Of course these is only a example.
 

Passion4theGame

Super Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Jun 30, 2014
Messages
1,178
Reaction score
657
Points
113
Location
Central Ohio
Website
www.cincydoom.net
Two thing we would need to make a ranking system that would be used.

Keep it simply so coaches would be motivated to put the information that's needed.

Take less then 2 minutes to fill out form.

I believe a simple ranking system would be the only way to go. And you would only need three or four pieces of information from coaches.

1.) How many teams were in your tournament?
2.) What place did you finish?
3.) What sanctioning body did you play?


You could easily come up with a mathematical formula that could rank teams based on performance.

Here's a example on how a simple system would work the example below is based on 20 teams. And its something I would be willing to build.

PGF = 3pts x 20 teams = 60 points
ASA = 2pts x 20 teams = 40 points
USSSA = 1 pts x 20 teams = 20 points

So if your team played a PGF tournament

Winner 60 points
Second 59 points
Third 58 points
Forth 57 points
All Teams would be awarded points bases on how they finished.

Of course these is only a example.


Yes and no. Some of these showcase events are not sanctioned but they will have The Who’s who at the event and some great ball is being played.
 

tjsmize3

Active Member
Joined
Jun 17, 2014
Messages
397
Reaction score
78
Points
28
Yes and no. Some of these showcase events are not sanctioned but they will have The Who’s who at the event and some great ball is being played.
Right! That's always been the issue with club sport rankings. Polls vs those with some sort of incorporation of "strength of schedule." You don't have to look any farther than our Ohio High School ranking system to see the problem you run into when it's a "vote only" or poll format generating the rankings. On the other hand, a real "strength of schedule" format would be incredibly difficult, expensive and time consuming when you start ranking teams that play a lot of ball outside of OH. You bring up the most important point that the sanctioning body is a very loose correlation (at best) with the actual level of play at any particular tournament. So any person (or group of people) that create a system that gives points for tournaments would have to really have a good working knowledge of ALL of the top end tournaments in the entire US. And as you noted, many of the best tournaments are unsanctioned (i.e. IDT). If I were to try to do something like put a national ranking system together I would probably try to create some sort of composite score. I would probably start with taking 3-4 of the most often looked at rankings (e.g. Extra Innings, FloSoftball, US Club, etc...) and assign points based on where each team appears in those rankings on a composite basis. You could then invite coaches appearing in the top 25 of those rankings to vote every other week and then put together a final ranking every 2 weeks that takes into account ALL of that. You would hope the bias of each method would sort of cancel each other out in the process and you would have some kind of reasonable listing that could pass the eye test as well. This of course would be a colossal project and with no real money in it I don't see someone putting in that kind of work. Unfortunately a "simple" process is just going to another poll that doesn't come close to passing the eye test.
 

CARDS

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 19, 2014
Messages
1,311
Reaction score
349
Points
83
Location
COLERAIN
Website
www.wearecolerain.com
Two thing we would need to make a ranking system that would be used.

Keep it simply so coaches would be motivated to put the information that's needed.

Take less then 2 minutes to fill out form.

I believe a simple ranking system would be the only way to go. And you would only need three or four pieces of information from coaches.

1.) How many teams were in your tournament?
2.) What place did you finish?
3.) What sanctioning body did you play?


You could easily come up with a mathematical formula that could rank teams based on performance.

Here's a example on how a simple system would work the example below is based on 20 teams. And its something I would be willing to build.

PGF = 3pts x 20 teams = 60 points
ASA = 2pts x 20 teams = 40 points
USSSA = 1 pts x 20 teams = 20 points

So if your team played a PGF tournament

Winner 60 points
Second 59 points
Third 58 points
Forth 57 points
All Teams would be awarded points bases on how they finished.

Of course these is only a example.


Sounds good however....Why 3 Pt PGF and 1Pt USSAA?
How many PGF events are there in Ohio?

As you travel across the country ASA/USA events are very strong but there are many pockets down south where USSSA and ISA are mostly played. You have to check out a sanctioning body with a hall of shame like the ISA has. Some unique rules as well.

Now, one area that 14-18U teams tends to find themselves in is playing "not for a national" but playing a showcase schedule with open non sanctioned events.
Some of these events blend 16/18U teams. There are also "Open" events or HS events teams get into. We use to put on one in Maysville KY that would draw college teams, adult teams and 14-18U teams. Defiantly a different type of play.
 
Top