Have to agree with TR on this one ... while stats can be misleading at times, I have also found them to be revealing over the years as well. Coaches are like anyone else ... they have built in biases towards certain players ... not necessarily a daughter, but sometimes someone whose parent they like, someone who is always working hard at practices, someone who has a nice swing, etc. I can say that almost every year I've coached, there's been someone when I looked at the stats about halfway through the season who was doing better than I thought, and someone else who was doing worse. When the book is kept well and there's enough opportunities (say 50 at bats or so), they start to mean more and more, and every coach should take them into consideration when setting lineups in my opinion. And while I didn't routinely share them with parents, I would do when asked or if I felt I needed to in order to help explain why I was doing certain things (like playing them less).
I agree about using statistics to help create a lineup, coach...but only in part. Statistics are a quantitative measure of past events and aren't necessarily a predictor of future events. That is why it is crucial to consider the context of the statistics. After all, which coach hasn't had a kid that absolutely kills one type of pitching but fails miserably against another type of pitcher? Last year, I had a player who probably hit .475 against slow pitching, but against medium to fast pitching hit probably .065. Her overall batting average was close to .335 but that is because after awhile I stopped playing her against fast pitching. If I just blindly went by her overall hitting statistics, I would have batted her every game regardless of who the pitcher was...and the team may have suffered.
Also, statistics do not take into account the "improvement factor." In travel ball and high school ball, girls can improve significantly over the course of weeks and months. Flaws in swings can be fixed, injuries can heal up, confidence can soar, understanding of the count and other factors can make a particular batter far more likely to succeed than they did even two weeks prior. Again, we are trying to predict future success here when making out a lineup card.
Finally, statistics don't always give the full picture of how a batter got out or got on. Was Sally's 0-3 game or 2-15 derived from a bunch of hard hit line drives that fielders made great plays on? Was Jane's 8-13 derived from squibblers and poorly hit flares behind the first baseman? Predicting for future success, would you not want to give Sally a little more credit and consideration over Jane when making up a lineup?
Of course, we all know that generally speaking the more at bats that are taken into consideration the clearer picture you have from a statistical perspective. However, what is an "adequate" number of at bats to draw from? We have players who probably have about 120 at bats since we started playing together as a team in September. However, half of those at bats are from 4 months ago or longer (and indoors). That further reduces the sample size and the effectiveness in being a predictor of success.
In short, I do see obvious value in using stats to help make up lineups, but I also put a lot of stock in qualitative things that don't show up in stats: the player's swing, athleticism, improvement, confidence level, pitcher we are facing, mental toughness, understanding of counts, etc. These things to me are very important in predicting success as well.
Ok...back to work now.