Part 3 of 3. Check out Slammers Youth Athletic Testing Leaderboards and Slammers Youth Rapsodo Hitting Leaderboards.
Putting this up top this week: All youth coaches have received all data on their teams, so if there are any immediate curiosities, they should be able to provide the data. All data from youth testing will populate into the Slammers Dashboard in the next month (and all parents / players will gain access to it there as well).
Throwing velocity as a comparative is not a point of focus for our younger youth players. While it does play on the field – both for pitchers and position players – each athlete is physically developing at different rates. Early developers will throw harder than average or late developers because of their physicality. We track throwing velocity during evaluation days with all of our youth players so that there is a year-over-year record – and so that players and parents can keep track of their own personal improvements. For the reasons above, this blog won’t feature youth pitching leaderboards for throwing velocity.
Intro to Pitch Score
We shared the pitching data with all youth coaches and for those who are curious, similar to Hit Score, we use Pitch Score to assess the ingredients that make a pitch successful – things like spin rate, velocity, vertical break, and horizontal break. The Pitch Score becomes much more important (and defined) as players ascend into high school. If you’re 11-years-old and your Pitch Score isn’t very good, frankly, it doesn’t really matter from an evaluative lens. What matters is that it’s trending in the right direction when you’re 12 (and then 13, 14, etc.).
If you’re interested in reading more about the ingredients that go into Pitch Score, check out this blog from last year.
Pitching is a bit different than the hitting and athletic data because the skill develops (and grows tentacles) on a different trajectory for each individual. The way our hitting evaluation is set up, it's 'see ball, hit ball.' The way our pitching evaluation is set up - well, it varies from North to South (neither is wrong or right) and from player to player. Some players are throwing secondary pitches where others aren't - and there is great variance across teams and age-levels. So, because of these complexities, there are no leaderboards to share for youth pitching data.