8 Analytics Secrets That Winning High School Programs Don't Want You to Know

Want to win more high school games without a big budget or a data team? We break down a practical roadmap for using analytics that fits into a busy coach’s life, from what to track in a notebook to the in-game decisions that swing close contests. The message is simple: ask better questions, measure what matters, and teach your players the why behind every choice.

We start by replacing old offensive habits with clearer metrics. On-base percentage becomes the north star for lineup construction, and quality at-bats turn plate appearances into teachable moments. You’ll hear how to use hash marks and weekly leaderboards to reward hard contact, walks, and two-strike wins so players focus on approach, not just batting average. Then we tackle pitching the right way: trade ERA for strikeouts, walks, WHIP, and competitive pitches. Protect arms with pitch counts and rest rules, and use simple review sessions to connect pitch selection and results to real adjustments.

Tech doesn’t have to be expensive to be effective. A smartphone delivers powerful video feedback for swings and deliveries. A basic radar gun keeps development honest and celebrates real velocity gains. Free stat apps provide spray charts and tendencies you can use for smarter positioning and scouting. We translate data into decisions you can trust: when bunting actually pays, who should really lead off, why your best hitter often belongs in the two-hole, and how to beat the third-time-through penalty with a prepared bullpen plan.

The heart of the episode is culture. Share the numbers openly, explain decisions with clear math, and praise the right habits even when luck cuts against you. Players learn faster, stay confident longer, and grow into baseball thinkers who can compete at the next level. If you’re ready to blend old-school grit with modern clarity, hit play, grab a notebook, and start tracking OBP and QABs this week. Subscribe for more coaching strategies, share this with a coaching friend, and tell us which metric you’ll implement first.

Join the Baseball Coaches Unplugged podcast where an experienced baseball coach delves into the world of high school and travel baseball, offering insights on high school baseball coaching, leadership skills, hitting skills, pitching strategy, defensive skills, and overall baseball strategy, while also covering high school and college baseball, recruiting tips, youth and travel baseball coaching tips, and fostering a winning mentality and attitude in baseball players through strong baseball leadership and mentality.

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening Hook And Show Intro
• 0:53 Sponsor: Netting Professionals
• 2:04 Should High Schools Use Analytics
• 3:05 Low-Cost Stats That Change Offense
• 5:20 Pitching Metrics That Actually Matter
• 7:33 Affordable Tools And Simple Tech
• 9:05 Smarter In-Game Decisions
• 11:25 Teaching Players To Think
• 13:00 A Practical Season Action Plan
• 15:05 Blending Tradition With Data
• 20:00 Closing And Sponsor Reminder

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

The team that beats you won't have better athletes. They'll have smarter coaches. Today on Baseball Coaches Unplugged, I'll explain why.

SPEAKER_01: 0:14

This is the Ultimate High School Baseball Coaching Podcast. Baseball Coaches Unplugged, your go-to podcast for baseball coaching tips, drills, and player development strategies. From travel to high school and college. Unlock expert coaching advice grounded in real success stories, data-backed training methods, and mental performance tools to elevate your team. Tune in for bite-sized coaching wisdom, situational drills, team culture building, great stories and proven strategies that turn good players into great athletes. The only podcast that showcases the best coaches from across the country. With your host, Coach Ken Carpenter.

SPEAKER_00: 0:53

Today's episode of Baseball Coaches Unplugged is powered by the Netting Professionals, improving programs one facility at a time. Will Minor and his team at the Netting Professional specialize in the design, fabrication, and installation of custom netting for baseball and softball. This includes pack stops, batting cages, BP turtles, screens, ballcarts, and more. They also design and install digital graphic wall padding, windscreen, turf, turf protectors, dugout benches, and cubbies. The Netting Pros also work with football, soccer, lacrosse, golf courses, and now pickleball. Contact them today at 844-620-2707. That's 844-620-2707, or visit them online at www.nettingprose.com. Check out Netting Pros on X, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn for all their latest products and projects. If you enjoyed today's show, please be sure to share it with a coaching friend. Hit that subscribe button and look for a new episode every Wednesday where I sit down with some of the best coaches from across the country. Where do you stand with the use of analytics in high school baseball? This past week I was at the ABCA convention held in Columbus, Ohio. And if I would have gone around to each and every coach and asked them what their thoughts are on the use of analytics in baseball, I would have definitely got an opinion one way or the other. Well, today I want to make a case for the use of analytics in high school baseball. Analytics are great for the major leagues. They use them all the time. But you're a high school coach, you may have a small staff, you uh got to take care of your field, you don't have a field crew, you teach during the day, and you have family that you go home to each night. And I totally get that. But here's what I want you to understand: the analytics revolution isn't just for teens with a million-dollar budget and full-time data analysts. The science of winning is for you too. And today I'm going to show you how to apply these principles at the high school level with the resources you actually have. Let me take you on a practical journey through what analytics really mean for high school baseball. And trust me, this isn't about buying expensive technology. This is about being being smarter, coaching better, and giving your kids every advantage you can. Why does this matter in high school baseball? Let's start with reality. Your program isn't the Dodgers or the Yankees. You don't have stat cash, you might not even have a radar gun. But you know what? That doesn't matter nearly as much as you think. Because the core principles of baseball analytics are about the technology. They're about asking better questions. Questions like, are we actually developing players the right way? Are we making decisions based on what works or what we've always done? Are we putting our players in a position to succeed? Here's the truth that should excite you. Most high school programs are still operating on gut feelings and tradition. If you start to thinking analytically, even in simple ways, you have a massive competitive advantage. Simple stats that can change everything. Let's talk about that low-hanging fruit. The stats that you can track right now with a notebook and a pencil, and that will transform and eval in how you evaluate players and make decisions. First one is a big one on base percentage. Not batting average on base percentage. This is the single most important change you can make in how you think about offense. If you have a player who hits 280 but walks in, 50% of his plate appearances is getting on base at a 380 clip. That's elite. You'll take that every time. That's a run producer. But if you're only looking at batting average, you might bat him seventh and wonder why your offense is struggling. Here's a simple exercise you can do. Go back through your scorebook from last season, calculate each player's on-based percentage. Just take hits plus walk plus hit by pitches, divide by at bats plus walks, plus hit by pitches, plus sacrifice flies. I guarantee you you'll find players you've undervalued and players you've overvalued. Second, quality at bats. A lot of coaches are into this. This is something you can track during the game with simple hash marks. What counts is a quality at bat. Hitting hard, hitting the ball hard, even if it's an out, moving a runner over productively, working a walk, getting hit by a pitch, a sacrifice fly, a two-strike hit. These are the things that actually contribute to winning. But they often get overlooked because they don't always show up in the batting average. Track quality A Bs. Share them with your players and watch what happens. Players start competing for them. They start taking pride in the process, not just the results. And that's when development happens. Rethinking pitching without a radar gun. Let's talk about pitching, because this is where high school coaches can make big mistakes. You've got a senior who's been your ace for two years. He's got a 2.50 ERA. He competes. Coaches love him, but here's what you need to track. How many strikeouts per seven innings? What's his walk rate? What's his whip? Walks plus hits divided by innings pitched. Because here's the secret about ERA: it's heavily dependent on your defense and luck. A pitcher can give up five hard-hit balls that happen to be caught and look great. Another pitch can pitcher can induce weak contact that finds holes and looks terrible. Over a small high school sample size, the variance is huge. Instead, focus on what the pitcher controls. Strikes, walks, and strikeouts. A pitcher with a K per nine rate above 7.0 and a walk rate below 3.0 per nine innings, you can even break that down to seven innings, I guess. Regardless of ERA, those are the guys who will succeed at the next level because they control the things that matter. Here's practical drill. Track competitive pitches in bullpen's and games. A competitive pitch is a strike or a pitch that makes the hitter chase. If your pitcher is throwing 65% competitive pitches, that's solid. If he's below 55%, he's struggling to command the zone and will get hard eventually, even if the results haven't caught up yet. You need to track pitch counts and innings properly. Youth pitching injuries, like everybody knows right now, are an epidemic because of coaches that overuse arms at a young level. The signs on this is clear. High pitch counts, too many innings, year-round throwing without breast, these are risk factors. You can download free pitch count tracking apps, use them, protect the player's future. There are some free and cheap tools that can actually help you. When it comes to technology, you can do this, you can probably afford to do it and implement it. First video. Every player has a smartphone. Use it. Record batting practice. Record bull pens. Record games. You don't need fancy software. Just record it and watch it back with your players. The ability to see themselves is incredibly powerful. The kid who swears he's keeping his hands inside, show him the video. The pitcher who doesn't think he's dropping his elbows, show him. There are free apps like Coach's Eye and Huddle Technique that let you do basic video analysis, draw lines, compare swings side by side, slow motion playback. These cost nothing or very little. Second, if you can scrape together a couple hundred bucks, get a basic radar gun. You don't need a Stalker Pro, a pocket braid or a bushnel work fine. Why? Because velocity matters for player development. That sophomore that's throwing 76 in March, who's throwing 81 in May, that's measurable progress that you can celebrate. That pitcher who thinks he throws harder than he does, the radar gun will tell him the truth and helps him understand what he needs to work on. Third, you can leverage free online resources, game changer and similar apps, lets parents track every player for free. You get spray charts, stats, tendencies, all automated. Assign it to whoever's keeping your book. Hopefully it's one of your coaches or a team manager. Suddenly you've got data on wherever your hitter hits the ball, what pitch pitches they struggle with, situational hitting. This is gold for game planning. If you want to go a step further, there are affordable launch monitors now. Rapsido has a hitting unit for around 500 that measures exit velocity and launch angle. Split it with your booster club or apply for a grant. That's professional level data for a couple for the cost of a couple new batting helmets. Make smarter game decisions. This is critical. Let's talk about how analytics should change your in-game management because this is where you can win games right now. The bunt. I always was a big proponent of putting bunts down, but man, here's what the data shows at every level. Bunting is usually a bad idea unless you're bunting for a hit. When you give up an out to move a runner from first to second, you're decreasing your expected runs in that inning. You're trading a chance at a big inning for a slightly better chance at one run. I know it feels wrong. It feels like you're playing for the big inning and not being aggressive. But trust me on this, even at the high school level, your chances of scoring decrease when you butt. There are exceptions. Runner on second, nobody out. You need one run late, weak hitter to plate. Okay. Getting to put down a bunt. But runner on first with one out, let your hitter swing away. The math is clear. Lineup construction. This matters more than most coaches realize. Your better hitter should probably bat second, not third or fourth. Why? Because your best hitter batting second means he gets more at bats over the course of a season. More at bats for your best player equals more production. Your three-hole hitter should be your next best player. Fourth can be a power guy, but don't automatically default to tradition here. And stop putting your fastest player in the leadoff spot just because he's fast. If he can't get on base, speed doesn't matter. Your leadoff hitter should have your highest on base percentage, period. Even if he's slow. Your table setter is the guy who gets on base the most. Let's move to pitching changes. Here's where high school coaches can hurt themselves. That starter who's dealing through five innings, you're thinking he's my ace, he can finish. Look at the numbers. Most high school pitchers get significantly worse the third time through the lineup. Their velocity will drop off, their command may waver, and hitters have seen their stuff twice already. Have a plan before the game. If your starter is he's at 75 pitches after five innings and has faced most of the lineup twice, consider bringing in your best reliever, even if it's a close game and you're protecting a lead. Your fresh reliever facing hitters for the first time is often better than a tired starter facing him for a third time. Now that goes out the window if you have a power pitcher that goes out and gives you seven innings every time he walks out on the mound. Teach players to think analytically. Here's where this gets powerful for high school coaches. When you teach your players to think analytically, you're not just helping them win games, you're developing them as baseball players and preparing them for the next level. Share the stats with your players. Post weekly on-base percentage leaders. Celebrate quality A Bs. Track hard hit balls, not just hits. When a kid smokes a line drive right at someone for an out, acknowledge it publicly. Great at bait, great at bat, great swing, unlucky result. That's what we're looking for. This does two things. First, it teaches players to focus on the process over the result, which is crucial for development. Baseball is a game of failure. Even the best hitters, they get out 65% of the time. If players are only rewarded for results, they'll get discouraged and won't develop. But if they're praised for quality swings, competitive at-bats, and putting the ball in play hard, they'll stay confident and keep improving. Second, it prepares them for college, and if they're lucky, a chance at Pro Ball. Because that's what they do. They evaluate. College coaches and pro scouts aren't just looking at batting average. They're looking at exit velocity, swing decisions, plate discipline. The kid who's hitting 250, but walking 15% of the time and hitting the ball hard, he's got a future. The kid hitting 350 but swinging at everything and hitting weak grounders, he's going to struggle at the next level. Teach your pitchers about sequencing, not just throwing strikes. Track where the pitchers, where the pitches are working on what counts. After games, Ru, take time to review it with them. You threw 12 first pitch fastballs for strikes. That's elite. But your two-strike changeup got hit hard three times. We need to work on that. This is developing a baseball IQ, not just physical skills. Create a culture where players understand the why behind decisions. Because today's athlete, they want to know why. When you pinch run for your cleanup hitter in a sixth inning, explain the win probability math to the team. When you let a guy swing 3-0 instead of taking, explain that you trust him and that a 3-0 fastball is the best pitch you'll see. Smart players make smart decisions in critical moments. So let's put a action plan together for this that you can implement this season. Regardless of your budget or technical expertise. That first when you start the season out, even in preseason games, start tracking on-base percentage and quality at bats. That's it. Just two things. Create a simple spreadsheet or even use a notebook. Share the results with your team weekly. You can also start video recording with all the practices of every batting practice and bullpen. And if you have to, have the players record themselves. You know, all you'll need is just a phone and a tripod. Start building that library so players can review their mechanics. Evaluate your lineup based on on-base percentage, not bad average or feel. Put your highest on-base percentage guys in the top three spots and see what happens. Create a pitch count and innings tracking systems if you don't have one. You can download a free app. Protect your pitcher's arms. This is a non-negotiable throughout the season. Keep a spray chart for opponents you'll face twice. Teams that you'll see in your league that you know you're going to see them twice, or you may end up seeing them in the tournament at the end of the season. Use it for defensive positioning in the rematch. Track your pitcher's effectiveness first time through the lineup versus third time through. Use this data for pitching changes. End of the season, calculate and share each player's full statistical profile. Quality A B percentage, hard hit rate, just for just your eye test. That's it. That's fine. For pitchers, strike, strike rate, walk rate, whip. Show players where they excelled and where they need to improve in the offseason. And here's the thing: you don't need to do all of this. Pick two or three things that resonate with you and implement them well. That's infinitely better than trying to do everything and doing it poorly. The bottom line for high school coaches: look, I know change is hard. I know you've been coaching a certain way for years and it's worked. I know some of this might feel like it violates the sacred traditions of the game you love. But here's what I want you to understand using analytics at the high school level isn't about abandoning baseball tradition or turning kids into robots. It's about giving them every possible advantage. It's about making smarter decisions with the limited practice time you have. It's about developing Developing them more effectively so they can play at a high level. And it's about winning more games, which let's be honest, makes everything more fun. The programs are going that are going to dominate high school baseball in the next decade are the ones that blend traditional coaching wisdom with analytical theme thinking. They're going to be led by coaches who aren't afraid to ask why. They're going to track the right metrics, make data-informed decisions, developed players. And a lot of times, you got to mix in trust in your gut. You don't need a big budget. You don't need a staff of analysts. You just need to be willing to think differently and consistently track a few things. Your players deserve that. Your program, it also deserves that. And honestly, the game deserves that. So grab a notebook, download a free app, and start tracking on-based percentage this week. I promise you, at the end of the season, you'll look back and wonder why you didn't start doing that sooner. Baseball Coaches Unplugged Podcast is proud to be partnered with the Netting Professionals, improving programs one facility at a time. Coaches, Spring will be here before you know it. You might want to check out these guys and help improve your field and facilities right away. They do a great job. You can contact them today at 844-620-2707, or just visit them online at www.nettingprose.com. As always, I'm Ken Carpenter. Thanks for listening to Baseball Coaches Unplugged.