Reply to Pls explain travel softball tournaments/games to me

Forum Index » Sports General Discussion

Reply to "Pls explain travel softball tournaments/games to me"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Baseball/softball is best understood as an individual sport with a team component.

Whereas soccer and other sports gain much from seasons, standings and playoffs, baseball and softball don’t necessarily have as much of that aspect in the sports. Thus, playing tournaments exclusively can and does make sense for many baseball/softball teams (especially the better ones) whereas for other sports leagues + tournaments are more impactful.

I wouldn’t read too much into it. [/quote]

Why don’t these sports gain much from seasons/playoffs?  They do in high school like any other sports. They do in rec.  Why is it less important in travel?[/quote]

Baseball/Softball are properly understood as individual sports because gameplay in these sports is (a) a series of discrete individual events in which (b) a player has very little to no impact after the player's involvement in a particular series of gameplay in complete.    To put this in practical terms, once the pitcher releases the ball, the pitcher has very limited impact on the remainder of sequence of events that make up a play.  Same for a batter.  Once contact is made with the ball, the batter has little impact on what follows beyond running the bases.  Same for the defender.  Once the defender has released the ball, she has very little impact on what happens afterwards.  Conversely, in basketball or soccer, a player releasing the ball still has an impact on the outcome of the sequence of events that make up a play and can manipulate the defense through positioning or return of the ball.

The net impact is that baseball/softball rely less on team chemistry than any other sport and why all star teams that don't practice together can play real meaningful baseball/softball games together.  In the vast majority of other sports you can't simply amass an All Star team that never practices together and actually play high level competitive [sport].  Teams in other sports need practice time to develop chemistry, timing and understanding of how they interact.  The easy break down of baseball/softball into individual, discrete events is also why those sports are the cutting edge of the statistical revolution.  Impact is easy to measure when starting and stopping points can be easily identified (which a player impacts a play).   And since chemistry is less important in baseball/softball, if you're playing at the top level, what you want to do is play the very top competition as much as possible.  To do that, you likely need to travel and play tournament games.  It is highly unlikely you'll play the best competition possible in league play.

To put it differently, in team sports like soccer, basketball, hockey, etc, the totality of the team can be greater than the sum of the individual parts.  In baseball/softball, the sum is super close the total of the individual parts.  League play is good for team sports because you can get a barometer and measure yourself against other teams.  High school baseball/softball make up for this problem by mostly playing their league games as series.  Whereas in soccer/basketball, you may go weeks in between playing a particular opponent twice.  In baseball, you schedule three consecutive games against the same team with the only real difference being who pitches during any given game.  League play is done for efficiency in baseball/softball.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics