HOW TO KEEP BASEBALL AND SOFTBALL STATS FOR YOUR KID

Your kid's team keeps a scorebook, but those numbers rarely make it home, and they disappear when the season ends. Keeping your own record of your player's games is one of the most useful things a baseball or softball parent can do. It shows real progress, it helps lessons focus on the right things, and it's the start of any recruiting conversation later.

You don't need to score the whole game. You only need to track one player, and that's much easier.

WHAT TO TRACK FOR A HITTER

For every time your player comes to the plate, write down what happened. That's it. Every stat below comes from these results.

• Plate appearances (PA): every trip to the plate, whatever happens.
• At-bats (AB): plate appearances, minus walks, hit-by-pitches, sacrifice bunts and sacrifice flies.
• Hits: singles, doubles, triples and home runs, written separately.
• Walks (BB), hit-by-pitch (HBP), strikeouts (K) and sacrifice flies (SF).
• Optional but valuable: where the ball went, and how hard it was hit.

THE THREE NUMBERS WORTH UNDERSTANDING

Batting average (AVG) = hits ÷ at-bats. It tells you how often a player gets a hit when they put the ball in play or strike out. A player with 12 hits in 40 at-bats is hitting .300.

On-base percentage (OBP) = (hits + walks + hit-by-pitch) ÷ (at-bats + walks + hit-by-pitch + sacrifice flies). It tells you how often a player gets on base, which is the whole point of hitting. Walks count here, so OBP rewards a good eye at the plate.

Slugging percentage (SLG) = total bases ÷ at-bats, where a single is 1 base, a double 2, a triple 3 and a home run 4. It measures power: two players can both hit .300, but the one hitting doubles has the higher slugging.

Add OBP and SLG together and you get OPS, a quick single-number summary many coaches use.

WHAT TO TRACK FOR A PITCHER

• Pitch count: every pitch, every outing. This matters most, for arm health.
• Strikes and balls, so you can figure strike percentage (strikes ÷ total pitches).
• First-pitch strikes: getting ahead 0-1 changes the whole at-bat.
• Strikeouts, walks, hits allowed and batters faced.

If you only track one thing for a pitcher, track the pitch count, and know how much rest it requires. (We wrote a whole guide on youth pitch count limits by age.)

HABITS THAT KEEP THE NUMBERS HONEST

• Record it right away. Memory fades fast between innings. Write it down during the at-bat, not after the game.
• Track every game, not just the good ones. A full season tells the truth; a highlight list doesn't.
• Note the competition level. Rec, travel, high school varsity: the same numbers mean different things at different levels.
• Don't be the official scorer in your head. Whether a play was a hit or an error is the scorer's call. Note what the official book says, and move on.
• Look at trends, not single games. Kids slump. Ten games tell you far more than one.

DOING IT THE EASY WAY

Paper works, but it's easy to lose and slow to total up. We built Prospekt so a parent can track one player (or several) from the stands, pitch by pitch, in a few taps. It figures AVG, OBP, slugging, strike percentage and the rest automatically, draws a spray chart of where the ball went, and keeps every game from every team and every season on one record that follows your player for years. That long view is where real progress shows up.

New to it? Our free how-to videos walk through setting up a game and tracking pitches live, about two minutes each.