Hidden Gold on the Diamond? The Contribution of the Relative Age Effect to Talent Estimation Errors of High School Players in the June MLB Draft Robert Brustad | 2016 SABR Analytics Conference presentations

2016 SABR Analytics Conference presentations | Society for American Baseball Research:

3:30-4:30 p.m., Friday, March 11Presented by Baseball Info Solutions, RP5 and RP6 took place back-to-back in a single session.

RP5: Hidden Gold on the Diamond? The Contribution of the Relative Age Effect to Talent Estimation Errors of High School Players in the June MLB Draft
Robert Brustad

• Audio: Click here to listen to Robert Brustad's presentation (MP3; 34:05) 
• Slides: Click here to view slides from Robert Brustad's presentation (PPT)

Identifying and projecting talent of high school players is complicated by meaningful age differences that exist among players within the same draft class. The “relative age effect” (RAE) refers to the tendency for older athletes within any competitive age cohort to appear more “talented” than younger athletes when current performance differences can be partially attributed to additional maturation and accumulated practice favoring older players. This study examined relative age influences on the probability of draft selection and eventual return value of high school players with the assumptions that relatively older players a) are more likely to be selected but b) relatively younger players have a higher ceiling and provide greater potential return. All high school draft selections in the first twenty rounds of the 2005 through 2012 MLB June drafts were included. The first analysis included those players born within the 12-month age range corresponding with the age of “typical” high school senior year players. Chi-square frequency analysis revealed a significant difference that favored the selection of older players. Return value was then assessed through subsequent accumulated MLB WAR values of three age-on-draft day groups. Significant differences existed in return value favoring the youngest group of players (m draft day age = 17.97 yrs.) who outperformed the average (m age = 18.40 yrs.) and oldest players (m age = 18.79 yrs.) by 2.36 and 2.44 times, respectively. This advantage was also present for seven of the eight individual drafts. Maturational considerations involved in projecting talent will be further discussed.

Robert Brustad is Professor in the School of Sport and Exercise Science at the University of Northern Colorado and former Editor of the Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology. His focus is on the design of talent identification and talent development systems in sport with primary interest devoted to the role of physical and psychological maturation and development on sport performance. He has consulted with various professional sport organizations and the United States Olympic Committee.

'via Blog this'

Survival of the fittest or survival of talent | footblogball

Fantastic article.

https://footblogball.wordpress.com/2015/02/27/survival-of-the-fittest-or-survival-of-talent/

Survival of the fittest or survival of talent

The optical illusion that is early talent identification and the selection philosophy of district teams

According to Darwin's theory of evolution organisms which are better adapted to their environment tend to survive longer. Does the environment we create influence the selection process and favor those that possess attributes that give them a temporary advantage while at the same time disqualifying those who at that moment in time are struggling to adapt?  Adaptive behavior is key to the survival of the human race and specific to soccer, a trait of high quality players. However if the early environment supports only temporary adapting systems ( in this case the young player) then those that are better equipt to adapt in the long run may well be lost to us forever.

Are some systems and structures just counterproductive ideologies that that are in conflict with development (learning & biopsychosocial) and the young player's natural learning process? We should of course remember that struggle is also part of the learning process. What are we doing to help players overcome those struggles that will appear during their development (non-linear)?

The Standard Model of Talent Identification
( Bailey, R.P: & Collins, D. The Standard Model of Talent Development and its

Discontents, Kinesiology Review, 2, 248-259)

In a recent paper, Bailey and Collins introduce one of the most common models used in talent identification, the Standard Model of Talent Development (SMTD)

This is a pyramid structure that is based on erroneous presumptions.

1. Development and performance are essentially linear.
2. Early ability that is identified as talent indicates future ability and performance.

The selection process is done at the cost of the wider group where focus is placed on those who have been identified as talented ( Bailey, R.P: & Collins, D. The Standard Model of Talent Development and its Discontents, Kinesiology Review, 2, 248-259)

Selection: Based on current performance. Identify those as talented as early as possible.

Early specialization is deemed necessary to reach elite performance level in the future.

Early performance and ability is necessary for success in the future.

De-selection: Hard to return to the system. Questionable selection criteria (often based on early physical characteristics)

District team selection often begins at the age of 13/14 and is part of this pyramid. Its influence is felt years before the actual selection process. I recently spoke with a Swedish U17 youth international who said that this process can create and feed a stressful environment. Over a year before the district team selection, every day at school, at training, on social media each match or training performance was put under the microscope of analysis. "How did you play? How did I play?  As well as being physically tired you would be mentally tired as well". The player went on to say "I was lucky because I had an external support structure, family and good adult mentors that really helped me, I don't know how I would have coped otherwise". Competition, failure and struggle are of course part of the sporting experience. They don't have to be negative experiences for children. The problems occur when it is all based on adult demands and values. These adult demands and values are appearing earlier and earlier in our sporting structures. The adult and the child, do they have the same motives?

There is no convincing evidence that most sports require an early investment of training in one activity. In fact, what evidence is available suggests that across a number of eventual elite players, early specialization is negatively correlated with eventual success (Gullich, 2011).

In the paper In the paper The Standard Model of Talent Development and Its Discontents (Bailey, R.P; & Collins, D. ) It is suggested that  "the apparent success of the SMTD is ultimately an optical illusion as there is no way of knowing who might have succeeded through different systems, and who were de-selected from the system but might have (under different circumstances) gone on to achieve high performance".

The paper goes on to suggest risks associated with ill-focused of incorrectly administered pyramids.

1. Early adult like training can lead to over-use injuries. There is a particular high risk associated with intensive training during maturation.
2. Early intensive training can lead to psychological problems. This can lead to drop out and burnout

Development is non-linear, learning is non-linear. Therefore talent is non-linear
Judging early performance during the formative years does have its problems. This is true especially when judging and identifying something that is non-linear using what is essentially a linear model.

1. Miss out on identifying other factors that are associated with talent ( soft skills such as decision making, communication, awareness)
2. Often fails to recognize potential due to a focus on the performance now.
3. Many pyramid structures based on early talent identification discriminate against those born later in the sporting calendar year.
4. Size and strength factors that are identified early contribute to a temporary advantage resulting in short term superior performance. This all evens out after maturity. There is a risk that the player has been used for his temporary advantage (to win) and has not actually learned the game. This player will struggle when growth evens out when maturity is attained.
5. Questionable accuracy with regard to measurement of ability, often affected by gender, ethnicity or socioeconomic background.

Are we judging biological maturation or talent?

Dutch Soccer coach Raymond Verheijen has presented data under the title "Growth spurt study in Dutch Youth Academy soccer". A 12 year study that included 36 professional clubs was carried out in Holland between the years 1997-2009. An analysis of a data base of over 10,000 players was carried out where factors such as height, weight, injuries and date of birth were taken in to consideration. The general idea was that month of birth should have no influence on talent. At the beginning of the study the Dutch schoolboy national teams were selected from August to July. Most players were born in the period August to October (43%) while only 10% of the players were born May-July. This phenomenon is often referred to as the Relative Age Effect (RAE).

Relative age effect (RAE): A bias that seems to favor a higher participation rate amongst those that are born early in the selection period).

Hancock, Adler, & Cote in a study from 2013 suggested that RAE is more than just a physical advantage. The research suggested that there are also some powerful social influences at play.

1. Parents (Matthew effect) – The rich get richer. Those who are perceived to have ability are given preferential treatment and extra support. This in turn increases that ability which leads to more support.
2. Coach (Pygmalion effect) – The higher the expectation placed on people the better is their performance. Those who are perceived to have ability are given more attention. Others feel neglected.
3. Athletes (Galatea effect) – A player may see that she is able to perform better than her peers. This performance can be due to due to early maturation A players opinion about her ability and his self-expectations about her performance largely determine the performance.

During this study the Dutch FA changed the cut-off date for its national youth teams to the Jan-Dec period. The RAE adjusted accordingly. It seemed that the scouting system was primarily based on how old the player was as opposed to how talented that player is or could be. Countries with small populations have a relatively small player pool.

Focusing on winning during the early stages of development just encourages the RAE, in turn making the player pool even smaller. It becomes more about the survival of the fittest as opposed to survival of talent.

The various traits slowly appear and differentiate over time….. infancy, adolescence, and even adulthood will see the latent components undergoing various transformations (Simonton,1999,p442)

In the research paper "Swedish soccer is searching for talent but finding age" Tomas Peterson says why players are chosen in accordance with their physical development is not known "but one may assume that there is a silent agenda dictating that these players will be the most successful in the forthcoming selection steps" from club to district team to national youth team. The material and data collected "indicates that selection on the grounds of physical development is already at work in groups of 5-12 year olds and " and the effect of this process is very clear when these children reach 13 and enter an even harder selection process. It is Tomas Petersons opinion that this is counter- productive to the development "of all the football talent that exists within every yearly cohort of girls and boys. I also believe that its goes against the goals of both the sports movement and the community in general".

Summary
"Assessment of talent at a single or narrow point in time is a flawed approach"- Mark Upton

Many current methods of focusing on early indicators of talent are very static and linear approaches. They ignore the fact that development is individual and that differences in performance can be explained by differences in maturation. Coaches that judge early talent evaluate and focus on the contemporary level of performance where physical characteristics are fundamental factors in the talent identification process. This brings to the surface three fundamental problems that need to be addressed with early talent ID.

1. Coaches gamble on the wrong players- (misuse of resources)
2. Miss out on those with more long term potential
3. Environment problem (development of a non-inclusive environment. No clear pathway back in to the system)

If we want to keep players viable over what is essentially a long, complex and sensitive development process then the aim should be to keep as many as possible as long as possible active within our sporting organization. What are we doing to help certain players overcome struggles that will appear during their development (non-linear)? What role does the environment play in creating these struggles?  We should remember that failure and struggle is also part of the learning process. Our environment should be a place where these failures and struggles can be met head on and dealt with through patience, encouragement, understanding and support.

Does the environment we create influence the selection process and favor those that possess attributes that give them a temporary advantage while at the same time disqualifying those who at that moment in time are struggling to adapt?

Sent from my iPhone

Smaller Towns Produce More Female Athletes: Discovery News

Interesting findings from this study that strike a similar them with the results found in the Relative Age Effect stuff. As far as athletic development, it's somewhat surprising that the attention effect may put a dent in the "big fish in a small pond" knock.

This quote speaks volumes, IMO. Apparently, results follow.

"If you have early success it changes your self-concept -- you believe you have talent."
Abernethy said this belief is nurtured because the talented regional athlete is picked in all the representative teams and gets more attention from coaches.


Smaller Towns Produce More Female Athletes: Discovery News:

Dani Cooper, ABC Science Online

Hometown: Chapel Hill, N.C. | Discovery News Video

March 5, 2009 -- When it comes to developing elite female athletes size makes a difference, a team of sports scientists has found.

Smaller towns and cities produce a disproportionate share of professional sportswomen, a recent paper published in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport shows.

The Australian-Canadian study looked at the place of birth of all American-born female athletes playing in the Ladies Professional Golf Association and the Women's United Soccer Association.

Using U.S. Census and the sports association data, they found that about 57 percent of all female American adolescents were born in cities with a population less than 500,000.

However, almost 85 percent of professional female golfers and about 80 percent of professional female soccer players were born in these less-dense communities.

The discrepancy was even greater as the size of the cities and towns grew smaller."

While 26 percent of females were born in cities of less than 50,000 population, these same centers accounted for 38 percent of all professional female golfers and 40 percent of all professional female soccer players.

Co-author Bruce Abernethy, of the Institute of Human Performance at the University of Hong Kong, said the findings support their earlier work that found elite male athletes are also more likely to come from smaller towns and cities.

Abernethy, who is also attached to the University of Queensland's School of Human Movement Studies, said however place of birth is unlikely to be the critical factor in developing sports expertise.

Rather it is "a proxy for describing different types of developmental environments, experiences and opportunities."

Abernethy points to the virtuous circle created for talented sports people growing up in a small town.

"It is much easier to be the best 13-year-old hockey player if you are living in a town with a population in the thousands, then it is in Sydney or New York," he said.

"If you have early success it changes your self-concept -- you believe you have talent."
Abernethy said this belief is nurtured because the talented regional athlete is picked in all the representative teams and gets more attention from coaches.

Their success also encourages them to practice more, which enhances their skills.

He said an equally talented child in the city will be in the middle ranks of their sport so will not get the same attention or develop the same self-concept.

Abernethy said other environmental factors also play a role.

"Smaller communities provide an environment that allows children a greater amount of independent mobility and physical safety," he and his colleagues write.

"When coupled with an abundance of space to play, these factors may facilitate diverse types of sport participation, a characteristic associated with the acquisition of sport expertise."

Abernethy said young athletes in country areas, because of less safety concerns, are not dependent on parental supervision to practice. This allows them to undertake what he calls "deliberate play," which is unstructured play that develops innovative skills they then use in their sports.

He said in country areas young players are also more likely to play against adults at an earlier age.

As a result they have to enhance their strategic thinking as they cannot rely on physical size to help them win, he said.

Abernethy said city-based sports administrators need to think how they can "create the environments that happen more naturally in towns." This could include rethinking the age-based structure of most junior sports.

The flaw in this system is that the physically bigger players are often picked as being talented, when it is only their size that allows them to dominate.

Once they hit grade sport and play against adults, they no longer have the size advantage and have not developed the strategic skills to go on.

Relative Age Effect spotted in Australia...and why it matters

From the blog Sports are 80 Percent Mental

http://blog.80percentmental.com/2010/02/month-of-birth-determines-success-in.html

Here it is again....

The month of your birth influences your chances of becoming a professional sportsperson, an Australian researcher has found. Senior research fellow Dr. Adrian Barnett from Queensland University of Technology's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation studies the seasonal patterns of population health and found the month you were born in could influence your future health and fitness.

The results of the study are published in the book Analysing Seasonal Health Data, by Barnett, co-authored by researcher Professor Annette Dobson from the University of Queensland.
Barnett analysed the birthdays of professional Australian Football League (AFL) players and found a disproportionate number had their birthdays in the early months of the year, while many fewer were born in the later months, especially December.

The Australian school year begins in January. "Children who are taller have an obvious advantage when playing the football code of AFL," Dr. Barnett said. "If you were born in January, you have almost 12 months' growth ahead of your classmates born late in the year, so whether you were born on December 31st or January 1st could have a huge effect on your life."

...and why it matters.

"Research in the UK shows those born at the start of the school year also do better academically and have more confidence," he said. "And with physical activity being so important, it could also mean smaller children get disheartened and play less sport. If smaller children are missing out on sporting activity then this has potentially serious consequences for their health in adulthood."

Dr. Barnett said this seasonal pattern could also result in wasted talent, with potential sports stars not being identified because they were competing against children who were much more physically advanced than them. He said a possible solution was for one of the sporting codes in Australia to change the team entry date from January 1st to July 1st.

I don't believe that the solution is as easy moving the birth date for the various youth leagues. Maybe part of the answer is to group teams more by size, as I believe youth football does.

Over here in the states, the travel/elite leagues are applying a form of self-selected, early identification system that removes some of the early achievers form the pool of late bloomers. I'm not sure that is the optimal system to have in place, but we are where we are.

TALENT - The Relative Age Effect and Success in Sports - Have a Good Birthday

It is interesting that when we examine issues relating to talent and how it is developed and where it comes from, some very fascinating pieces of information emerge.

Recent studies have shown that factors like birth month and whether a child is born in a relatively warm weather state has a higher correlation to success in sports generally and baseball in particular than ever imagined.

When I was coaching little league baseball, we called it "having a good birthday". It played as much of a role in the selection of players as baseball ability. Although maybe not as much as having a "GLM", but I digress. Now famous authors like Malcolm Gladwell and well respected university professors have put a name on it - The Relative Age Effect.

The theory is that children born only slightly after the cut-off date in age divided leagues by virtue of being older (and presumably bigger, stronger, more mature) than their peers accrue selection and developmental advantages. This effect is found within the educational system as well since when a child enters the system revolves around their birth date. The implication for future success in life is an issue here, just as it is for those involved in youth sports. It may in fact be a more important factor in the educational system (but this is a baseball blog and I am trying to stay on task).

These effects begin early in the sports career and the resulting head start obtained carries over into senior and elite competition. The effects are long lasting and appear to be more pronounced for males than females.

For further discussion of the Relative Age Effect in particular and other that lead to successful development (whether in sports, music, business, etc.) I would recommend:

Expert Performance in Sports by Starkes & Ericcson
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
Talent is Overrated (What really separates world-class performers from everybody else) by Geoff Colvin
and
The Talent Code (Greatness isn't born it's grown. Here's how) by Daniel Coyle

All are exceptional books.

OBTW (which means "Oh, by the way" thereby defeating the purpose of using an acronym) the term GLM means "Good Looking Mom". Most little league coaches know this term and use it in talent identification and player selection at the most junior levels in little league.

As the use and application of this metric was explained to me by a more experienced coach when I first began my foray into coaching baseball - "Charlie, if you're going to lose, you may as well enjoy the view".

WISE WORDS INDEED.

-----
Summary from Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Outliers: The Story of Success.

According to Gladwell the potential bounty of athletic prowess isn't so much in the genes as it is in a child's birth date.

Consider Canadian junior hockey, in which the cutoff date for age eligibility is Jan. 1.

"A boy who turns ten on January 2, then could be playing alongside someone who doesn't turn ten until the end of the year," Gladwell writes, exploring why a disproportionate number of elite hockey players have been born in January and February. "In preadolescence, a 12-month gap in age represents an enormous difference in physical maturity." The older athletes gain all the benefits of age bias: They're viewed as better because they are bigger, placed on teams with superior coaching and chosen to play in all-star games that enhance their development.

Gladwell finds similar results in U.S. baseball, in which cutoff dates for most youth leagues have been July 31, meaning, as he writes, "more major league players are born in August than in any other month."

----
The table below lays out the full month-to-month data. As of the 2005 season, 503 Americans born in August had made it to the major leagues compared with 313 American born in July. . . .

The pattern is unmistakable. From August through the following July, there is a steady decline in the likelihood that a child born in the United States will become a major leaguer. Meanwhile, among players born outside the 50 states, there are some hints of a pattern but nothing significant enough to reach any conclusions. An analysis of the birth dates of players in baseball’s minor leagues between 1984 and 2000 finds similar patterns, with American-born players far more likely to have been born in August than July. The birth-month pattern among Latin American minor leaguers is very different—if anything, they’re more likely to be born toward the end of the year, in October, November, and December.

The magical date of Aug. 1 gives a strong hint as to the explanation for this phenomenon. For more than 55 years, July 31 has been the age-cutoff date used by virtually all nonschool-affiliated baseball leagues in the United States. Youth baseball organizations including Little League, Cal Ripken/Babe Ruth, PONY, Dixie Youth, Hap Dumont, Dizzy Dean, American Legion, and more have long used that date to determine which players are eligible for which levels of play. (There is no such commonly used cutoff date in Latin America.) The result: In almost every American youth league, the oldest players are the ones born in August, and the youngest are those with July birthdays. For example, someone born on July 31, 1990, would almost certainly have been the youngest player on his youth team in 2001, his first year playing in the 11-and-12-year-olds league, and of average age in 2002, his second year in the same league. Someone born on Aug. 1, 1989, by contrast, would have been of average age in 2001, his first year playing in the 11-and-12-year-olds division, and would almost certainly be the oldest player in the league in 2002.

Twelve full months of development makes a huge difference for an 11- or 12-year-old. The player who is 12 months older will, on average, be bigger, stronger, and more coordinated than his younger counterpart, not to mention more experienced. And those bigger, better players are the ones given opportunities for further advancement. Other players, who are just as skilled for their age, are less likely to be given those same opportunities simply because of when they were born. . . .

This phenomenon will not come as news to social scientists, who have observed the same patterns in a number of different sports. The first major study of what has become known as the “relative age effect” . . . determined that NHL players of the early 1980s were more than four times as likely to be born in the first three months of the calendar year as the last three months. In 2005, a larger study on the relative age effect in European youth soccer . . . . found a large relative age effect in almost every European country, though it seems to shrink in adult leagues and is less significant in women’s soccer. . . .

Interestingly enough, the relative age effect doesn’t appear in the two other major American sports leagues. . . .

----------
"Born to play ball: the relative age effect and major league baseball" by AH Thompson, RH Barnsley,

The website below provides a brief summary of the work and a couple of illustrative graphs showing the effect. The entire report is available via .pdf below.

http://www.socialproblemindex.ualberta.ca/relage.htm#Baseball

PDF of the report available here:

http://www.socialproblemindex.ualberta.ca/RelAgeMLB.pdf

The upper graph (SHOWN BELOW) shows the influence of the relative age effect among Major League Baseball players. However, the magnitude of the effect is much lower than that found among other sports like soccer and hockey (see the soccer results for a graph depicted on the same scale).

In an attempt to understand this, we studied Little League players where the effect was presumed to be rooted. Our analysis of team rosters did not reflect the presence of an effect of any significance. It was only when we compared those selected for post-season play with those who were not selected, did an effect emerge. But as the lower figure shows, the differing trends for these two groups showed neither the magnitude nor the clarity found in other sports . This weak effect among professional baseball players was thus hypothesized to be a natural consequence of its weak development during the formative years of Little League. This, in turn, might be explained by the size of the age-range used by Little League teams - often 4 to 5 years - much larger than that found in other team sports. Thus, all budding baseball players are at a disadvantage when they begin, and all will have an advantage in later years. This may neutralize some of the mechanisms that might be "in play" in other sports.

Sources:
1. Thompson AH, Barnsley RH, Stebelsky G (1991). Born to play ball: The relative age effect and Major League Baseball. Sociology of Sport Journal, 8, 146-151 (for a copy click here)
2. Thompson AH, Barnsley RH, Stebelsky G (1992). Baseball performance and the relative age effect: Does Little League neutralize birth date selection bias? Nine, 1(1), 19-30.

Little League World Series is flirtin' with disaster, y'all

OK, I promised myself that this year I would not say anything negative about the Little League World Series. But I lied. I love the event, it still represents a slice of Americana, but there are some things I cannot watch much longer without venting.

First, the obligatory messages that you see EVERY broadcast, bar none. This wasn't quite so annoying when there was only ONE broadcast per year, but now that the LLWS looks more like March Madness, these messages have got to be scaled back somewhat.

1) The umpires are volunteers, they pay their own way here.
This message is usually delivered immediately after a retched safe/out call or a ball/strike call that Ray Charles would not miss. I'd pay some of these guys one-way ticket back home. Listen, these guys are supposed to be the creme de la creme of Little League umpires. It's not too much to ask that they appear to know what they are doing. Do your Leslie Nielsen, strikeout looking, punch out dance on the THIRD strike fellas. And this is after repeatedly looking at the indicator to check the count. It's not that hard to keep track in your head guys.

And if the field is 2/3 the size of a major league field, why do we need the same amount of umpires to cover it? Seems like four would be plenty. Most of these guys have probably rarely worked with ONE partner, much less FIVE others. And a one week or two week crash course is not going to get these guys up to speed in time.

2) The major leaguers are watching the LLWS in clubhouses across the country.
This is a bit of a tip of the cap and some needed good PR for ESPN's other corporate partner--Major League Baseball. I doubt too many guys are watching too strenuously when 75% of the time, they are playing at the same time. Oh, exception noted for the Cubs and White Sox, who are mandated by their coaches to watch the games in order to pick up base-running tips to improve their game.

3) The must play rule is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
No, it's not. It gives an advantage to the teams/leagues that carry less players on the roster. Unless they are mandating and enforcing that everyone actually has the same roster size coming into the game, there is an inequity that is being ignored.

4) The pitch count is the second greatest thing since sliced bread.
No, it's not. Unless you are also going to mandate that these kids do not throw curve-ball after curve-ball--ad nauseum--to say nothing of the slop-slider these kids twist off. I can't get through a single game without severe pain and inflammation in my elbow. And I'm just watching these kids throw.

To have the pitch count rule in place without doing anything to address breaking balls--I don't think you've made the world a much safer place for youth pitchers nationwide. And the continually mounting pitching injury statistics bear that out.

5) Which dovetails rather nicely into my next rant. Pitcher safety.
Having pitch counts will not be a salve to the wound that Little League Baseball and youth baseball in general will suffer when one of these pitchers takes a come backer to the face or head on national TV. To say nothing of the damage done if one of these calendar year 13 year-olds delivers a pitch to a late 11-early 12 year old batter.

The CA team's lineup last night went back-to-back with the 6-foot, 170 pound "Little" Leaguer and another good sized kid with a "Major" League swing. If he connected he could easily take out the 3B or pitcher with a rocket line drive.

One of the CA batters, after swinging at a third strike in the dirt that got past the catcher, TOOK OFF FOR FIRST BASE!! Do you know why he might have done that??? My guess is because he plays in a league or a travel team where they are ALLOWED to take off on a dropped third strike by rule. Granted, PONY does that and some 12 year-old travel leagues do, but my guess is that a lot of these 13 year-olds have played on the bigger field before.

We all marveled at Danny Almonte a couple of years ago until we learned that he was too good (too old) to be true. But was he such a phenom that LL or ESPN figured that people enjoyed watching the level of competence a 13-14 year old could provide and tried to increase the numbers by backing up the birth date eligibility to allow for it to happen more frequently?

We used to joke about kids who were big enough to have driven the team bus, but some of these kids look like they could actually LIFT the team bus.

It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt guys.

There is a lot of chatter about birth dates and it's effect on advancement and development throughout the major sports as well as other important elements of kids lives, such as education. And while the data is difficult to dismiss outright, I think a larger factor I see at work in these games is what Dr. Mike Marshall used to refer to as the LLWS being a Tournament of Accelerated Maturers.

If I remember right, we vacated a world championship won by the Philippines some years back after it was discovered that the team was stacked with 15-16 year-old kids. While that team was advanced physically, they were not that much bigger than a "normal" 12 year-old. And granted, there is a great range of size at this level, but the 14-15 year-olds would have more repetitions and greater overall skill development which that would deliver. It's a game of repetition and as a former colleague used to tell me "Charlie, you cannot teach BIG."

I hope these guys don't have such a party on the ratings bonanza (read money) that has accrued to both LL and ESPN from this expansion. Expanding the number of teams that play to promote the game is one thing, but expanding the talent pool to shoehorn borderline HS players into a kiddie pool is not pretty. To say nothing about how it endangers the safety of the players on the "short" end of the gene pool.

And I hope some poor kid never sacrifices his health and safety before the adults realize they have pushed the envelope too far.

P.S. - One more suggestion guys. The teams from "Saudi Arabia" and "Germany" that are in reality U.S. military base teams probably do nothing to promote the game internationally. The Middle East team should truly represent the Middle East, not the U.S. Same with the European representative.

If Little League isn't big enough in these countries that they are not able to field a team capable of getting out of their local pool maybe they should be handicapped as in golf and bowling and allowed to pull players from a wider radius than in the U.S. Maybe base it on population density or something and adjust it annually until these guys catch up.

And if you miss one year on the formula and one of these teams actually wins the title one year, so what. I MEAN, SO WHAT!!! Wouldn't that do more to promote the sport internationally at this level than almost anything else Little League can do? I mean some of these countries must be growing weary of being cannon fodder for the U.S.A. to trample over all the time.

Or throw all the team in the Final Four or Final Eight or whatever into one pool and play single-elimination from there. It's not really a "level playing field" when the International field is stacked with two or three championship caliber talent and only one team gets through to play a U.S. team that had to stretch to maybe win one game to get to the finale. The American team year after year seems to be able to set up it's pitching to win the tournament, while the World teams have to play hard every game just to get to the Final.

I would still watch a Japan-Curacao WS final.

Just a thought.

THIS JUST SCREAMS WHAT THE LITTLE LEAGUE WORLD SERIES IS ABOUT

http://www.littleleague.org/series/2006divisions/llbb/teams/transatlantic/aarondurley.htm

Meet Aaron Durley, Little League age 12, 6-8 and 256 pound first baseman for Arabian American Little League Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

This young man fares well in a Tale of the Tape with Prince Fielder. In fact, my money is on Aaron if he goes up against Cecil Fielder.

This is why when Dr. Mike Marshall rants about this type of tournament, and in some respects youth baseball in general, being mainly about "accelerated maturers" vs. "delayed maturers", we need to take notice and at least understand what is going on and gain some perspective.

In some respects, I have a love-hate relationship with all the hoopla surrounding the LLWS. Mainly because of the nostalgia, the light that is shined on the critical issues surrounding youth sports. You get to see, if you care to look, both the best and worst of what youth sports is all about. And amazingly, it is not all about steroid use.

We had the recent case of the coach in Utah, who intentionally walked a team's best hitter in the champioship game to get at the next hitter, who was a recent cancer survivor. And there was a split in the reaction to the event ranging from why was a no-competetive league holding a championship game, if the kid was handicapped why was he hitting behind the best hitter on the team, wouldn't you want to treat the kid equally, etc.

Watching the LL Southern Regional final between Columbus, Georgia and Dunedin, Florida, we got to see a polished, 12-year old lefthander throwing 80+ MPH fastballs.

No, Danny Almonte is not making a comeback.

But you do have to wonder about the accuracy of the radar readings when the Florida pitcher was throwing 64 MPH knuckle-curves. I don't think I had any High School Freshman throwing 80+ and thats 14 and 15 year olds. He did look as polished mechanically as some 14 and 15 year olds I've seen, it's just that I had the same queasy feeling I had when I saw Amonte pitch and that's a) 12 year olds don't throw that hard and b) 12 year old LH pitchers generally aren't that polished on the mound.

I hope for the sake of Little League Baseball that I'm just being overly cynical. Or that the radar readings are as inflated as a Major League Slugger. I'm not sure they could take another Almonte-like scandal.

Especially with the Outdoor Life Network showing the Cal Ripken World Series at the same time. Good to see some of these other organizations get some play. Especially Ripken's, they do an outstanding job and have a fantastic approach to youth sports overall. I saw Billy Ripken on air explaining rule changes for next year: 50 foot pitching distance to help the hitters a little bit and 70 foot basepaths to help infielders learn better mechanics. His explanation was that at the shorter distances IF's "panic" too easily and don't learn properly how to relax and just field the baseball and throw. They just don't hav enought time with 60 foot basepaths, or in most cases they don't feel like they have enough time. Good explanation for why they were making the change and I would expect both changes will facilitate a better overall game played by kids at that age.

Competition is good, it's what made America great. It's good to see some of that philosophy filter down to the youth baseball level.