Prep Baseball Report

Top Viewed Stories of 2019: No. 1 - Rankings


Brandon Hall
Executive Director, PBR NC

The start of 2020 brings a lot of excitement and goal setting for players, coaches, and scouts across the country.  As we begin to look forward, we also take a brief look back at 2019 and some of the exciting things that happened, along with some of the stories that drew a lot of attention in the state of North Carolina. 

In 2019, Prep Baseball Report saw 9 million views on stories published to the site.  We also saw over 8.9 million hits on player profiles hosted within PBR.  As part of our look back at 2019, we will countdown some of the top viewed profiles and top news stories from the year.  Today we open up the look at the Top Viewed Stories in NC from 2019 with No. 2 on our list.

 

Top Viewed Stories of 2019

No. 1 - Rankings

Throughout each year, the staff of PBR of North Carolina works to see as many teams, players, games, and workouts as possible.  While on the road, our scouts are compiling notes to share with the baseball world.  These notes, stats, evaluations, and video are compiled and disseminated through the PBR website. 

With the help of Google Analytics we are able to track and follow which stories are popular and are read each week.  Without fail, no matter the timing of the release, or the time of the year, a release dealing with Class Rankings will draw baseball fans from across the state, and the country.  In 2019, and by a landslide, the most read stories posted to PBR of North Carolina dealt with Class Rankings.

The Class Rankings take a great deal of work from PBR's staff.  When PBR scouts see a players at an event or a game, they are working to put a player grade on each player possible.  The player grade is compilation of tools and attributes.  Once a player has earned a player grade, he is entered into a rankings database where players can be sorted by their player grade. 

In the course of assigning the player grades, there are a number of players that may have identical grades.  When this happens, the staff at PBR will debate and talk about specific players, working to create a rankings order.  At times, it can be preference.  An example may be two players that have the same player grade with one as a light hitting catcher and the other as a below average runner in the outfield.  Different coaches and evaluators may value different tools, creating the order that players may fall into the rankings, even when they have the same grade.

Once the player rankings are published our staff works to clarify, and at times justify, some of the rankings.  Stories that follow the rankings can include a look at newcomers, players who made a jump, or players to watch as we get ready for our next rankings release.

The rankings put out by PBR are educated guesses based on our experience in evaluation and the number of players and games we are able to see.  In 2019, the staff of PBR of NC saw over 300 high school games across the state, plus summer and fall games, plus PBR events.  The staff that works to finalize player rankings has over 70 years of scouting and evaluation experience at the college and pro level.

2019 Rankings Stories