YEAR OF THE SHORTSTOP

In a pregame conversation near the end of the regular season, Terry Johnson was asked to compare two of the standout players in the Mountain Valley Conference. Wilkes Central’s baseball coach allowed that both were very good players, but without hesitation made a definitive judgment. I’ll take my guy, he said. Johnson’s guy was Skylar Brooks, his sophomore shortstop, and Brooks heads a group of players with outstanding offensive performances at what is one of baseball’s premium defensive positions. In a game that has embraced on-base percentage to go with a longtime love of extra-base power, the sum of those two numbers—on-base plus slugging percentage, or OPS—has become a modern measure of a hitter’s overall ability. And based on that standard, shortstops ruled the conference, including the four Wilkes County teams. Four of the top five players in OPS and six of the top 11 in the conference were shortstops. The best OPS mark on each Wilkes team was that team’s shortstop. “I think at the high school level it’s more the start of a trend,” Drew Ward, West Wilkes’ coach, said of the offensive output, “and I expect it to continue, because shortstop has become the place where you put your best athlete…. I think it’s a reflection of what’s been going on in college baseball, professional baseball. You don’t have the light-hitting middle infielders as much as you used to.” Dwayne Berrier, North Wilkes’ coach, said, “I feel like you’re able to sacrifice a little more of an athlete behind the plate now to be able to use them in the infield to get them to help you be able to make more plays…. My theory behind that is if you’re able to use your better athlete out there, chances are they’re probably one of your better hitters as well.” Bradley Hayes, the coach at East Wilkes, added, “It’s probably a coincidence that all four schools’ best guy ended up being (at shortstop), but usually—around here anyway—some of your best athletes are going to be catching, pitching or playing shortstop. That’s kind of the case with us.” And Johnson said, “It’s a little different in high school ball than when you get to college and the upper levels. We rely on our shortstops to be a key player in our defense, but we also rely on them to be… that athletic ability is there, and we expect them to be pretty good hitters, if not some of the best hitters on the team…. I don’t think it’s an anomaly in high school. I think it’s just one of those things that you see happen a lot.” The player of the year was a shortstop. The conference had four players selected all-state—three of them were shortstops and the fourth played the position when needed. Brooks led all players in the conference with a 1.708 OPS. Second was Ashe County shortstop Turtle Windish at 1.499, followed by Wilkes Central’s Houston Koon at 1.270, East Wilkes shortstop Bryce Vestal at 1.197 and West Wilkes shortstop Alex Ortiz at 1.164. Starmount shortstop Patrick Usher was eighth with a 1.031 OPS, and North Wilkes shortstop Daniel Pruitt was 11th at .957. An OPS above .933 is considered great in sabermetric analysis. As a reference, Babe Ruth’s career OPS was 1.164. All six of those players were all-conference selections. Brooks was the conference player of the year, and he, Koon, Ortiz and Windish were chosen all-state. Of that group, only Koon wasn’t primarily a shortstop. And with the defensive responsibilities of the position—positioning against hitters’ tendencies, turning double plays, pickoff plays and handling cutoff throws from the outfield just to name a few—being able to perform offensively as well can be a challenge. “We put a lot of emphasis on our shortstops because they’re involved in so many ways defensively,” Johnson said, “but we put a lot of stock in them at the plate and on the bases to do things for us as well.” Ward, who was the Northwest Conference’s player of the year as a shortstop at West Wilkes, said, “Outside of catching and doing the same thing, it’s probably the toughest position to do it at…. You have a key role in almost every play (defensively)… and when you’ve got to go swing, you’ve got to put all the defensive stuff to the side and go to bat. “It’s also tough sometimes because your shortstop usually has the best range on the infield,” Ward added, “so there’s more chances for him to make an error. So if he does make a few more errors, he’s got to put that away before he goes and picks the bat up.” Hayes and Berrier echoed that thought. “For a lot of guys, I think it is a challenge,” Hayes said. “Sometimes guys have a difficult time if they have an error in the field to leave it and come in and put their batters’ brains on. And the same goes if they have a bad at bat—sometimes they can’t flush it and go out and do what they’re supposed to do on defense.”

YEAR OF THE SHORTSTOP

Photo Credit: Wilkes Journal-Patriot

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