In this edition of Stat Watch, we continue are look into the baseball teams offensive attack, but we start experimenting with pitching as well. I’ve also been playing with a new data/graphing system throughout the day, so graphs may show up and disappear as Paul and I work in the upgrade.

Hitting

The hitting stats are becoming more refined as batters are starting to accumulate at-bats. Our current at-bat leader (40 ABs) is Jake McLouth, who newly moved into the clean up position, has still yet to draw a walk this season. Cislo and Fellows pull up the rear with 31 ABs. I left Berset and Lorenz out of those numbers as they are replaced fairly consistently and have about 2/3 less the number of plate appearances as Cislo and Fellows.

The batting average didn’t quite make the jump you’d expect after winning a game 21-3 with 19 hits. Last week we ended with a .288 batting average; this week we end with a .291 average. Not much improvement right there.

As you can see, on-base-percentage also didn’t make a jump either. We actually lost .003 points down to .406 this week. This kind of comes off a little bit weird. I would have thought the Jacksonville 19-hit affair would have raised the percentage, but as they say, one game doesn’t make the season.

The rest of our games have been pretty abysmal in terms of hitting, and it shows in the following graph. What we have here is average hits (H/9), runs (R/9), walks (plus hit by pitch, BB/9), and strike outs (K/9) per 9 innings of hitting.

It’s encouraging to see our runs per nine innings going so high. It would be pretty high even if you took our 21 run game and made it 8, our current average, it would still have us scoring about 6.67 runs per game. That’s should be enough to compete well in any league… at least if our pitching keeps up their side of the deal.

I’d also like to point out the strike out’s per nine innings. That number has continued to grow as we’ve gone along, which is a definite problem. We’re currently averaging over a strike out per inning (9.11/9-innings). It’s killing several of our innings.

Lineup Changes

As mentioned in the weekend recap, we had a few lineup changes this weekend. Let’s take a little bit at a look why, just so you out there get a better idea of what’s going on. First, let’s look at McLouth vs Dufek.

On the left, we can see McLouth is hitting leaps and bounds above Dufek. Dufek is .182 points behind in average alone. In the slugging category, McLouth is averaging .279 more bases per at bat. In more basic terms, McLouth averages an extra single every 4 at bats he takes. That’s a very sizable gap.

This move places a better hitter behind our best player, Ryan LaMarre. By doing this, pitchers cannot pitch around and walk LaMarre without fear of giving up more runs. With Dufek struggling behind LaMarre, we may lose a few runs each game that his struggles continue.

The second move by Coach Maloney was to switch Anthony Toth and Kenny Fellows. Toth mainly batting in the 2-hole, as we can see in the graph below, was getting on consistently, but he was not able to put the ball in play and move the runners on base around or gather many RBIs.

Looking at the two players’ production, the on base numbers are currently very consistent, and both are rather good. The difference is the hitting, which Fellows has done better and more consistently better. Fellows is currently hitting .387, as compared to .250 for Toth.

By switching the two batters, Maloney is hoping that Toth will still continue his pace with walks, setting the table for the top of the order. The hope for Fellows is that he continues to hit and get on base, driving in more runs, moving the runners a head of him into scoring position, and still get on base to score for the heart of the order behind him.

The ideal inning would start with a Toth walk, a Cislo single on a hit and run putting runners at first and third, a Cislo steal right before a Fellows RBI single. LaMarre either walks or hits a double, followed by a McLouth double, and then either struggle through Dufek and Berset to try to eek out a last run before Lorenz comes up, as he’s statistically an out. That kind of inning is 5-7 runs, which are the kind of innings that win college baseball games.

Leader Board – Offense

Average		On Base%		Slugging%
Player	AVG	Player	OB%	Player	SLG%
Ryan LaMarre	.421	Kenny Fellows	.500	Ryan LaMarre	.711
Kenny Fellows	.387	T-Ryan LaMarre	.488	Jake McLouth	.650
Jake McLouth	.350	T-Kevin Cislo	.488	Nick Urban	.486
Runs Batted In		Runs		Walks + HBP
Player	RBI	Player	R	Player	BB/HBP
Ryan LaMarre	17	Kevin Cislo	13	T-Kevin Cislo	12
Jake McLouth	10	Anthony Toth	11	T-Anthony Toth	12
T-Toth/Fellows	7	Ryan LaMarre	9	Mike Dufek	8
Steals		Doubles		Home Runs
Player	SB	Player	2B	Player	HR
Kevin Cislo	5	Nick Urban	4	Jake McLouth	4
Ryan LaMarre	3	T-Kevin Cislo	3	Ryan LaMarre	3
Anthony Toth	2	T-John Lorenz	3	Mike Dufek	2

Pitching

And here’s where things get fun. Instead of showing trends, which don’t help much over 2 appearances or less than 15 innings, I think I’m going to look through some of the team statistics. This process may be adjusted to individual pitchers by the time the conference season rolls around.

Here we see the opponent batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage. The opponent batting average is currently .306, the on base percentage is .343, and the slugging percentage is .442 for the season. The on base numbers aren’t too bad, which surprises the heck out of me. Its amazing how such a bad weekend can make you forget how great a weekend the BigEast/Big10 Challenge really was on the mound. Opponents are out hitting us and out slugging us this season, which is never a good sign. We should be looking to get that opponent average down into the .290s or less. On base percentages need to drop to the .310s at the highest, and slugging… well it has a lot of room for improvement.

In this chart we have the “per 9 innings” stats of our opponents accumulated through the season. This just breaks down the previous chart into reasons why we are getting out hit. Opponents average an extra .5 hits per game, which isn’t much, but we average about 1.5 more walks per game. We also strike out about one more time per game than our opponents. I would put ideal numbers to be at to be H/9 ~ 8, K/9 ~ 9, BB/9 ~ 2, and ERA around 4.00. Right now the ERA is pretty close to what we would want in a season, but we should never just settle. We should always strive to improve the numbers.

Leader Board – Pitching

Starter ERA		Innings		Starter Ks
Player	ERA	Player	INN	Player	Ks
Chris Fetter	1.64	Eric Katzman	11.2	Chris Fetter	13
Eric Katzman	3.09	Chris Fetter	11	Travis Smith	10
Travis Smith	4.70	Kolby Wood	10.2	All 3 others	6
Relief ERA		Relief App		Relief Ks
Player	ERA	Player	APP	Player	Ks
Mike Dufek	1.80	Tyler Burgoon	4	Matt Miller	11
Tyler Burgoon	3.12	T-Matt Miller	3	Mike Dufek	6
Matt Miller	3.86	T-Matt Gerbe	3	Tyler Burgoon	5
Oppon BA		Walks+HBP/9IP		Saves
Player	BA	Player	BB/HBP	Player	Sv
Mike Dufek	.125	Chris Fetter	2.45	T-Mike Dufek	1
Matt Miller	.185	T-Mike Dufek	3.6	T-Tyler Burgoon	1
Chris Fetter	.233	T-Brandon Sinnery	3.6*	T-Matt Miller	1

*This is the only stat Sinnery can claim he’s doing well in right now.

Next week I’ll look at some of these same stats and hopefully have some better news on the pitching front.  I plan on working into some more advance statistics as the season moves along, I’ve just been bogged down with other things.

Posted under Baseball
Tags: chris fetter, jake mclouth, kenny fellows, mike dufek, ryan lamarre

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