WEEK THREE (first half): The BirdsofStray return to the Nest against Central Michigan

JACKSONVILLE, FL - The 'Strays return to the Nest for a series against Central Michigan and we'll continue to test drive some baseball statistical concepts in real-time.

Including Games played through 3/6:

UNF Runs scored: 47 
UNF Runs allowed: 87 
Win Probability .246 (13-39 in 52 games)

RCx based on OBA/SPCT: 44.82 
RAx based on OBA/SPCT: 81.50 
Win Prob. Based on Rx: .275 (14-38 in 52 games)

Offense (based on OPS, K%):

Seguera .930 (25%), 
Presno .837 (32%), 
Matthias .769 (31%), 
Grodi .746 (13%), 
Libuano .712 (21%)

Team Average .659 (23%)

T.May .587 (27%), 
West .582 (36%), 
Marabell .573 (23%), 
T.Clark .573 (12%)

• Too many strikeouts, not enough pop. 
• Lineup tilts to the left side.
• Need RH bat to emerge above the team average.
• Runs have decreased from ~5.5+ per game last year to ~4 per game this year.

Defense:

Runs allowed have increased from ~4.5 per game last year to ~7 per game this year.

The disparity in RC/RA decreased from +1 per game last year to -3 per game this year.

Errors per game have increased from 1.2 per game last year to 1.77 this year.

Bunt defense is still an issue, which it was last year.

Fielding is close to this situation right now:

Pedro Guerrero was playing third base for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1984 when he made the comment that earns him a place in my Hall of Fame.  Second baseman Steve Sax was having trouble making his throws.  Other players were diving, screaming, signaling for a fair catch.  At the same time, Guerrero, at third, was making a few plays that weren't exactly soothing to manager Tom Lasorda's stomach.  Lasorda decided it was time for one of his famous motivational meetings and zeroed in on Guerrero: "How can you play third base like that?  You've gotta be thinking about something besides baseball. What is it?"

        "I'm only thinking about two things," Guerrero said.  "First, `I hope they don't hit the ball to me.'"  The players snickered, and even Lasorda had to fight off a laugh.  "Second, `I hope they don't hit the ball to Sax.'" 

 -- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game"

The pitching was expected to be about the same as last year and the fielding and hitting somewhat worse due to graduation and inexperience.

The starting pitching is virtually in total disarray, save from the performance of freshman Tony Roca.

Except for Ohme, who is hurt, only freshmen and incoming JUCOs are under the average team ERA of 6.43 and they have pitched 43/112 innings total (38%). This represents four starts out of the first 13 as well. 

The efforts from upperclassmen in this area must pick up before conference play or you’re playing for next year. The first third of the season (18 games) appears as if it will be difficult. After that, the schedule is kinder for 12 games or so. Then conference play begins in earnest.

Hitting:

As far as the hitting statistics, 100 PA are better than 50 PA no matter what statistic you are measuring.  It’s always better to have more data, but the rate at which the data becomes useful varies based on the statistic.

The only statistics that stabilize (become reliable) before 200 PA’s are: https://library.fangraphs.com/principles/sample-size/

K-rate (60PA)

BB-rate (120PA)

The rest take longer than one season and season to season comparisons are problematic at the NCAA level. But you must work with what you have to gain insights and make decisions.

By contrast, stats we depend on for insight like OBP & SPCT can take between 320 – 460 PA to stabilize.

Given those caveats, I did pull down the splits versus LHP and RHP for 2019 and 2010 for the Ospreys.  

Last year we did see a couple of LH hitters (Law and Libuano) hit 

LHP’s better than RHP (a reverse split). 

Conversely, Tanner May and Tanner Murphy appeared to do better against RHP than LHP.

https://sabermetrics.cs.illinois.edu/batting/ncaa_baseball/

This year, in limited action, Chris Matthias appears more comfortable against RHP as does switch hitter Sequera.

LH hitters Grodi, Spratling-Williams, Presno and West to date are hitting LHP better than RHP, which you do like to see somewhat. 

Somebody has to crush RHPs and it’s generally harder to rely on RH hitters to do that. We’ll see how it goes, remember that by the time the data is reliable, the season is over.

You have to know your personnel.

I would prefer to have purely exit velocity splits, but I haven’t seen any site that collects or posts that and you would have to have Statcast-type capability and you won’t see that here due to a leadership weakness called titlulus novem cultus.

Good luck finding the cure for that!!