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Publication Date: July 29, 2003
Beane Counts
So, you're trying to build a program from the ground up, and you're not sure where to start. You've identified the off-field stuff you can do, and you know that your team is bad enough that you could strike out (OK, poor choice of words) in any of a dozen directions to get better, but which of those directions is most likely to make you a better ball club? There's tons of statistical analysis out there to measure how good you've been, but what do you use to shortcut that analysis and decide where to concentrate those precious practice and training sessions?
Most of what I consider modern baseball theory can be boiled down to the notions of controlling the strike zone and hitting the ball a long way more often than your opponents do. Rob Neyer of ESPN came up with an interesting idea for a metric a couple of years ago, not as a means of providing the last word in player analysis, but as a quick and dirty means of identifying which teams were likely to be scoring the most runs and continue to do so in light of the above theory. As a play on words from the name of the Oakland A's general manager and a sometimes disparaging term for accounting, he called it the Beane Count.
The Beane Count is remarkably simple. It's just a team's ordinal rank within their league in four categories: home runs and walks produced and allowed. For the college ranks, I've made a slight adjustment by switching to per-game rankings, since we don't have the luxury of each team playing exactly 162 games. Without further ado, here is the Beane Count and its component for the champion and Beane Count leader in each conference for 2003.
Hitting Pitching
Conference Team HR/G BB/G HR/G BB/G BC BC# #
America East Maine 2.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 5.0 1 2
Vermont 3.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 9.0 2 1
ACC Florida State 5.0 1.0 3.0 1.0 10.0 1 1
Atlantic Sun Florida Atlantic 1.0 1.0 3.0 3.0 8.0 1 1
Atlantic 10 Richmond 2.0 2.0 1.0 2.0 7.0 1 1
Big East West Virginia 1.0 5.0 4.0 9.0 19.0 1 2
Rutgers 7.0 1.0 8.0 5.0 21.0 4 1
Big South Elon 4.0 1.0 1.0 2.0 8.0 1 2.5
Winthrop 1.0 3.0 6.5 3.0 13.5 2 1
Big 10 Ohio State 1.0 3.0 4.0 1.0 9.0 1 2
Minnesota 10.0 5.0 3.0 2.0 20.0 3.5 1
Big 12 Missouri 7.0 1.0 4.0 2.0 14.0 1 4
Nebraska 3.0 3.0 8.0 1.0 15.0 2 1
Big West Cal State Fullerton 6.0 2.0 5.0 1.0 14.0 1.5 2
UC Riverside 1.0 5.0 2.0 6.0 14.0 1.5 3
Long Beach State 5.0 7.0 3.0 2.0 17.0 3.5 1
CAA Virginia Commonwealth 7.0 2.0 4.0 2.0 15.0 1 1
Conference USA Tulane 2.0 5.0 4.5 1.0 12.5 1 3
Southern Mississippi 1.0 2.0 4.5 9.0 16.5 2 1
Horizon Butler 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 8.0 1 2
Illinois-Chicago 1.0 7.0 3.0 1.0 12.0 2 1
Ivy Harvard 1.0 3.0 7.0 2.0 13.0 1 3
Princeton 4.0 5.0 4.0 3.0 16.0 2 1
MAAC Marist 3.5 5.0 1.0 1.0 10.5 1 2
LeMoyne 1.0 9.0 9.0 2.0 21.0 6 1
MAC Ball State 6.0 3.0 1.0 2.0 12.0 1 3
Kent State 1.0 1.0 8.0 3.0 13.0 2 1
Mid-Continent Oral Roberts 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 4.0 1 1
MEAC Norfolk State 5.0 1.0 1.0 2.0 9.0 1 6
Bethune-Cookman 4.0 2.0 5.0 4.0 15.0 4 1
MVC Southwest Missouri State 5.0 4.0 4.0 1.0 14.0 1 1
Mountain West Nevada-Las Vegas 2.0 1.0 2.0 5.0 10.0 1 1
NEC Central Connecticut State 5.0 4.0 1.0 2.0 12.0 1 1
OVC Tennessee Tech 4.0 4.0 5.0 1.0 14.0 1.5 3
Murray State 7.0 3.0 2.0 2.0 14.0 1.5 4
Austin Peay State 8.0 8.0 1.0 4.0 21.0 8.0 1
Pac 10 Arizona State 5.0 1.0 2.0 2.0 10.0 1 2
Stanford 6.0 7.0 5.0 3.0 21.0 6 1
Patriot Lafayette 2.0 4.0 5.0 1.0 12.0 1 6
Bucknell 3.0 2.0 4.0 5.0 14.0 3.5 1
SEC Alabama 3.0 1.0 7.0 3.0 14.0 1 7.0
Louisiana State 2.0 5.0 10.0 5.0 22.0 5 1
Southern North Carolina-Greensboro 8.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 11.0 1 5.0
Western Carolina 1.0 2.0 7.0 2.0 12.0 2 1
Southland Lamar 6.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 9.0 1 1
SWAC Southern 1.0 1.0 2.0 1.0 5.0 1 1
Sun Belt Arkansas-Little Rock 6.0 2.0 4.0 5.0 17.0 1 7.5
South Alabama 2.0 5.0 8.0 6.0 21.0 6.5 1
West Coast San Diego 2.0 2.0 1.0 6.0 11.0 1 3
Pepperdine 6.0 8.0 4.0 2.0 20.0 5.0 1
WAC Rice 3.0 1.0 1.0 2.0 7.0 1 1
If you'll take a minute to digest this table, you'll see that leading in the Beane Count categories is not a guarantee of winning, but it's not a bad place to start. Of the 30 conferences, 11 were won by their Beane Count leader, and 8 more were won by the runner-up. There are other ways to win, obviously -- teams like LSU and South Alabama compensated for relatively mediocre walk rates by overachieving at batting average, and extreme dominance on one side of the ball, as with Winthrop or Austin Peay, can compensate for average performance on the other side of the ball (remember when the Eagles were a primarily pitching club?). Those things are both hard to rely on and hard to teach, though, so walks and power look like a really good place to start.
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| Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> Where to Start | About the author, Boyd Nation |