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Hitter Development

Publication Date: May 1, 2007

This will just be a quickie, as I catch my breath for the run up to the postseason.

Back in February, I threw the ball out for a discussion of possible coaching metrics. I'm not ready yet for any sort of comprehensive look at the subject yet, but there was one quick-and-dirty study that I could do now, and that's to look at the subject of hitter development.

If you take the pool of all players who had at least 100 plate appearances in back-to-back years for the same team, you find that the average player from that group increased his OBP by 2.9% from the first year to the second and his slugging average by 5.8%. That's an average, though, and it might mean something to look at who went over and under those marks by the most. We're skirting with some sample size issues here, since we're talking about an average of around 18 players per team, but the samples are large enough to be meaningful with a little salt added.

I don't have time to check for coaching changes, but here are the ten teams who had at least ten players counted where returning players increased their OBP by the most (the numbers listed are ratios, so Alabama players increased their OBP by 16.3% on average, for example): 

 OBP   SLG  #  Team

1.163 1.274 18 Alabama
1.146 1.118 20 Louisiana Tech
1.112 1.110 12 Appalachian State
1.111 1.097 17 Southern Utah
1.105 1.123 11 Liberty
1.104 1.168 18 Massachusetts
1.104 1.150 22 Siena
1.104 1.122 12 Duke
1.103 1.090 11 Princeton
1.098 1.048 16 St. John's

The bottom 10: 

 OBP   SLG  #  Team

0.972 1.033 19 Buffalo
0.972 0.930 13 Niagara
0.968 1.038 13 Mount St. Mary's
0.962 0.920 19 Washington State
0.961 0.981 19 UCLA
0.960 0.949 11 St. Peter's
0.958 0.942 13 Pennsylvania
0.953 0.971 16 New Mexico State
0.945 1.051 11 North Carolina State
0.938 1.005 10 New York Tech

The top list for slugging: 

 SLG   OBP  #  Team

1.274 1.163 18 Alabama
1.177 1.077 20 Davidson
1.168 1.104 18 Massachusetts
1.166 1.057 25 Towson
1.166 1.039 23 Louisiana-Lafayette
1.165 1.074 19 East Carolina
1.165 1.026 19 Rhode Island
1.162 1.093 24 North Carolina-Wilmington
1.157 1.073 18 Missouri State
1.156 1.043 16 Arkansas State

The bottom list for slugging: 

 SLG   OBP  #  Team

0.971 0.953 16 New Mexico State
0.962 1.013 13 Jacksonville State
0.952 0.995 21 Wagner
0.949 0.960 11 St. Peter's
0.944 1.008 18 Valparaiso
0.942 0.958 13 Pennsylvania
0.932 0.979 10 Northern Colorado
0.930 0.972 13 Niagara
0.920 0.962 19 Washington State
0.919 0.990 18 Fairfield

Tournament Watch

This means absolutely nothing, ignore it.

This is one generic layman's predictions for who gets in the tournament. I'm not going to bother picking a team from the one-bid conferences, since the conference tournament will just be a crapshoot, but if I only list one team from a conference, they'll get an at large bid if they don't get the automatic bid. 

America East   Clemson               Minnesota             UCLA
A10            North Carolina State  Coastal Carolina      Arizona
CAA            North Carolina        UC Irvine             South Carolina
Horizon        Virginia              UC Riverside          Louisiana State
Ivy            Miami, Florida        Cal State Fullerton   Vanderbilt
MAAC           Georgia Tech          Long Beach State      Arkansas
MAC            Stetson               East Carolina         Mississippi State
MEAC           Texas                 Rice                  Mississippi
Mid-Continent  Oklahoma State        Southern Mississippi  Florida
NEC            Missouri              Memphis               College of Charleston
OVC            Oklahoma              Tulane                Western Carolina
Patriot        Texas A&M             Houston               Louisiana-Lafayette
Southland      Nebraska              Wichita State         Troy
SWAC           Kansas State          Creighton             Pepperdine
WAC            Louisville            Oregon State          San Diego
Florida State  Michigan              Arizona State         Texas Christian

Pitch Count Watch

Rather than keep returning to the subject of pitch counts and pitcher usage in general too often for my main theme, I'm just going to run a standard feature down here where I point out potential problems; feel free to stop reading above this if the subject doesn't interest you. This will just be a quick listing of questionable starts that have caught my eye -- the general threshold for listing is 120 actual pitches or 130 estimated, although short rest will also get a pitcher listed if I catch it. Don't blame me; I'm just the messenger.

Date   Team   Pitcher   Opponent   IP   H   R   ER   BB   SO   AB   BF   Pitches
4/27 UCLA Tyson Brummett Arizona 9.0 5 3 2 4 6 29 35 134
4/27 Lipscomb Rex Brothers Belmont 7.0 8 4 4 2 3 26 30 125
4/27 Central Michigan Josh Collmenter Toledo 9.0 3 1 1 3 13 30 33 132(*)
4/27 College of Charleston Nick Chigges The Citadel 8.0 5 1 1 4 4 28 33 137
4/27 Texas-Pan American Chad Linder Dallas Baptist 7.0 12 10 10 6 1 33 41 138(*)
4/27 Fordham Cory Riordan Richmond 8.0 9 5 4 1 9 33 35 122
4/27 Kentucky Chris Rusin Georgia 8.1 8 4 3 4 5 31 35 123
4/27 Northern Iowa Aaron Jenkins Indiana State 9.0 3 0 0 5 11 28 33 133(*)
4/27 Nebraska Tony Watson Kansas State 7.2 8 3 2 1 7 30 33 123
4/27 Maryland-Baltimore County Will Delawter Vermont 9.0 9 3 2 2 5 35 40 133(*)
4/27 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Will Norman McNeese State 9.0 5 4 4 4 7 32 36 131(*)
4/27 Louisiana Tech Luke Burnett San Jose State 6.0 7 4 4 4 4 22 26 121
4/27 South Alabama Joey Doan Florida Atlantic 8.0 11 6 5 2 4 33 37 131
4/27 West Virginia Levi Maxwell St. John's 7.0 11 8 5 3 4 34 37 125
4/27 Tennessee James Adkins Louisiana State 9.0 3 1 1 4 14 27 33 136(*)
4/27 Missouri Aaron Crow Texas Tech 7.0 7 2 2 1 6 27 30 122
4/27 UC Irvine Gorgen UC Davis 9.0 13 6 5 1 9 38 40 134
4/27 Hofstra Patrick Rogers Virginia Commonwealth 10.1 9 2 1 3 9 38 41 123
4/28 Tennessee-Martin Adam Ledlow Austin Peay State 9.0 13 4 4 4 3 35 42 137
4/28 Maryland-Eastern Shore Dustin Longchamps Bethune-Cookman 6.0 9 7 7 6 6 25 31 128
4/28 Columbia John Baumann Stony Brook 9.0 11 5 4 1 7 39 40 135(*)
4/28 Richmond Alex Hale Fordham 7.0 9 6 6 5 4 29 35 133
4/28 Massachusetts Jim Cassidy Dayton 7.1 7 2 2 2 4 26 30 122
4/28 Mississippi Lance Lynn Mississippi State 8.0 6 1 1 0 9 28 31 124
4/28 New York Tech Joe Esposito Pittsburgh 8.2 6 4 4 5 6 31 38 160
4/28 South Alabama Brandon Sage Florida Atlantic 6.0 9 4 3 4 10 28 33 129
4/28 Alabama Miers Quigley South Carolina 8.0 9 4 3 2 9 31 35 123
4/28 West Virginia Matt Yurish St. John's 7.0 8 7 5 6 10 28 35 138
4/28 Cal State Northridge Joe Rocchio UC Santa Barbara 9.0 8 5 5 3 7 30 39 137(*)
4/28 Georgia Southern Aaron Eubanks Wofford 9.0 6 1 1 2 9 34 36 137
4/29 Wisconsin-Milwaukee Andy Hetebrueg Wright State 6.2 10 6 5 3 3 30 36 121
4/29 Arkansas State Nathan Gates Louisiana-Lafayette 9.0 5 2 2 4 2 29 37 128
4/29 Lipscomb Rob Smithson Belmont 9.0 9 2 2 4 8 34 39 135
4/29 Nicholls State Michael Bartek Stephen F. Austin State 8.0 6 2 2 6 6 29 35 131(*)
4/29 Princeton Eric Walz Cornell 11.1 14 5 5 3 5 47 50 142
4/29 Cornell Walker Toma Princeton 6.2 8 4 4 3 7 28 31 122
4/29 Temple Matt Mongiardini St. Louis 9.0 8 0 0 5 5 32 39 138(*)
4/29 Villanova Bill Hoffman Cincinnati 9.0 9 2 2 2 7 33 37 131
5/01 Utah Valley State Marcus Moore Brigham Young 8.1 9 1 1 5 8 31 37 158
5/01 Niagara Marcus Spaulding Buffalo 5.2 4 2 2 6 5 20 26 122

(*) Pitch count is estimated. As always, I welcome actual pitch count corrections.

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