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Ten Good Things

There's no college baseball today. I know there have been other recent days when there was none (that's one of the reasons I'm not that fond of the postseason; there was at least one game every day from February 1 through May 28, and then the conference tournaments end and there's nothing the next day -- it's just not right). Today, though, you can see the end from here. To help ease that pain, here's my annual list of things that I really liked about this season:

• The ACC has had a great year. The conference finished first in the conference ISR's for the first time in a few years. Only one team, Virginia, underperformed in the postseason, and Miami more than made up for that, becoming one of the four teams from the league to make it to Omaha. Most significantly, North Carolina still has a reasonable chance to become the first ACC national champion since 1955, and that makes me happy. As a general rule, I dislike statistical anomalies, because those who don't understand the nature of probability tend to use them as bludgeons instead of recognizing them as, well, anomalies. Getting a title for the ACC would eliminate one more of those crowing points (anybody now remember when the Big 12 had never won a game in Omaha?).
• Tiny Danny Ray Herrera from tiny New Mexico (OK, I'll quit with the tiny's now) had the best year of any pitcher in the nation. Herrera's listed at 5'7" and 145 pounds, and he's on absolutely no one's prospect radar (he was drafted in the 45th round, the 1345th selection overall), but he put up a 2.24 ERA in the toughest hitter's park in the nation and led the nation in RBOA.
• We'll have a new champion this year. Although nobody pushed their way onto the national stage this year the way that Oregon State did last year, the Beavers stuck around and UNC has gotten here, so someone will get their first title this year, and on balance that's a good thing.
• San Diego and San Francisco were allowed into the tournament. There's still some work to do on equity between the regions at selection time, but this was a good move by the committee and should be commended as an intermediate step.
• Tulane and UNO were given temporary homes for the fall semester. Katrina did not change enough about the nature of American life, and there's still a lot of work to be done (go do some of it, now), but there was a large opening of hearts in the months after the storm, and it was great to see the way that the players from Tulane and UNO were welcomed by the communities in Lubbock and Las Cruces.
• The schedules were better connected this year. We're still not to the point where it's trivial to make the case for regional equality, but this was the year with the most interregional play in the game's history. It's likely that this will take a hit with the advent of the common starting date because of the fewer available weekends for travel, but we're doing good things this week.
• The best hitter in the country also didn't come from a power conference. Even adjusting for strength of schedule, Kellen Kulbacki of James Madison put up some astonishing numbers, leading the nation in slugging, home runs, and AOPS, among lots of other stuff.
• Rather than folding their tents when Rice left, the WAC had a great season. Hawaii and Fresno State spent a good chunk of the year in the top 15 in the ISR's, and the conference finished #8 overall in the ISR's.
• Neither of the finalists this year are likely to end up on probation any time soon. I actually used that comment first in a radio interview going into the 2003 final series, when the last two champions had both gotten slap-on-the-wrist probations for, in at least one case, fairly substantial violations of the rules. That's not likely to happen this year; UNC is one of the nation's leading public academic instituations, and OSU has shown no history of pushing the edges in their practices.
• Kentucky tied for the SEC title. Although they did so in a down year for the conference, Kentucky came from the struggle that they've been through for most of my lifetime to tie for the first conference title in 138 years or so and shows every sign of joining the annual discussion the way that Vanderbilt has. That means that there are now no guaranteed doormats in the SEC for the foreseeable future.

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.

I didn't repeat it as a good story from last year, but the shortness of this list is once again a sign that things may be getting better.

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

Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> Ten Good Things

About the author, Boyd Nation