The Blog for the Sports Gamer

The lack of power in MVP NCAA 06 now makes a whole lot more sense.

Steve Bauman and I talk baseball a lot. I mentioned to him the neatness of MVP NCAA, but also the fact that there seems to be a lack of power in the game. Being the baseball stat geek heads that we are, we started to look up some college baseball stats. I freely admit to not being a college baseball junkie so I thought, as did Steve, that we’d see a lot of offense, little pitching, and a lot of homers due to the aluminum bats. Wow were we wrong. Well, sorta.

In looking at the Big 10, USC, Fresno State, and Arkansas State (to give us a fairly wide sample) a few things seem to ring true throughout:

• Homers are rare, particularly when compared to MLB. Most teams average less than a homer per game. Most teams will have one guy that is their slugger. It was rare to see a team with 2 legit HR threats. Ohio State hit 43 homers in 63 games. Muderers Row they are not.
• Doubles are also low. Again, teams are hitting 1-2 per game, tops.
• If you don’t hit .300 in college, you suck.
• There are a LOT of singles hit in college baseball. Lots.
• Walks are high. The teams we looked at averaged about 5 per game
• There are a lot of runs being scored as most teams average at least 6 per game. OSU beat Penn State last year 29-2. You do see some low scoring pitcher’s duels, but for the most part games have a combined 10-12 runs per game.
• The reason for this, it appears, is that the bullpens are devastatingly bad. Most teams, even good ones, have 1 or 2 solid starters (who also serve as relief pitchers when needed) but the rest of the staff is filled with 5+ ERA guys. That was a common theme with most teams.
• Most teams, in the Big10 at least, have a team BA of .300 or higher. If your team hits under .300 as a team, your team cannot hit. Purdue was worst in the Big10 with a .290 BA. Colorado eat your heart out…
• In the Big10, team ERAs hover around 5. OSU lead the league with a 3.98, but 5 teams came in over 5 with Michigan State having the worst at 5.68. Interesting stuff, the Big10 Stats.

So, based off this statistical sample, there is a lot of small ball being played in college baseball. Lots of singles, (a lot of hit batters as well) horrid pitching depth, and a lot of runs.

There are power hitters in college ball, don’t get me wrong. There’ sa 1B for Arkansas State with Bonds-like numbers — but those guys are very rare. Most hitters will hit less than 8 homers in a 60 game season and its very common for a guy that hits over .300 to hjave a SLG% of less than .500

Anyway, I just thought this was interesting, and I think if you want to tweak any settings to reflect the college game that stuff like this should be kept in mind.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 23rd, 2006 at 1:46 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.