Dirtbags Baseball - Long Beach State 49ers

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Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Next Up: Wichita State Shockers

Here's a snapshot:

Current record - 16-3. Their losses have been at the hands of Louisiana-Lafayette, UC Irvine and Southern Cal. Significant wins (with current RPI in parenthesis) have come (single games) against UC Davis (91), Hawaii (25), Texas Tech (39), and three wins against Northwestern State (30). Five of their wins were against Hawaii-Hilo, with its #223 RPI, and three against Southern Utah, with a #227 RPI.

This season preview gives a good overview on the team.

Rankings:
#14 in Collegiate Baseball.
#21 in NCBWA.
#22 in Sports Weekly/ESPN.
Not ranked in Baseball America.
#12 in Iterative Strength Rating (ISR) - (BoydsWorld).
#29 in Ratings Power Index (RPI) - (BoydsWorld).

Starting pitching:
Friday: RHP Mike Pelfrey, 3-1, 2.25 ERA, and preseason 1st team All-American.
Saturday: RHP Jereme Foster, 2-0, 4.78 ERA. Opponents are batting .294 against him.
Sunday: RHP Travis Banwart, 1-0, 1.65 ERA.

The staff ERA is 3.36. Nine saves are spread around 4 pitchers. Nine pitchers have ERAs of 2.25 or better, 5 of whom have 8.2 innings or more.

The Shockers currently have a .305 batting average, with a .395 slugging percentage. They're fielding at a .972 clip.

Given the fact that half of their wins (8 of 16) have come against Division I bottom dwellers Hawaii-Hilo and Southern Utah, it's difficult to gauge just how good Wichita State is from either its record, or it's hitting and pitching stats. In those 8 games, they held opponents to 22 runs (2.75 per game). But Hawaii-Hilo scored a total of 14 runs in just two losses. So in the other 6 wins, they help opponents to 8 runs (1.33 per game). On the offensive side, the Shockers scored 72 runs in the 8 games (9.0 runs per game). This represents 1 run shy of 50% of the total number of runs they have scored on the season (145). Another 13 of those runs were against McNeese State (133rd in RPI) yesterday.

Here is the LongBeachState.com weekly release in html and pdf.

When it comes to RPI, so important to making the Regional field, Wichita State is great to have on the schedule. Their RPI is already high, and is likely to go even higher. They play in the Missouri Valley Conference, where they really have no competition in baseball. Last season they went 49-16, including a 28-4 mark in the MVC. They lost to Arkansas in the Fayetteville Regional last year. Winning this series, on the road, would be big.

Update: March 17, 2005: As poster Anthony points out on ShockerNet, it's a bit extreme to say Wichita State has no competition in the MVC. He says Southwest Missouri State has a good program that went to Omaha 2 years ago. Last season they were 31-28 overall, and 19-12 in the MVC.

posted on 3/16/2005 by Jeff Agnew

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