Yazy Arbello of Keystone goes to the Diamondbacks in the 26th round.

Congratulations to Youchak and Kahn of Hopkins. It's good to see them both get recognition for their season.

Youchak - ABCA National Player of the Year, ABCA Mid-Atlantic Player of the Year, 1st team AA d3baseball.com, 1st team all Centennial

Kahn - d3baseball.com National Player of the Year, Cenennial Player of the Year, ABCA 1st team All American, ABCA 1st team Mid Atlantic.

Aren't the awards announced before the WS? So the stats as they stand now are what would be used?

Eagleson and Youchak were the picks for the Mid Atlantic Player/Pitcher of the Year, I wonder if the same two will be National Player/Pitcher of the Year.

(Eliopoulos 2nd team, Harbeck 3rd Team. Both Kahn and Sikorski joined Eagleson and Youchak on the first team)

Player of the Year battle between Youchak and Kahn, Pitcher of the Year battle between Eliopoulus and Eagleson, what else could Coach Babb ask for? (Other than a strike call in 2008)
With the talent on this years Hopkins team Babb may be in for the best season of his career, picking up win #898 today against Rowan would put the Jays in a great position to secure a spot in Appleton.

What role should Strength of Schedule play in selecting POTY? For instance consider they folloring two players:

Dave Kahn (Hopkins)        .476 BA (69 for 145) 69R 66RBI 16HR  .972 slg% .537 OBP 14-14 SB
Stefan Neece (Greenville) .495 BA (50 for 101) 43R 61RBI 16HR 1.089 slg% .651 OBP  9-11 SB

Neece's numbers are rather impressive (as are Kahn's) with about a .200 higher OPS, however he plays for Greenville (24-11) who is out of the playoffs with a .456 SOS (nearly the lowest in DIII). While Kahn is playoff bound for top slotted Hopkins with a .536 SOS (somewhere near 100 of 350 in DIII). Is it a stretch to correlate SOS to the quality of the pitching faced?

Thoughts?

Quote from: Gramps on April 29, 2010, 08:23:14 PM

Quote from: HeyScots on April 29, 2010, 11:47:52 AM
Agreed...All of these players have great stats, but i believe the deciding factor should be if any of these players can lead their team to the world series

If that's true, than why are we talking about best players.  Just wait for the world series and pick out the MVP of the World Series and make him the best player/pitcher of D3.  If stats don't matter, I can think of at least two players that have scored the last run or had the winning hit or started the winning rally that could be considered.
And these are good steady players, just not having a super year.  I think that we should wait until after the season is over, all of the tournaments played and all of the accolades given out.  Than we can better decide an appropriate  candidate. Until than, we're just campaigning for our favorite player from our team, from our conference, from our region, or from our section of the country.

If you believe Billy Bean (Moneyball reference here) there is no such thing as a clutch player.

However, with the wide degree of competition and considerations (like field size, weather etc.) it is nice to see what all these great players can do against great competition.

Here is some fuel for though regarding all conference teams.  Brian Youchak was second team Centennial (a weak conference with no one other than Hopkins getting any national recognition) but listed as first team All-American for D3 and First Team All Region for ABCA.  He has the #3 BA in the country and is the offensive leader for a Hopkins team headed to Wisconsin.

Clearly politics came into the decisions on the conference team, but it should be performance alone that determines these honors.

Moreland showed why he is deserving of Pitcher of the Year when he shut down Hopkins from the 3rd to the 10th inning.  8 Scoreless against the #1 offense.

Congrats to David as well.

Billy 40,

The fact that there are other players out there with comparable numbers to Youchak is exactly what I am talking about.  All of these players deserve to be mentioned, I did not search through all of D-III to find the best player, I simply looked at the line-up of the best hitting team in D-III (by team BA).  And for the record, Youchak is beating Kolb in HR, Slug, K and Runs.


All-American Fan,

Youchak does not have a base to steal 94% of the time, you can't steal if you are not on base.  Youchak has the opportunity to steal some base after 49.3% of his plate appearances.  David has the opportunity to steal after 40.7% of his plate appearances.

If you factor in strikeouts (stealing 1st) then Youchak has an opportunity after 54.9% of his PA and David after 56.1%.

Youchak can steal 2nd (into scoring position) after 29.7% of his PA.  David 35.7% of his PA.

I will not buy any argument that David is a comparable base-stealer to Youchak or Kolb or any other of the base-stealers around D-III.  Being said, his team has decided that he shouldn't be, and you can not hold that against David.


Everyone else,
I agree that projecting numbers is flawed, but when you are comparing 189 AB to 132 AB it is flawed to compare totals.  I also agree that the person who actually put up the big numbers has an edge on the person who is on pace to put up big numbers, and again I think David will be, and probably should be, the player of the year.  But to reiterate, calling him a hands down lock and not consider the seasons that players like Kolb and Youchak have had is shortsighted.


I was looking through McMurry's extended stats and it is remarkable to see that David's BA against right, against left, with RISP, bases empty, two outs, bases loaded, etc. are all eerily close to his season average.  Clearly he brings the same approach and focus to each at bat.

If David has speed then I take back that he is lacking that tool, and I will not comment on his arm.  Still the .911 fielding % leaves something to be desired.  And he has struck out 34 times this season.

Ralph,
I would steal with those numbers behind David, Hopkins has 47 times this season (Youchak is followed by Pietroforte whose numbers are better than Vorhees and Pietroforte is followed by Emr whose numbers are better than Vorhees)  The reason I would steal with Pietro and Youch is because they are both very fast.  They are a combined 43-47 and each went their first 17 before getting thrown out.  That is what speed adds to your lineup.

All-AmericanFan,
David has not been in SP 79 times this season after his AB (singles, walks, HBP)  He has put himself into scoring position 7 times (assuming all his steals are of 2B.)  He gets himself into SP 8.8% of the time, add in his XBHits and he is in SP after 20% of his plate appearances.

Brian Youchak (there is your name for someone batting over .500)  Has not been in SP 53 times this season after his AB.  He has put himself into scoring position 20 times (same logic I know it is slightly off because Youchak has stolen thrid).  He gets himself into SP 37.7% percent of the time, add in his XBHits and he is in SP after 31.9% of his plate appearances.

The U for Life,

Here are numbers that I would expect to see from the POTY
    Player               AVG  GP-GS    AB    R    H   2B  3B  HR RBI   TB   SLG% BB HBP  SO OB%  SB-ATT  FLD%
Brian Youchak....  .515   34-33   134  53  69  17   1   8   52   112  .836    8    2      8  .541   20-21   .980
If he had the same number of ABs as David
                           .515   46-46   189  75  97  24   1  11  73   158  .836   11   3     11 .541   28-30   .980

Now the final word, I don't think everyone read my first post on this topic.

Derek David is a great power hitter and deserves any award that he gets including Player of the Year.  But to say that he is the "Hands Down" Player of the Year is an insult to every other player in D-III who is having a phenominal year.  David's numbers are spectacular, but he has had the opportunity to make them spectacular, something that other players in the country have not had.  There are players out there who are 5-tool players who do not put up David's HR totals, but that should not mean that they can't be considered for POTY.  Looking beyond the basic numbers it is clear that team contribution goes well beyond OBS.

Quote from: Billy 40 on May 11, 2008, 10:46:09 AM
The weather - that's part of the problem when evluating talent in a short Spring Baseball season up in the North. It is very difficult to compare a player when 50% of the games were played below 45 degrees, when teh other player played 100% of his games in weatehr over 75. So while a team might squeeze in 40 games, a large percentage were played in condtions more suited for Football. WOuld be nice to see how well some of these Southern teams would do, is tehy took a Spring Break trip up to NY or Chicago in March, instead of us travelling to Florida or wherever to get our brains beat in by teams playing outside for 8 weeks.

Regarding David - didn't  he hit a HR in 6 or 7 consecutive games? I don't care what competition he was playing against, that's really impressive. The fact he hit so many HR's, and accounted for so many runs, impressive. This quote below gave me a good chuckle...

"Average - Very good, but not comparable to some of the 0.500 + hitters"

Are you kidding me? There isn't a single .500+ hitter who is on the same planet with David's power numbers.

There is a reason that before I wrote average I wrote "power - 100% the best HR hitter in D-III"

We are talking about the BEST PLAYER in America at the D-III level.  There are a lot of things that go into a baseball game and hitting home runs is only one of them.  5 tool players are rare, and David is not a 5 tool player.

and if they want to play in 45 degree weather and/or rain

Quote from: mideastfan2 on May 10, 2008, 10:45:01 PM
^^^ did you say 50+ at bats, or was that a typo and you actually meant over 100+ at bats??  50 at bats isn't enough to qualify how good of a hitter you are for a whole season, or even be considered for an all-conference, all-region, or allamerican team.

.444, with over 73 RBI's, 78 runs scored, and 26 HR's (not to mention his .915 slugging percentage & .520 on base percentage) is very very rare.  He's played a tough schedule and in a very tough conference.  I've been around DIII baseball for quite awhile and haven't seen too many players with these types of numbers that DON'T win POY honors. 

Just my opinion of course from what I've seen in the past.

I knew someone wouldn't like my 50+ AB, so I will justify.  Ryan Biner 86 AB .488 BA torn ACL out for the season, Jonas Fester (pre-season all american) 67 AB .447 BA torn MCL missed the last 20 games.  Dan Merzel 50 AB .440 BA got a spot in the INF to fill the spot left by Fester.  The other three are all hitting over .485 with a min of 130 AB. Point is, all of them are hitting .440 and they are all on the same team, that is ranked in the top 25.

If you want to mention slugging percentage and OBP review my post about OBS he is nearly 200 points behind the D-III leader.  Still he is a great player.

My point to all of this was simply should power numbers be the only measure of POY status.

How about this for a POY pick.  Brian Youchak.  He has only played in 34 of Hopkins 38 games because other kids were let into games against easy opponents(134 AB), and he does not get mop up ABs when the game gets out of hand.  If he played in 46 games like David these would be his numbers

BA .515  Slug .836 OBP .541 RBI 70.4 Runs 71.7 and he would be 27-28.4 SB-SBA.

If he had the same number of ABs as David then his numbers would be.

74.8 Runs  73.3 RBI and 28-30 SB-SBA


I am sure that there are kids on other teams that you could play the same game with.  David has great numbers, but he is also one of the DIII leaders in AB and he plays in warm weather.  Don't let totals (RBI, Runs, HR, etc.) be most impressive part of what he has done.

Quote from: mideastfan2 on May 10, 2008, 11:33:55 AM

Quote from: fouriscosmic on May 09, 2008, 03:42:31 PM
Can there ever be a lock for player of the year.  David's power numbers are impressive and other numbers are good, but should a player win PoTY just because he hits home runs (lots and lots of them)?  David's OBS is 1.435 rather impressive, but not the best in D-III.  Dan Kauffman of Junita has a 1.624 (leads D-III in OBP and BB). 

If you want a 5 tool player as player of the year then David falls short.

Power - 100% the best HR hitter in D-III
Average - Very good, but not comparable to some of the 0.500 + hitters
Speed - I have never seen him play, but his low doubles and triples combined with few stolen bases implies no wheels
Fielding ability - 0.911 fielding percentage at 3B is not strong at all
Arm - Can't judge by any numbers, not the most important for 3B.

I don't know that I can offer a better candidate, but just some fodder for thought

David has also played 46 games this year, some of his numbers should be taken as per game averages.  He ranks 6th in RBI per game despite being ranked #1 for RBI

yeah, there can definitely be a lock for player of the year, and if Derek David doesn't win it, there's something wrong!!  The kid is hitting over .440 and has driven in over 73 runs......that should be enough, regardless of the fact that he hit more home runs in a season than has been seen in quite a while.

He'll win it, hands down.

I may be jaded when it comes to average but .440 just doesn't impress me like it used to.  Hopkins has 6 players with 50+ ABs hitting .440 or higher (most much higher with many more ABs) so I find it hard to buy that his .440 BA makes him a lock for POtY.  His power numbers are impressive, but is that what makes the biggest impact on the teams success?

Can there ever be a lock for player of the year.  David's power numbers are impressive and other numbers are good, but should a player win PoTY just because he hits home runs (lots and lots of them)?  David's OBS is 1.435 rather impressive, but not the best in D-III.  Dan Kauffman of Junita has a 1.624 (leads D-III in OBP and BB). 

If you want a 5 tool player as player of the year then David falls short.

Power - 100% the best HR hitter in D-III
Average - Very good, but not comparable to some of the 0.500 + hitters
Speed - I have never seen him play, but his low doubles and triples combined with few stolen bases implies no wheels
Fielding ability - 0.911 fielding percentage at 3B is not strong at all
Arm - Can't judge by any numbers, not the most important for 3B.

I don't know that I can offer a better candidate, but just some fodder for thought

David has also played 46 games this year, some of his numbers should be taken as per game averages.  He ranks 6th in RBI per game despite being ranked #1 for RBI