BB: SCAC: Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference

[Gus Sinski]

 Lots to get to here...

Frank: Accuse me of rampant homerism, but I think you have to give Hendrix an edge over Trinity when laying down odds just on the basis of the season series. You can, I think, throw out the San Antonio series when Hendrix clobbered Evan Bronson, because everyone was clobbering Evan Bronson early in the season. But with Bronson back to his usual dominant self in Conway, Hendrix still beat him and took two of three to win the season series. That's part of what I meant earlier when I said the Hendrix lineup has to feel very confident against Trinity, because they have hit some top-line pitching.

Donotknowscac: I did a little preliminary research on DePauw, and Gerlach certainly has numbers that jump off the page and punch you in the kidneys. Now here's where I assume the role of SCAC West snob: I think the hitters in the West are better overall...Will Hawkins, Hunter Owen, Daniel Ward, Jeff Forgerson, Jordan Pennington, etc. But yet and still, the top half of the conference's team batting average stats is dominated by EAST teams. So does that mean the pitching is also weak? And even if it is, doesn't Gerlach's 1.80 ERA show that he's just plain good? My head's hurting just running through all this. Maybe I can make it up Thursday and see for myself.

tiger_fan2000: Hendrix is indeed a wild card, but this is a remarkably confident and laid back group. Their recruiting philosophy has been to find kids from nationally prominient programs who maybe don't play as much, as opposed to the misery days of the early decade when we'd find a kid who batted .500 for Possum Grape High School or something. A lot of these guys — Ted Smoyer, Jeff Forgerson, Dave Keine, Mark Vlaskamp, Kyle Raskin — grew up playing with and against absolute studs. So playing in big games against guys with reputations is nothing new to them. I daresay the coaches may be wound tighter than the players. Not to mention, a big chunk of the roster is from California, and folks from there do seem to be a little less excitable.

Okay, that's that. Sorry for the longwindedness...coffee, downtime at work, etc. Looks like I'll be able to head to Jackson no later than Friday...let's hear it for company-mandated furloughs!

[infielddad]

Having been at the SCAC's when it was last played at Smith-Wills in 2002, Frank is correct when he says it is a big park.  It is very big and plays much larger than any SCAC field.
While it was not turf in 2002, the infield was very fast even then.  I assume it might even be faster with good turf.
For the most part, the size of the field, especially in  the power alleys, neutralizes  the power game. If there is any breeze blowing in, most  fly balls are just ordinary outs.
The field puts an emphasis on pitching, defense, speed and execution.
In 2002, scores amongst the teams with stronger pitching included 1-0, 4-3, 5-1, 6-0, 11-0.   If a team gets good pitching throughout the tourney, they have huge advantage because of the park.
In addition to the impact of Smith-Wills, you cannot underestimate the difference in intensity of these games.  It is noticeable and will be obvious from the first pitch in the Hendrix-DePauw game. The intensity and the emotions are all part of winning the SCAC.  Understanding the background of the players from Hendrix and what they have accomplished, this is different.  Playing the schedule they did will help them.
But they will feel the difference.  You cannot miss it. 
My view is that it isn't a secret why the SCAC's have been won by Trinity and Millsaps over the past several years.  In part it is due to their players and coaches.  In part it is due to the fact they know what to anticipate and how to deal with those "intangibles."

[frank_ezelle]

---In news that should not surprise anyone, Hunter Owen and Juan Joseph were named co-winners this evening as the top male senior athlete at Millsaps.  It has been great watching these two guys play over the last several years.

---Gus, the regular season didn't really provide much seperation between Millsaps-Trinity-Hendrix regarding head-to-head games.  While Millsaps and Hendrix both won their series with Trinity 3 game to 2, one has to factor in that Millsaps and Hendrix had the extra home game over Trinity this season. 

---Here's something I did not know until today:  16 out of 17 SCAC baseball tournaments have been won by a team from the West.  DePauw won in 2001 when they were the host.  I do think the tide is turning on this.  Rhodes certainly has been capable of winning in the last few years.  DePauw is always solid.  OU has improved greatly in the last year or two.  And of course BSC will be coming off probation soon. 

[richball]

No love for Centre.. They've been in it 3years in a row and they are peaking right now. OU has one OK year (non-conference) and now they're conference champions.

So sit back, close your eye's, and let CENTRE roll off your tongue, now that just feels good!!

[Lou_Brown]

Richball: Calm down with all your talk. Centre has been playing some good baseball, but lets not forget they are still 9-21 overall (which hurts the SCAC b/c it will lower the QOW of teams in the tournament). Jones gives them a shot at winning a game, but he will not beat Millsaps.

Obviously, OU is very dissapointed with not making the tournament. Losing 4 conference games due to rain absolutley hurt them this season, they never played Centre and missed a game with sewanee. they had a good season but played their worst baseball at the worst time of the season. I think a injuries caught up to this team in the end. They lost their ace March 1st, their #1 catcher the second week of March, their #2 catcher during the Rhodes series and Sarisky had to leave the game at DePauw wth back issues. Not to mention Llano sat out a handful of games including two SCAC contest. But rain and injuries are all a part of baseball, no excuses. They had their chance and could not capitalize. I don't think they had all the pieces to win the tournament this year but they are going in the right direction.  I would have loved to see a healthy Sarisky vs. Owen matchup. OU will regroup, early word is they are having a decent recruiting class and be in the hunt again next year.

Good luck to all of the teams! I think Millsaps and Trinity are too deep not to win the tournament. Millsaps will go to the NCAA no matter what, so maybe the best thing for the SCAC is to have a team like Trinity or Rhodes win this thing and get two teams in the NCAA.

Does anyone know if all the games will be shown via video?

[Pauperboy]

As provided previously, here is the Tourney's Homepage.

http://www.gomajors.com/sports/2009/4/2/BB_0402092119.aspx?path=baseball

It states that livestats and live video will be provided for all games. I watched enough live video of Millsaps games this season and if it's the same setup....their play by play guy is very good and the quality compared to alot of others I have seen is outstanding. Tremendous asset for fans to follow along.

[nvnorthpaw]

After throwing around some stats all night, here is a list of statistical categories I personally feel will play an important role in the SCAC tournament this week/weekend:

Offensively:
  -XBH/Game:Millsaps, Trinity, DePauw, Rhodes, Hendrix, Centre
 
-FB(BB+HBP)/G:Millsaps, Rhodes, Trinity, Centre, DePauw, Hendrix

  -K/G:DePauw, Trinity, Millsaps, Hendrix, Rhodes, Centre----this means DePauw K's the least amount per game.

  -AVG:Rhodes, Trinity, DePauw, Millsaps, Centre, Hendrix

Pitching:
  -ERA:  Rhodes, Millsaps, DePauw, Trinity, Hendrix, Centre
  -WHIP(with HBP included, they count too!): Rhodes, Trinity, Millsaps, DePauw, Hendrix, Centre
  -FB/Game:  DePauw, Rhodes, Millsaps, Trinity, Hendrix, Centre
  -K/FB:  Rhodes, DePauw, Millsaps, Trinity, Hendrix, Centre
  -ARA:  Rhodes/Millsaps, DePauw, Trinity, Hendrix, Centre
  -FLD%:Millsaps, Hendrix, Trinity, Rhodes, DePauw, Centre


-Also, just to clarify ARA is Average Runs Against...I believe that it really doesn't matter whether or not a run is earned when it comes down to winning a game in the tourney
-A "FB" refers to Free Base, whether it be a walk or a HBP

After going through these lists, I assigned descending point totals for different categories to predict the outcome of the tournament.  After several calculations and many a sheet of paper, I came up with these odds for each team:

Millsaps   26.2%
Trinity     21.4%
Rhodes   19.8%
DePauw  15.1%
Hendrix   11.9%
Centre     5.6%

However, the beautiful thing about this game is any team can win on any given day

[frank_ezelle]

I applaud nvnorthpaw's efforts while disagreeing with the conclusions.  One thing that hurts in trying to compare the teams from both divisions is that they play totally different schedules.  Few teams in the West have played the teams played by the teams in the East and vice versa.  The closest you come to finding scores against the same competition would be games played by Millsaps and Rhodes.

Two things about the conclusions of mvnorthpaw's research:  (1) He and I agree that no one is considered a strong favorite to win the tournament since he has Millsaps in the lead with about a 1 in 4 chance.  (2) I don't see how the season results can be disregarded and Millsaps and Trinity get about a 2 to 1 edge over Hendrix.  I'll go with results over stats here and that tells me that these three teams are close when playing against one another.

One thing that is difficult to determine from the regular season stats:  Who has the pitching to last?  It should tell you something that the Millsaps coaches decided last week that since Will Hawkins has a strong arm, they would try him out on the mound in practice.  He pitched one day in practice and actually came in the game and got the win in the final game against Trinity.  This reminds me of the SCAC Tournament at Sewanee when Hunter Abrams came in to pitch in a key situation and it was his first time to pitch all year.  The team that wins will probably needs some strong innings from some unlikely arms.

And one last thing that will be evident to anyone at the stadium--it will be very helpful if your outfielders have a lot of speed.  It's a big outfield with a fast turf so look for a lot of doubles and triples.  Having outfielders who can cut off some of those balls and hold hitters to singles will be a big plus.  I have to believe that fielding will play a bigger role in determining the champion than it might play in a smaller park with a grass field.

[richball]

nvnorthpaw those are pretty interesting stats, do you have them for just conference games so that way we can see how they do against eachother excluding the outside comp.?


As for Lou_Brown, calm down huh, well you would be pretty excited too if you and OU got to go to Jackson.

[spring bruce09]

Well, here goes my end of the season rant,

It is an absolute shame and a joke that this conference has a schedule designed so that teams can play an inequal amount of conference games. OU had a turnaround year and while they didn't help themselves by how they played at Depauw, they still should have had the opportunity to earn themselves a bid to Jackson. What I am trying to say is that after beating Sewanee's ace and then pounding their number 2 starter they did not get to play the 3rd game. Not to slight Sewanee but I firmly believe this would have been an OU win. Couple that with the fact that the series with Centre (which was at home!) got cancelled and what shakes out is unfair scheduling. I'm not trying to say OU would have beaten Centre because I am sure Centre could have played well and won but at least then it would have been settled on the field. I just find it unbelievable that the conference games (which are what should matter most when it comes to scheduling) could not be rescheduled or made up. I understand the money side of things but it is truly a shame that the OU player's season is over and it is partially out of their own control.

Like I said I realize that they could have won 2 out of 3 at Depauw to take care of business themselves and they didn't but they didn't get to play 4 games this season against the bottom two teams in their division (other than themselves obviously) and 3 of those games were home games. In the end they only got to play 3 home conference games all season! That is preposterous and I think the league needs to change the way it does the conference scheduling. Whether it be leaving an extra week at the end before the conference tournament so teams can make-up games or making every team play each other home and away, something needs to be done.

Oh well, there is my rant so good luck to all the teams this week, hopefully its a great tournament.

[richball]

I agree  springbruce09 that it would have been nice for Centre and OU to have played. I hear Centre wanted to play them the following weekend while on their spring break but OU wouldn't adjust. Centre needed  the wins for their conference standing, (14-2 against OU last 4 years),to take some pressure off later in the season. But in all reality in the end Centre stepped up and OU didn't.

[frank_ezelle]

nvnorthpaw those are pretty interesting stats, do you have them for just conference games so that way we can see how they do against eachother excluding the outside comp.?


As for Lou_Brown, calm down huh, well you would be pretty excited too if you and OU got to go to Jackson.

richball, you reminded me of something that should be remembered by the Millsaps team.  Centre is a team with a poor record overall but they played well at the end against the best team in their division and they earned their way to the SCAC Tournament.  In a lot of ways, their story is like the Millsaps Men's Basketball team this season except the Majors fell just short of the tourney.

No one would be impressed by the overall record posted by the Millsaps basketball team this season, but they were playing as well as anyone at the end of the year.  They lost to Centre and DePauw in the last seconds of those games and they handily beat Trinity.  It would have been very exciting if Millsaps had qualified for the SCAC Tournament and they would have gone in thinking that they could beat anyone in the field.  I understand why you feel the same way about your Centre baseball team.

Centre will obviously be 100% focused on Millsaps.  I believe Millsaps will be 100% focused on Centre and if that's the case, then I like the chances for a Millsaps victory in this game.  It should help Millsaps that they are the one team that will almost certainly get to the NCAA Tournament even if they don't win the AQ.  There's still plenty to play for so I expect them to be motivated, but they don't have everything on the line and I think that's an advantage.

Regarding the post by spring bruce09, I think it's a valid point.  It would have been worse if say OU had been rained out against Sewanee and Centre had been rained out against DePauw.  At least in this case Centre and OU played the same schedule and Centre would have still been ahead even if OU played the Sewanee game and won.  The problem comes in trying to find a valid solution to the situation.  

I believe pushing the tournament back a week would conflict with exams at many schools.  Plus, the only way that would help is if teams left it open as a dead week on their schedule.  If it's a week set aside for makeup games, then you can't go and schedule games knowing that you might cancel on your opponent.  What I've discovered over the years is that you can count on the SCAC home office, the athletic directors, and the coaches to do the best they can to do what's right for the student-athletes.  When they are the ones calling the shots, I trust their judgement.

[nvnorthpaw]

nvnorthpaw those are pretty interesting stats, do you have them for just conference games so that way we can see how they do against eachother excluding the outside comp.?


As for Lou_Brown, calm down huh, well you would be pretty excited too if you and OU got to go to Jackson.

Richball...thanks for the idea, I don't know why I didn't go that route in the first place.  Anyhow, after re-calculating the same stats with conference only statistics here are the results (interesting to note how the odds correlate with the seeding within each division):

Offensively:   
AVG: Trinity, Centre, DePauw, Rhodes, Millsaps, Hendrix
XBH/Game: Trinity, Millsaps, DePauw, Rhodes, Centre, Hendrix
FB/Game: Millsaps, Centre, DePauw, Trinity, Rhodes, Hendrix
K/Game: Trinity, DePauw, Millsaps, Hendrix, Rhodes, Centre

Pitching:
ERA: Rhodes, DePauw, Millsaps, Trinity, Centre, Hendrix
WHIP: DePauw, Rhodes, Millsaps, Trinity, Hendrix, Centre
FB/Game: DePauw, Rhodes, Millsaps, Trinity, Centre, Hendrix
K/FB: Rhodes, DePauw, Millsaps, Trinity, Hendrix, Centre
ARA: Rhodes, DePauw, Millsaps, Trinity, Hendrix, Centre
FLD%: Millsaps, Hendrix, DePauw, Trinity, Centre, Rhodes

It is important to note that the pitching stats are independent of how many Batters each team hit because I could not locate that stat for conference only games. After re-compiling these stats my new odds are:

1.  Millsaps/DePauw both  22%
2.  Trinity                           19%
3.  Rhodes                         14%
4.  Hendrix                         12%
5.  Centre                          10%

I don't imply anything by these numbers, I love baseball for the simple reason that anything can happen (Red Sox coming down from 3-0? what were the odds on that one?).  I just have too much fun throwing around numbers!

[Gus Sinski]

 For those who don't know, the SCAC has a blog (like who doesn't?) where they have recorded interviews with conference coaches and players.

The latest entry has an interview with Hendrix's R.J. Thomas and Coach Pritchard from Centre.

http://scacsports.blogspot.com/

Those who do the Facebook thing can sign up to become a "fan" of the SCAC and get notifications when new interviews come out.

In less than a month, the SCAC has interviewed R.J. Thomas twice, Wheeler Gnat once and Daniel Ward once. This sets a new record for number of baseball interview requests fielded by a Hendrix sports information director. The previous record was zero, held by the 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 teams.

The six teams will be converging on Jackson tomorrow for their individual practice times as set up by the Millsaps baseball staff. Can't think of a better program to be hosting this thing. Good luck to all, and perhaps I'll meet a few of you this weekend. May the best team win.

[donotknowscac]

Well, here goes my end of the season rant,

It is an absolute shame and a joke that this conference has a schedule designed so that teams can play an inequal amount of conference games. OU had a turnaround year and while they didn't help themselves by how they played at Depauw, they still should have had the opportunity to earn themselves a bid to Jackson. What I am trying to say is that after beating Sewanee's ace and then pounding their number 2 starter they did not get to play the 3rd game. Not to slight Sewanee but I firmly believe this would have been an OU win. Couple that with the fact that the series with Centre (which was at home!) got cancelled and what shakes out is unfair scheduling. I'm not trying to say OU would have beaten Centre because I am sure Centre could have played well and won but at least then it would have been settled on the field. I just find it unbelievable that the conference games (which are what should matter most when it comes to scheduling) could not be rescheduled or made up. I understand the money side of things but it is truly a shame that the OU player's season is over and it is partially out of their own control.

Hey Mr. Bruce09,
As I had posted previously, I figured someone would be taking the time this week to write your sentiments.  It was just a matter of who it was gonna be, OU, Centre, or Rhodes.

You would have to be a math wiz to figure it out going into the weekend.  But, Rhodes folks were thinking that if you went 2 for 3 and the Lynx won 2 of 3 then we both would be one game over .500.   But because OU played LESS games your winning % would be better and consequently OU would have gone to Jackson.  The same scenario goes for Centre also.

Then to make matters worse, it looked for a while that the games would be rained out in Memphis this weekend.  So, when the first game started at Autozone stadium Saturday, there was a lot of pressure on the Lynx.  They had to win because of the possibility of rainouts for the balance of the weekend.  Also, had to survive a controversial call on a two out ninth inning home run by Sewannee.  It was ruled foul.

So, in summary, last year's 4 game series but not playing all teams and this year's 3 game series playing everyone doesn't seem to work.

It is a tough situation and I'm sure not smart enough to have an answer.