(read in the voice of Russel Crowe from Gladiator)

Ladies and Gentlemen (used loosely) of Olsen Field, and Statboy:
A mere 30 days stand between us and the glorious arrival of Aggie Baseball. Long have I suffered and anguished in darkness awaiting the return to the majestic sport of kings that we all love. Long have we been hoping for a return to Olsen. Suffer no more, for I have once again returned to the Baseball forum for my annual pre-season address. Though some have enjoyed my absence of late, others may smile to see my level headed opinions (facts) return. It is true I suffered greatly from Battered Aggie Syndrome at the hands of last season. It is true I believed we did not belong on the field of battle known as the Regionals, and yes, it is true that I made bets against our team (though be it in hopes of a victory). However, I have overcome BAS and hope springs anew. I hereby proclaim that I will take a new tactic this year, I will not play the devil's avocado that I played in years past (claiming we suck in hopes we would win), but instead will openly support our team. So let us rally around the boys on the field, throw away our focus on twitter, instragram, etc., and get back to heckling so our boys can win!

TLDR: since we aren't overhyped coming into the season, I'm jumping on the bandwagon early.

I'll see everyone on Feb 14 (I know, I know, opening day is Feb 13, but I have something out of town I can't get out of...but I'll try to do my normal tailgate on the 14th if possible)

Hoping for a great season.

Dumb. Who is going to cook me burgers on opening day then?!

theres a mcdonalds down the street....

True. But we have a shot to prove it.

Let the chants of fire the dam coach begin.

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Let the chants of fire the dam coach begin

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Not yet

Haven't even played a game yet

Who knows? We may win a national championship this year

There is a big difference between "I think Childress should have been fired last June" and "fire Childress a month before the season opener"

But between now and mid-february i will refrain from any "fire Childress" crap unless someone brings it up or stirs it up first

I have faith Captain.

Attaboy

Childress leads us to the promise land...

woah, woah, woah....let's not push things...I'm not saying let's blindly drink the koolaid here. I'm saying let's fire up the support for the boys and get them off to a good start. We aren't starting off the year overrated this time, so we have everything to gain. We can really make some noise if we get on a roll. Let's do it!

one thing we can all agree on...going to be tough to draw meaningful conclusions from the first month of the season (February)

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one thing we can all agree on...going to be tough to draw meaningful conclusions from the first month of the season (February)

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Oh I think if we lose a bunch of games through March 1st we'll have a pretty good idea of what we have

I'm in. Starting out positive, but reserved. Some new wrinkles and a new year, so, "Here we go, here we go".

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Childress leads us to the promise land...

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Yes, he does. It's like he leads us there so we can see what we can't have.

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one thing we can all agree on...going to be tough to draw meaningful conclusions from the first month of the season (February)

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Twill be cold..

I'm glad I got on board early this year. I'm having fun watching the team play some decent baseball and I think there is room to grow. It's also very encouraging we seem to have (at least for the time being) tossed systematic bunting on the back burner. Situational bunting can't be avoided, but I'm liking the swing away approach and the team is taking advantage of it. If we can continue scoring 4-8 runs/game we will have a decent season. Let's keep it going!

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I'm glad I got on board early this year. I'm having fun watching the team play some decent baseball and I think there is room to grow. It's also very encouraging we seem to have (at least for the time being) tossed systematic bunting on the back burner. Situational bunting can't be avoided, but I'm liking the swing away approach and the team is taking advantage of it. If we can continue scoring 4-8 runs/game we will have a decent season. Let's keep it going!

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Love all the free swinging, no bunting, hard hit balls, home runs, very few K's, etc. granted we've played weak teams so far, but no way a saw dog offense has this many runs so far.

I'm glad the 2-0 and 3-1 take sign is gone. That was just WRONG!

There is 1 thing that could potentially be worrisome to me. Run distribution by inning. I know we are only 4 games in but so far over 50% of our runs have come in the first 3 innings. Then our bats go cold until the 7th. While I LOVE starting the game off with hot bats, I'd love to see us keep the peddle to the metal. We currently average 1.47 runs per inning, that's great, can't underscore how much of an improvement that is so far vs 2013 (about .5rpi) and 2014 ( about .6rpi). However, I definitely think as we see more games and better pitchers who have some innings under their belt, the first 3 innings will be less explosive and we'll need to find some hotter bats in the middle innings. Even on Friday, arguably the best opening day in recent Olsen history, we went scoreless during the 4th, 5th, and 6th innings. If I'm allowed to pretend I'm coach for a moment, I'd really try to get the guys to not taper their offensive performance starting in the 3rd inning starting this weekend. That way when we get to really good pitching and we only get 1 run in the first 3 innings, we can be used to accelerating through the 4th, 5th, and 6th and wind up with 4-5 runs by the time we get to the 7th.

% of runs per inning:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Gm 1: 3 7 3 0 0 0 4 2 X
Gm 2: 0 4 1 0 2 2 7 0 X
Gm 3: 4 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 X
Gm 4: 2 0 1 0 0 0 3 0 X
Total: 9 11 5 2 2 2 14 2 X
19% 23% 11% 4% 4% 4% 30% 4% X%

TLDR: starting off hot while pitcher is shaky, we are letting pitcher get into a routine starting in the 3rd inning and don't really let him get out of routine until 7th inning

definitely something we can change though. still optimistic and loving our new approach at the plate.

I like the stats, but I wonder how a pitching change or lineup change affected those middle inning slumps.

I hope we don't ever have to come from behind, our 9th inning stats are horrible.

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I hope we don't ever have to come from behind, our 9th inning stats are horrible.

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I like the stats, but I wonder how a pitching change or lineup change affected those middle inning slumps.

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Here are the Starting Pitchers Innings Pitched by game
Gm 1: 1.0
Gm 2: 4.2
Gm 3: 4.0
Gm 4: 4.0

Not enough data points to really get a good feel for it, but using data so far:
Game 1 is outlier with more than 1 run in 3rd inning. Final pitcher was only pitcher who went longer than 1 inning at 1.2 IP
Game 2 starter didn't give up a run in the 4th, was responsible for both runs. So starting pitcher was responsible for taper that occurred in the 3rd and 4th, but Ags got to him when he got tired in the 5th and reliever couldn't hold the runners from scoring, nor could he keep them from hanging a 2 on him in the 6th.
Game 3 starter blanked Ags for 2 innings and pulled after 4th, giving up 2 in 4th. Relievers held ags remainder of game
Game 4 starter gave up 1 in 3rd (unearned) and blanked ags in 2nd and 4th. reliever held ags scoreless for 2 innings, but then ags picked up on side arm and hung 3 on him.

Interested to see what happens this weekend, but if we can start hanging a few 2 run and 3 run innings back to back in the middle of the game we should go far this year and be able to have a few slower starting games (likely to happen once we face better pitching).

Summary: not enough data, but looks to me like Ags take advantage early, then let pitcher settle down and wait for him to get tired to pounce again. Take a few innings to get used to reliever.

What I'm really liking is the solid contact most of our players are making. Notte has started slow on the stats, but he's making good contact and driving the ball deep. He'll start finding some gaps eventually.

I'll try to stay on top of this throughout the season, but here's this week's updated data

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Gm 1: 3 7 3 0 0 0 4 2 X
Gm 2: 0 4 1 0 2 2 7 0 X
Gm 3: 4 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 X
Gm 4: 2 0 1 0 0 0 3 0 X
Gm 5: 2 1 2 0 2 1 0 1 X
Gm 6: 3 2 1 0 1 0 2 6 X
Gm 7: 0 2 1 0 0 1 0 1 X
Total: 14 16 9 2 5 4 16 10 X

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1st 4 games: 9 11 5 2 2 2 14 2 X
last 3 games: 5 5 4 0 3 2 2 8 X
cumulative: 14 16 9 2 5 4 16 10 X

% of Runs per inning
1st 4 games: 19% 23% 11% 4% 4% 4% 30% 4% X%
last 3 games: 17% 17% 14% 0% 10% 7% 7% 28% X%
cumulative: 18% 21% 12% 3% 7% 5% 21% 13% X%
average: 23% 18% 13% 5% 6% 6% 18% 12% 0%

Looks like once again, we attacked starting pitchers early this weekend, with Penn St starters getting 4.0, 4.0 and 3.0 innings pitched respectively. Saturday's starter did have 5 UNearned runs against him though. That aside, trend of cooling off as starter settles in in the 3rd/4th continues and initially colder bats against relievers (Gm 2 7th inning and Gm 6 8th inning being the outliers to that). Looks like the sacrifice bunts have picked up since the first 4 games (up to total of 4 now, and I believe we only had 1 in first 4 games, may be wrong though). That may explain the slight dip of runs per inning after this weekend.

9th inning offensive production still horrendous...

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9th inning offensive production still horrendous...

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May Olsen be filled with 9th inning X's this year

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9th inning offensive production still horrendous...

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May Olsen be filled with 9th inning X's this year

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What is the average %? How are you calculating that?

Took the average of the % runs by inning per game. Didn't break that out by game on here, just on my spreadsheet, but showed the average bc it looked more meaningful seeing as a few games show outliers

Still not sure I understand this stand and what it is meant to represent. Not sure how it could be higher than the 2nd Inning. Would like to see the stats or the numbers you are using to calculate this stat

Underlying data is the runs by inning I already posted. Since you went to A&M, you already know math and you're probably just getting caught up in the presentation, so here's the steps to get to average % runs per inning

Inning: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Gm1: 3 7 3 0 0 0 4 2 0 total 19
3/19= 16%

Inning: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Gm 1: 16% 37% 16% 0% 0% 0% 21% 11% 0%
Gm 2: 0% 25% 6% 0% 13% 13% 44% 0% 0%
Gm 3: 67% 0% 0% 33% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%
Gm 4: 33% 0% 17% 0% 0% 0% 50% 0% 0%
Gm 5: 22% 11% 22% 0% 22% 11% 0% 11% 0%
Gm 6: 20% 13% 7% 0% 7% 0% 13% 40% 0%
Gm 7: 0% 40% 20% 0% 0% 20% 0% 20% 0%
take the average by inning i.e game 1 in excel: =average(.16,0,.67,.33,.22,.20,0) = 23%
Average % by inning: 23% 18% 13% 5% 6% 6% 18% 12% 0%

Cumulative runs: 14 16 9 2 5 4 16 10 0 Total 76 runs
Cumulative:18% 21% 12% 3% 7% 5% 21% 13% 0%

You wouldn't happen to have base runners or number of at bats percentage by inning would you? I want to say that even when we are not scoring in the middle innings, we still have quite a few base runners; seems we are justing missing the big hits during that span.

That is something I don't have. I'm not one of the guys who keeps score during the games. Statboy may have that, but I just pull data from box scores and published stats from aggieathletics. We do have baserunners in the middle innings, but I haven't paid attention to whether or not its more or less than first 3 or last 2 innings