Winning games is what really matters, but looking at stats can be fun...

For teams in D1 baseball's 3/25/24 top 10, using WHIP & OPS data for games through 3/28/24:
- - WHIP ranged from 1.01 to 1.68. (A&M = 1.11)
- - OPS ranged from 1.088 to 0.876. (A&M = 0.982)
So, A&M was near the best per WHIP and near the middle of the range per OPS.

Note this is comparing A&M with the top 10 ranked teams only, not all of college baseball.

I wondered about the combination of pitching (WHIP) & batting (OPS) .

To get a simple view of that, I re-ranked the top 10 teams from 1 to 10 based on their WHIP and OPS. Then I added the two ranks for each team and re-ranked them using the sums of the ranks.

The resulting order was as follows:
1. Tennessee - - third best WHIP and best OPS.
2. A&M - - second best WHIP and fourth best OPS.
3. Oregon St. - - sixth best WHIP and second best OPS.
4. Arkansas - - best WHIP and tenth OPS.
5. Dallas Baptist
6. Tie - - Clemson, Vanderbilt, Virginia
9. Tie - - Florida, LSU

Obviously strength of schedule and other factors affect this greatly. And it's clearly oversimplified. But it says A&M is good so I like it. :-)

Very interesting, thanks.

My impression of Aggie pitching is that we don't have a true ace, but several very good (not-AA level) starters. Aschenbeck is the best pitcher on the staff, and I don't see how any other reliever in the nation can be considered better. Rudis has been sneaky good. We have several other relievers that Schloss trusts and would take to Omaha. And we've trotted some guys out there for an inning or so that've gotten shelled.

The staff as a whole has gone from liability in 2023 to strength in 2024. Is it elite enough to win a Natty, if our batting lineup stays healthy? Maybe. Get Wansing healthy and producing by the end of the regular season and I'd change that to probably.

It is so refreshing to have BOTH high quality pitching and hitting. This is not normal. Even with Schloss we shouldn't count on this annually. THIS team is special. Enjoy it.