By The Numbers: A&M breaks even across four-game slate in week two

Anyone who didn’t think that this season would be a work in progress has spent way too much time donning nothing but maroon-colored glasses.

Aas someone who often drinks the same Kool-Aid as many of you (and gets the newfound luxury of doing so now more than ever before), it’s easy to head into a season with blind faith that it would all be different the moment that Jim Schlossnagle rolled out his team in year one.

Take this week alone.

The Aggies lost two out of three against an Ivy League school from Philadelphia, and the same issues that gave Rob Childress’ last couple of squads fits (namely timely hitting and bullpen collapses) came to the surface in the 1-2 showing against Penn. As I dive into it in this week’s numbers-driven piece, there are quite a bit of highly encouraging elements early on, both at the plate and especially on the mound. As with every positive early-season trend, some things are going on that leave a lot to be desired.

Unless you had the Aggies pegged for Omaha simply because #22 is now in the third-base dugout and no longer terrorizing us from the visiting dugout, you had to see this coming.

This team has a chance to improve as the season rolls along, and there is plenty of time for that. Still, this team has a long way to go to compete with what is on the horizon with a gauntlet of a schedule with series against Ole Miss (No. 2 per D1Baseball.com), Arkansas (No. 3), Vanderbilt (No. 5), LSU (No. 7), Mississippi State (No. 9), Georgia (No. 15) and a single game at No. 1 Texas.

I’m choosing to latch onto this early group and appreciate it for what it is: A work in progress under the direction of one of the truly elite coaches in the entire country. Let’s support the heck out of this group and follow along as Schlossnagle & Co. fight like heck to turn this thing into chicken salad as we roll along in the 2022 campaign.

Here’s a statistical look, By The Numbers, at a 2-2 week for the Aggies and a 1-2 series loss to Penn over the weekend at Olsen Field at Blue Bell Park...

.167 - Combined batting average in the Penn series for the returning players from last year’s roster (Austin Bost, Brett Minnich, Ryan Targac, Logan Britt, Taylor Smith and Kalae Harrison). That group combined to go 8-for-48 with just one extra-base hit and 23 strikeouts. Meanwhile, the new faces brought in by Schlossnagle & Co. went 13-for-43 (.302) on the weekend. You see the difference early when you go to the ballpark. The new faces are doing a better job of taking the outside pitch the other way and aren’t trying to get too “big” in the box. The returning players struggled over the weekend, swinging through very hittable pitches and striking out in back-breaking situations. It was just one weekend, but that observation jumped out to me in this series.

.172 - A&M’s average against the Quakers with two outs. The Aggies combined to go 5-for-29 in the series with two outs. A stat that has haunted the Ags in recent years certainly reared its ugly head in this one. This is a mark of the toughness of a team, and while nobody should make too much of one weekend, it’s a trend that Schlossnagle is hoping to reverse in short order.

.201 - Opponents average through seven games against A&M pitching. The Aggies have given up just 46 hits in 63 innings, and 10 of the 14 arms that have seen action so far boast an opponent’s average at or below the Mendoza Line (.200).

Cole Eskew, TexAgs

A&M struggled offensively, scoring only 11 runs in three games vs. Penn.

.226 - A&M’s average (12-for-53) with runners on base vs. Penn, but that already paltry number dipped to .195 (8-for-41) with runners in scoring position. Yikes. The Ags did a halfway decent job of getting the leadoff man on base in the series (.346 OBP) but had a world of trouble cashing in with runners on over the weekend.

.385 - Brett Minnich’s batting average last week. The junior went 5-for-13 with two doubles to raise his average to .381 through the early going. Outside of Trevor Werner, Minnich leads the team in OPS at 1.152 (.533 OBP, .619 SLG).

.802 - Team OPS through seven games this season. That’s a respectable number, but you would hope to see it quite a bit more inflated considering the competition. The north wind and chilly temps have had something to do with it, but not everything. The Aggies have homered just four times, and nobody has more than one thus far. There are seven Aggie bats with an OBP of .400-plus, with Werner (.538) leading the way, followed by Minnich (.533). Meanwhile, four Aggies have a slugging percentage over .400. Werner is at 1.000 in three games, and Minnich is second on the roster at .619.

0 - Games played last week for Trevor Werner, who is out with a nagging oblique injury. The third-year sophomore was one of the national stories of the first week after hitting .500/.538/1.000 in the opening series against Fordham. A&M really could have used his bat and fire on the baseball field against Penn. The Aggies desperately need #28 handling the hot corner defensively and spearheaded the middle of this lineup. Werner’s absence was felt in a big way over the weekend.

0.38 - Combined ERA in the four games last week among the A&M starting pitchers. Khristian Curtis, Nathan Dettmer, Micah Dallas and Ryan Prager gave up just one earned run in 23.2 innings pitched. Curtis allowed no runs on three hits in 4.0 innings of work in his first collegiate start last Tuesday vs. Lamar, walking three and striking out two. Dettmer gave up just one unearned run on five hits over 6.0 frames in the tough-luck loss to Penn on Friday, punching out four without walking a man (Dettmer earned a no-decision). Dallas was dazzling in game one of a Sunday doubleheader vs. the Quakers. He gave up a hit on the first pitch of the game but did not allow another, spanning 8.0 shutout frames. The Texas Tech transfer issued just one free pass and fanned 10. Prager allowed one run on three hits in 5.2 innings in his second career start, striking out eight without walking a man. Hard to believe the Aggies lost a series to an Ivy League school with minuscule starting pitching numbers like these, but that’s how baseball goes sometimes.

Cole Eskew, TexAgs

Despite still searching for his first victory, Ryan Prager is sporting a 1.80 ERA through two collegiate starts.

1 - Homerun allowed by A&M’s pitching staff in 2022. That one round-tripper came against freshman Ryan Prager on Sunday on a ball that was initially ruled a foul ball but was reversed after a video review.

1.19 - Combined ERA of A&M’s starting pitchers through the first seven games of the season. Dallas leads the way at 2-0 with a 0.63 ERA. He has walked one and struck out 15 in 14.1 innings of work. Dettmer is right behind him at 1-0 with a 0.75 ERA. He has fanned 11 without walking a batter thus far. Prager is 0-0, and the ERA sits at 1.80 for the freshman. He has walked just one and struck out 11. Curtis has a 0.00 ERA in just 4.0 innings of work. He’ll take the ball again tonight against Lance Berkman and HBU.

2 - Errors on A&M defenders for the entire series. Both of those were given to Kole Kaler on Friday, playing out of position at third base for the injured Werner. Those are the only two errors all season against the Aggies (although there was a big blunder by Ryan Targac in the ninth inning of the late game on Sunday during a rundown, which was not an error because there was no forward movement with the runner at first base). A&M’s fielding percentage is a dazzling .993 through seven games.

5:1 - Strikeout-to-walk ratio so far from the A&M pitchers. The Aggies have fanned 60 hitters in 63 innings (8.57 Ks per nine innings) and have walked just 12 batters in seven games. The most impressive strikeout-to-walk ratios so far in the Maroon & White are Dettmer (11:0), Dallas (15:1), Prager (11:1) and Joseph Menefee (7:1). A&M’s trio of weekend starters has combined for 37 Ks and just two walks thus far.

5 - Extra-base hits for the Aggies in the Penn series in 110 plate appearances. All of them were doubles, and not one ball left the yard off the bat of an A&M hitter on a weekend featuring chilly temps and a decent little northern wind.

5 - Hitters sitting at .300-plus with the average. That includes Trevor Werner (.500), Brett Minnich (.381), Jack Moss (.364), Troy Claunch (.304) and Austin Bost (.300). A&M is hitting .272 as a team.

5.56 - Combined bullpen ERA through seven games. It’s a bit skewed, however, as five relievers are at 0.00, and Chris Cortez sits at 2.08. Brad Rudis is at 3.86, and then three veteran arms — Stanford transfer Jacob Palisch (9.00) and longtime Aggies Menefee (12.00) and Alex Magers (20.25) — have combined to allow 12 of the 18 runs A&M has given up on the season. Besides that trio, only one other guy (Ryan Prager with two) has given up more than a single earned run thus far in 2022.

14 - Stolen bases so far for the Aggies. That’s an average of two steals per game, which is a regular-season pace of 108. A&M has been thrown out three times in seven games while attempting to steal. UTSA transfer Dylan Rock leads the Ags with four steals in five attempts.

18.90 - ERA on the week for the returning bullpen arms. Menefee and Magers combined to allow seven earned runs in 3.0 innings of work against Lamar and Penn, and Jonathan Childress came on to record the last out of the ninth inning on Sunday after Penn scored five runs on six hits in the frame. It was not a good week for the bullpen, period, as the new faces to the roster combined for a 5.40 ERA in relief on the week.

35 - A&M strikeouts in the Penn series. Not much else you can add to this one. Not good.

Up next: HBU at Olsen Field at Blue Bell Park on Tuesday and then a trip to the Metroplex to face Washington State, Iowa and Wichita State in the Frisco Classic this weekend. We’ll see you soon at the ballyard!