A look at college baseball, part 1

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This is a pet project I’ve been working on, and after an extensive amount of editing work, I’ve finally finished up part 1 of my project, looking at offense in college baseball. My goal in doing this was to find out exactly how each of the major Division 1 conferences stack up against each other. We kind of know which conferences are traditionally strong (PAC 10, SEC, etc etc), but I wanted to know how strong, and I wanted to have a frame of reference to be able to compare two conferences, and eventually two players from different conferences and see how their offensive numbers differ. The one area that I can’t dig into, simply because I don’t have the resources, is park factors, which I believe plays an important role, one I just won’t be able to investigate at this point. So, check below for my findings…

Today I’m going to post my offensive findings, and then I’ll have the pitching info in a few days, depending on how quickly I can finish it up. There are 30 major conferences in Division 1, plus the D-1 Independent schools. This data set is not 100% perfect. The info was purchased from the baseball cube, and the stats are 99% complete I’d say, so the sample should be accurate enough. I’m going to post the 5 year averages (2004-2008), which is a better sample than just looking at one isolated year.

ncaaoffense3

So, there is the data. Teams are sorted by Secondary Average, highest to lowest. I had to condense all the data to make it fit into an easy (somewhat) to read chart. To see what teams are in what conferences, go here and click the appropriate conference. You’re free to draw your own observations, I plan on doing more with this data at a later point, and then using it to evaluate the draft class as we get closer to June.

7 thoughts on “A look at college baseball, part 1”

  1. This is great work and should prove to be a real asset when trying to put college draft picks into some statistical perspective. It’s surprising how large the spread is across the conferences — the Big 12 sporting a combined .295 SecA while the Big West is at .233, for instance. It should certainly prove a useful tool for evaluating guys going forward.

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  2. Sunshine State Conference! Sure, it’s Division-II, but look at the offense from Tampa, Barry, and Florida Southern. There is some serious talent and the SSC champ typically finds its way to the NCAA II Collegiate Baseball Championship.

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  3. When you combine this info with the pitching information your going to have a very valuable tool for evaluating college players. Good stuff.

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  5. I don’t know what you’re looking for in PF, but the work may have already been done for you. Check out: http://www.boydsworld.com/data/pf2008.html (this site is a necessary resource for any statistically inclined college baseball fan, though it had a teeny more content before BP picked up its author).

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  7. Der-K, thanks for that link. I had no idea there was a good college site like that.

    James, really appreciate the work you put into this. It’s funny as well, because I had a conversation the other day about a kid from my hometown who pitches for Lafayette (Patriot League) and was wondering how to put his stats into context.

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