Northern Sun Players of the Week – 3/23/09

The Northern Sun Conference has named their Player and Pitcher of the Week for the week ending March 23rd.  Once again, the Conference has decided to go with 2 players from the same team (Minnesota State).  The Mavericks played one of the weakest opponents in the Conference (Northern State) in this weekends opening of league games.  While both players named had very good performances this week, I think the Conference should stop saying they try not to pick 2 from the same team or that they take strength of opponent into consideration.  Player of the Week Rant Follow Up 

Player of the Week was a no-brainer as Minnesota State’s Danny Miller won the honor.  The sophomore outfielder from Eden Prairie, MN was a perfect 11 for 11 in the first 3 games of the Maverick’s weekend series against Northern State.  The 11 consecutive hits set a new Minnesota State record, beating the old mark of 10 straight set in 1996.  His 11 hits included 2 doubles and a home run to go with 7 RBI’s and a perfect 8 putouts in the field.

Pitcher of the Week was Minnesota State’s Patrick Lenton.  The junior from Maple Grove, MN pitched a complete game shutout in a 9-0 win over the Northern State Wolves.  Lenton’s performance was marked by giving up only 1 hit and 1 walk to go with 8 strikeouts.  He improved his season record to 4-1 as the #1 starter for the Mavericks.

While Lenton’s pure stats were better (a 1 hitter IS really good), I think there were 2 Augustana pitchers, Kenny Lidke (4 hits in 6.1 innings) and Tyler Pierson (2 hits in 6 innings, 9 K’s and no earned runs allowed), who had just as good performances this week when you consider they were pitching against a top team like Concordia.

NSIC Weekly Release No. 7

NCBWA Regional Poll – 3/23/08

The National College Baseball Writers Association has released their Regional Poll for the week of March 23rd.  At the end of the regular season these are the teams that will be competing for 6 spots in the NCAA Regional Tournament.  Both the Northern Sun Conference Tournament Champion and the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Tournament Champion will earn automatic bids with the remaining 4 spots nominated as at-large bids.

The top 2 spots continue to be Mesa State and Colorado State – Pueblo out of the RMAC.  Wayne State jumps to the #3 position after sweeping Bemidji State in the opening weekend of NSIC play.  Southwest Minnesota State moves up to #4 on the strength of a 10-1 spring trip and Saint Cloud State drops 1 spot after losing unexpectedly to Minnesota Crookston. 

The biggest movers were Augustana who moved into the #8 spot and Concordia who dropped 6 spots after the Augies took 3 of 4 against the Golden Bears over the weekend.  NCBWA Regional Poll

NCAA Division 2 Baseball Rankings – 3/23/08

As is usual on a Monday, 2 of the 3 national Division 2 college baseball rankings have been released. 

• College Baseball News has not 1 but 2 new #1 teams.  Last week’s previous #1 team, Southern Arkansas, dropped to #5.  In their place both Grand Valley State and Florida Southern tied for the new top spot in the poll.  North Alabama made a huge jump from not receiving votes up to a tie for #13.  Going the other way was Frances Marion who dropped from #15 to a tie for #29.  Speaking of #29, the Northern Sun Conference was represented in the poll again as Wayne State is tied with Frances Marion.  St. Cloud State, Augustana and Concordia all received at least 1 vote this week as well.  College Baseball News Rankings
• Ping!Baseball continued with Southern Arkansas at the top of their poll while moving up Grand Valley State to #2.  Emporia State made a big jump from #10 to #3 which should be interesting as Wayne State has a game against them this week.  Emporia’s big jump was courtesy of a 3 game drubbing of Central Missouri who dropped from #3 down to #18.  There are no Northern Sun teams in the Ping Top 30.  Ping!Baseball Top 30 Rankings

Northern Sun Weekend Recap – 3/22/09

This weekend featured the start of Conference contests for 8 Northern Sun teams and there were some surprising results.

• After losing the opening game of a 4 game series, Augustana came back and won the next 3 against Concordia behind some amazing pitching performances.  The Augies were outgunned 8-5 in that first game but came back with wins of 13-1, 2-1 and 2-1.  The Vikings pitchers in games 2-4 went a combined 22 innings giving up only 10 hits and 2 earned runs while striking out 19 Concordia batters.  This series may be a blow to the regular season Conference title hopes of Concordia who was one of the top 3 teams in the preseason coaches poll and rated #28 in the country by the Northern Sun D2 College Baseball Poll.  The losses now put them 3 games back in the standings to the other 2 favorites. Concordia is the lone Conference team idle next weekend.   Augies Down Concordia in Doubleheader
• One of those teams Concordia is now looking up at is preseason Conference favorite Wayne State.  The Wildcats swept all 4 games of their weekend series against Bemidji State to start the Conference season at 4-0.  The last game in the series was the closest as the Beavers came back to even the game at 3 in the sixth inning.  That would be short lived as the Wildcats Justin Hemauer delivered a 2 out bases loaded single to score 2 runs in the bottom of the 6th which ended up being the final 2 runs scored in a 5-3 win.  Wayne State is scheduled to travel to play Minnesota Duluth next weekend while the Beavers head to Sioux Falls to play the surprise team in Augustana.  WSC Completes Sweep of Bemidji
• Minnesota State was the other preseason top 3 team and they also swept all 4 games against their weekend opponent, Northern State.  Just like in the Wayne State series, the Mavericks closest contest was their last game of the weekend.  In that 4th game the Wolves took a 6-3 lead into the bottom of the 7th inning before Minnesota State rallied and got a dramatic walk-off 3 run home run from senior Geno Glynn to seal the sweep.  The series was marked by a record breaking performance from Maverick sophomore Danny Miller of Eden Prairie, MN.  Miller was 11 for 11 in the first 3 games of the series which broke the Mavericks consecutive hits streak record of 10 which was set in 1996.  Next weekend, Minnesota State hosts Upper Iowa and Northern State hosts Southwest Minnesota State.  Mavericks Take Series From Northern State
• In the final weekend series, as we wrote about yesterday, St. Cloud State surprisingly split it’s opening doubleheader against Minnesota Crookston on Friday (Crookston Stuns SCSU).  The Huskies did come back on Saturday and sweep the Golden Eagles by lopsided scores of 11-4 and 14-2.  Sam Radbil continues to be the offensive catalyst for St. Cloud and the Huskies got very good starting pitching from both Tim Scott and Pat DeLaHunt.  St. Cloud State is playing in Bismarck next weekend against the University of Mary while Crookston hosts Winona State.  Huskies Sweep Golden Eagles
• In non-Conference games this weekend, Upper Iowa traveled to St. Joseph, MO for a 4 game series against Missouri Western.  Unfortunately, the Peacocks were swept which dropped their record to 5-7 on the season.  Griffon Baseball Completes 4 Game Sweep
• Finally, on Saturday we saw Southwest Minnesota State conclude its spring trip with a 5-1 win over St. Michael’s (VT).  The win gave the Mustangs a 10-1 record for the opening spring trip – their best result in school history.  Mustangs Conclude Spring Trip

Series Preview: Bemidji St. vs. Wayne St.

 

The final weekend Conference series features Bemidji State traveling to play Wayne State. 

Last year the Beavers (7-11) also traveled to Nebraska and came away with a 1-3 weekend which featured their first ever win at Wayne.  While they are on a 4 game losing streak they are still off to their best start in 6 years.  Earlier in the season they swept Minnesota State so they are certainly capable of playing with the top teams in the Conference.

Wayne State (8-5) comes into Conference play as the preseason coaches poll favorite.  The Wildcats have won the Conference title the past 5 straight years so they have been really good for a long time.  The team started 2009 with a bit of a so-so start but has recently won 4 straight games to come into this series on a high note.

Bemidji State Approach

• Put the ball in play – Wayne State has the worst fielding percentage in the Conference and 2 of their losses can be attributed to errors
• Keep the ball down – Wayne State has 13 home runs to Bemidji’s 4 on the season.  The good news for the Beavers is their pitchers sport a really good fly ball to ground ball ratio (134/167) of .8 – keep inducing grounders.
• Get a lead by 6th Inning – Maybe easier said than done but Bemidji is 6-0 when leading after 6 innings and 0-10 when trailing.
• Pretend there’s a runner on base – Beaver batters are hitting .304 with a runner on base vs. .263 with bases empty

Wayne State Approach

• Quickly Clone Eric Schwieger – The left handed freshman starter has been Wayne State’s best pitcher.  More importantly though, the Beavers have been hitting .323 vs. right handed pitchers and only .192 against left.  Unfortunately for the Wildcats, they are a right handed dominated pitching staff
• Hit the ball toward Third – Beaver 3B, Colton Smith, has a very mediocre .803 fielding percentage.  The rest of the team is quite good.
• Stay off the plate – Bemidji has 100 strikeouts and only 40 walks on the season – they must be pretty aggressive swingers

Prediction – Wayne State is likely the better team but I was impressed by Bemidji’s wins against Minnesota State.  I’ll go with a Wayne State 3-1 series victory.

Series Preview: Augustana vs. Concordia

 

In the 3rd Northern Sun Conference baseball series of the weekend, Concordia University of St. Paul hosts Augustana.  The games have been moved from Concordia’s home field to Minnetonka (MN) High School which has a field turf surface that is much more playable.  Weekend Series Moved

Concordia (15-3) comes into the series with their best start in school history and is ranked #28 in the country in the recent Northern Sun Poll (Northern Sun Baseball Poll).  The Golden Bears were picked in the preseason coaches poll as one of the Conference’s top 3 teams. 

Augustana (8-5) is playing their first series as a part of the Northern Sun Conference.  The team has already had a great turnaround from a year ago.  Last year, the team had a 13-30 record on the season.  Statistically, the team’s batting average is up 30 points, the pitchers ERA is down a full 1.5 runs/game and they’ve stolen more bases in 13 games than in all 43 last year.  First year head coach Tim Huber seems to have the Augies headed in the right direction.

Coming into the series, Concordia holds most of the statistical advantages.  In comparison with all other Northern Sun teams the Golden Bears are #1 in Team Batting Average, #2 in Team ERA and #1 in Fielding.

Augustana Approach

• Test Concordia’s Pitching Depth – Concordia’s #2 starter, Blake DeVries, hasn’t pitched since leaving a game against St. John’s with an injury.  In addition, the way their schedule has been spread out really hasn’t required that they go very deep into their staff.  Kirk Ingram has been great in relief but there’s not much else in their bullpen that has been tested.
• Start Right Handed Hitters – Right handers are hitting .305 against Concordia pitching while lefties are hitting only .194.  When facing Concordia’s star pitcher Jake Schmidt the bias is even bigger (.316/.146).  On the other hand, when Ingram comes into the game put in a left handed pinch hitter as the bias reverses for him.
• Be Careful Stealing – The Augies like to steal but need to be wary of Concordia catcher Chris Herbert who has thrown out 6 of 19 runners

Concordia Approach

• Be aggressive at the Plate – Augies pitchers have a poor strike out ratio so they aren’t overpowering for the most part.  On the other hand, if Per Nestigen starts you may want to be a little patient with him as he’s got more walks than Innings Pitched which indicates control issues.
• Run – Starting catcher Charles Dubanoski has only thrown out 1 base stealer in 9 attempts.

Prediction – Concordia is the better team, especially some of their top end guys.  That said, they’ve played an easy non-conference schedule and might not be extremely deep.  I’ll predict Concordia wins the series 3 games to 1.

Golden Eagles Stun Huskies in Conference Opener

 

Yesterday in this blog I wrote my first Series Preview outlining the weekend games between Minnesota Crookston and St. Cloud State – SCSU vs. UMC Series Preview  In that piece I outlined the huge advantage in statistics that were owned by the Huskies and predicted a 4 game sweep over the Golden Eagles.

There’s a reason they play the games as even the best teams lose over the course of a long season – in a single baseball game, anything can happen.

In game 1 of their series, St. Cloud State opened up a commanding 6-0 lead after 3 innings but had to hold on in the 7th inning as the Golden Eagles scored 4 runs in the final frame to make it interesting.  The Huskies held on to win 7-5 but not before starter David Deminsky (4-0) gave up a lead off home run in the 7th and then let 2 more on base.  St. Cloud’s closer, Tim Radmacher, then promptly gave up a 3 run homer before shutting down the threat.  The final score may have lifted the spirits of the Crookston team who was expected to lose convincingly all weekend.  Game 1 Boxscore

In game 2, there were 4 lead changes in a back and forth battle that was tied 3-3 at the end of 7 innings and tied again at 5-5 after 11.  In the 12th inning the Golden Eagles capitalized on a walk to Paul Krebs and a double by catcher Tyler Reiner to push across the winning run and win 6-5 in 12.  Krebs (2-2) not only scored the winning run, he pitched the final 1.1 innings to get the win.  Game 2 Boxscore

The main differences in why Crookston competed so well –

• The pitching staff, who came into the game with a Team ERA of 7.44, finished the day with a 4.73 ERA
• That said, the biggest difference was at the plate.  The Golden Eagles entered the series having hit 3 home runs in their previous 14 games.  They must have eaten their Wheaties because they hit 3 home runs in each game yesterday!

These same 2 teams will play another doubleheader today to finish their weekend series.  No matter what happens I’ll rate this series as a win for Crookston.

Crookston Release – Baseball Team Stuns SCSU

St. Cloud Release – Huskies Split NSIC Opener

Series Preview: Minnesota St. vs. Northern St.

 

A 2nd Northern Sun series has been moved up to Friday/Saturday as Northern State travels to Mankato to take on Minnesota State.  Northern State Moves Games

On paper these games should be a mismatch as Minnesota State was projected as the Conference’s #2 team in the preseason coaches poll while Northern State was picked to finish next to last in 12th place.  That said, the Mavericks have been a little disappointing early this season which might give the Wolves a bit of optimism.  One does need to remember that Northern State did lose all 4 games they’ve played during non-Conference against other quality Northern Sun teams.  They lost doubleheaders to both Concordia and St. Cloud State by lopsided scores.

On paper it’s easy to see that Minnesota State is the superior team.  They are better across the board with hitting, pitching and fielding stats. 

In looking a little deeper at each team the following sticks out –

Northern State Approach

• Keep the ball down – Northern State pitchers this season sport a fly ball/ground ball ratio of 1.7 (114 fly outs to 68 ground outs).  That’s not good.  They should be shooting for a 1-1 relationship or better.
• Hit the ball toward the left side of the infield – shortstop Kosuke Hattori (.884 fielding %) and 3B Geno Glynn (.833 fielding %) have been the only weak links in the Mavericks defense but their fielding averages aren’t very good.

Minnesota State Approach

• Pound the Pitchers – The Northern State pitchers have been okay at not walking too many but they don’t strike anyone out either so keep being aggressive late in the count.  On the other hand, if Wolves closer Nick Wallentiny comes in be patient.  He’s walked 13 in 9+ innings.
• Leave Ben Kincaid in as the permanent DH from now on- since starting him about half way through the year he’s hitting .517 hitting in the 3rd spot of the lineup
• Clone Jay Bresnahan – not really practical but I wanted to call out Bresnahan and his season to date.  He’s hitting .510 but more impressive is his .918 slugging percentage which leads all regular starters in the Northern Sun Conference

Prediction – While a tougher opponent than Crookston I’ll go with a Minnesota State sweep.  The Wolves best shot at a win will come in their game with starter Michael Gardner going.

Series Preview: St. Cloud State vs. MN Crookston

   

The Northern Sun’s baseball teams begin Conference play today.  Two of the weekend’s series have been moved from Saturday/Sunday doubleheaders to Friday/Saturday contests in order to try and avoid poor weather forecast for Sunday.  This series was moved from its scheduled location in St. Cloud to Freeman, SD to find a dry field.  Changes For Weekend Series

We’ll see if I can keep up with each series but for each weekend set of games I’ll begin with a common “tale of the tape” comparison to give some feel for the teams’ overall success in 2009:

As is painfully obvious in this view, the Huskies are the vastly superior team in almost every category. 

I also plan to look a little deeper at the stats to talk about how each team might approach the series -

Minnesota Crookston Approach

• Run early and often – About the only area I found that is a little chink in the armor for St. Cloud is that their catcher, Nate Hammes, has been below average to date on throwing out base stealers.  So far he’s thrown out 3 in 18 attempts for an .833 clip.  Crookston doesn’t look like they’ve run much but I’d try to exploit this a little
• Also, in the game Pat DeLaHunt is pitching for St. Cloud – throw in as many right handed hitters as possible.  Right handers are hitting .361 against him while lefites are hitting only .100.  The other St. Cloud starting pitchers don’t have any obvious right/left bias.

St. Cloud State Approach

• Stay with your starters – This one is totally obvious too but St. Cloud’s starters have been dominating this season.  Logan Birr (4-0, 2.45 ERA), Pat DeLaHunt (4-0, 3.51), Tim Scott (5-0, 3.91) and David Deminsky (3-0, 4.13) have a combined 16 wins while 4 of the 5 losses have been pinned on relievers.  That said, this is the type of series that you might be able to spread the innings around a little bit.
• Have fun but stay focused – the Huskies really can’t afford to drop one of these games

Prediction - St. Cloud State Sweep

Northern Sun – Strength of Schedule Analysis

Today marks the beginning of Conference games for the 13 Division 2 college baseball teams of the Northern Sun Conference.  One of the comments on this blog (thanks Wow) brought up the topic of Southwest Minnesota State’s easy schedule so I thought I’d look into it.

For the most part, the 13 teams in the Northern Sun have a Conference schedule made up of 4 games against 8 different teams for a total of 32 games (there are 2 exceptions as Upper Iowa and Northern State have an extra pair against each other for some reason).  This means that most teams “don’t” play 4 other teams each year which can lead to significant differences in your schedule difficulty depending on who you do and don’t play.

The key to analyzing the difficulty is to accurately gauge how tough of an opponent each team is.  In the NFL you see this done a lot during the off-season by using the previous year’s results as a gauge for future year performance.  That would be impractical as the Northern Sun didn’t exist in its present form last year plus the changeover on a college team provides significant differences in team quality from year to year.  Therefore, I relied mostly on things like the preseason coaches poll and non-Conference results to give each team a quality factor.

How I did this was pick a team I thought represented a middle of the pack team to compare off of.  The team I chose was Winona State.  I then thought about how Winona would do over the long haul against each other team and came up with the following table –

How you read this is that if Winona played Augustana, Bemidji or Duluth (all teams factored at .65) that my guess is that Winona would win about 2 of 3 games against them.  Winona would win 4 of 5 against Mary & Northern and every game against Crookston.  They would win 1 of 3 against Minnesota State, SMSU and SCSU.

Now the key to the exactness of this exercise is whether you believe in the weighting I give each team.  That said, everyone knows that if your schedule has Mary, Northern and Crookston on it as opposed to Wayne & Concordia that you probably should win more games.

Using the factors above I then measured every teams schedule against their Conference opponents for the season to get the following strength of schedule (this does factor out Upper Iowa and Northern’s extra games) –

What this shows is the relative strength of schedule for each team based on my factors.  It is not designed to predict wins & losses.

Using this we can say that indeed Southwest Minnesota State followed by Upper Iowa have the easiest schedules.  When looking at the detail of SMSU’s schedule you’ll see that they play all 3 of the weakest teams and don’t play Concordia or Wayne State.

Of the top 3 teams predicted in the preseason coaches poll, Minnesota State looks like they have the toughest route.  Their schedule is 5 games harder than SMSU and 3+ games harder than Wayne State.

If people have strong opinions about the factors to use it would be easy for me to rerun the results now that the spreadsheet is built.

Northern Sun Blog – Readers Pick Champion

The first ever poll on the Northern Sun Blog wrapped up today.  The question was – Which Northern Sun team will win the NSIC regular season Championship?

The readers have spoken and the winner is Concordia!

They were followed by Minnesota State and Wayne State.  Those 3 teams were the 3 teams at the top of the preseason NSIC coaches poll conducted in January. 

Of course, this poll was totally unscientific and many people may have used it to vote on their favorite team instead of which team they truly feel will win the Championship.  I think you’d find it hard to get people to really pick Augustana if there were something on the line. 

In addition, SW Minnesota State didn’t garner many votes but that may because they started their season so late and most regular readers may have already voted in the poll before seeing the Mustangs get off to a blazing 8-0 start.

My thanks to the 62 voters – I’ll definitely use the poll feature again to gather opinions and feedback.

Great Week For Northern Sun Teams

Just 1 week ago I published these standings and it wasn’t pretty (NSIC 3/12/09 Standings) -

• There were only 2 teams with records above .500
• 3 teams hadn’t even won a game
• NSIC teams had combined to be 11 games under .500 as a group

Fast forward 7 days and the picture is suddenly a lot brighter as we close in on the start of NSIC Conference games –

• 6 teams are now above .500 and 3 more are within 2 games of .500
• NSIC teams are a combined 5 games over .500 as a group
• 8 teams are on current wins streaks of 2 or more games
• Southwest Minnesota State is off to its best start ever
• Minnesota Crookston even swept a pair of games

Between now and the beginning of the 4 Conference series scheduled for this weekend I hope to post the following -

• Post the final poll results from readers
• Produce my analysis on team schedule strengths and how that will play into the final Northern Sun standings
• An analysis of each Conference series as well as my predictions for each set of games