Coach Mitch Gaspard and the Alabama Crimson Tide baseball team are just about to start getting into the meat of the schedule as SEC play starts to pick up so we wanted to take a look back at the stats from last season and see how they compare to this year thus far.
Alabama is currently sitting at 16-8 for the year with a 3-3 record in the conference. At this point in the season, the overall record from both seasons are on par with each other ( 16-8 this year, 15-9 last year) although we had a one more conference win last year (3-3 this year, 4-1 last year). We have been able to keep things close this year, only losing by more than 2 runs on 2 occasions (Vs Kentucky 7-2 and Vs Louisiana Lafayette 6-0). All of the losses from last year up until this same point in the season were lost by 2 runs or more. If we continue to keep things close and the team continues to improve with a bit more consistent and timely hitting, the Tide should be a formidable opponent for the rest of the year and make another appearance in the NCAA tournament. As of now, the Tide is outscoring their opponents 140-58. Through the complete season last year, opponents were outscored 325-278.
Alabama Vs Troy in Pensacola, Florida. Photo from Alabama Baseball Twitter account
On the pitching mound comparing the complete season statistics from last year to this year, Bama is already showing an improvement. Tide pitcher Spencer Turnbull is currently ranked 5th in the country with an ERA of 0.28. The best ERA from the staff last year was an 1.50. Turnbull had an ERA of 3.70 last season. Jon Keller and Justin Kamplain have also improved their ERA. The pitching staff as a whole as a 2.05 ERA compared to last year’s 3.70. You do have to remember that the numbers from last season are for the whole 2013 campaign while the ones for this year is through 24 games. The SEC conference from top to bottom is looking impressive so far and Bama is just getting started in the tough part of the schedule. Opponents are also allowing more earned runs to Bama in the 2014 season.
Batting average for Bama has shown an improvement from last year, albeit just a small one. The Tide pitching staff has also lowered the batting averages of their opponents for 2014. Georgie Salem, Kyle Overstreet, Austen Smith plus 3 others are at or above a .300 batting average. Daniel Cucjen was the only one from last season to finish above a .300 batting average. Last year, we had 26 home runs for the whole year compared to this season currently already with 16. Taking an average of the numbers from both seasons, Bama’s number of players left on base vs opponent’s number of players left on base are almost identical. There is always room for improvement but it is nice to see the numbers and see that Gaspard and company have made some improvements from last year. If we can improve just a bit more and make the most of opportunities when we get runners in scoring position, we should be sitting a bit better at the end of the season than we ended last year.
If you get a chance to attend, be sure to head out and do so. There has been some entertaining games this year and it’s an exciting team to watch. Bama will be action this weekend with a 3 game in conference home stand this weekend with Ole Miss, starting Friday night.
Stats taken from RollTide.com