The iceberg of metrics runs deep.
I’m an optimist, and sometimes, that ends in disappointment. Actually, scratch that. Oftentimes, it ends in disappointment. But with Northwestern baseball, this optimism has paid dividends so far.
At the start of the season, I predicted that Northwestern would finish above .500 in conference play, much to the dismay of many, including my fellow staff. But now, the ‘Cats have four series under their belt in conference play and are standing at 6-6. Are they winning the Big Ten this year? I certainly don’t think so. But they have undeniably outperformed expectations.
This leaves one key question: How? Well, this seems like the task for me in this week’s Diamond Deep Dive, analyzing the iceberg of Northwestern baseball’s unlikely success.
Surface: The run differential
The ‘Cats currently sit in 10th in the Big Ten with a run differential of -14. If you rank Northwestern’s Big Ten foes by run differential, you see a slight change dropping them to 11th. A small difference to note, but not something to write home about. Besides, two of those six conference losses have come by the run rule.
However, when you expand the data to a full season, that’s 30 games of 15-15 play from Ben Greenspan and co., the run differential keeps decreasing, this time to -29 overall. This isn’t a small sample of a couple of blowouts, but rather, trends. A .500 record would typically average out to a run differential of zero, but rather, it seems that for every win, Northwestern is losing by a margin of two more runs.
Now, typically, there are a few reasons for these trends if they’re sustained. One could simply be luck. A team should be doing worse on average but is getting lucky in close matchups. Sometimes, it can indicate a top-heavy bullpen, which could very well hold true in the case of Northwestern. What I mean by that is, when there’s a close game on the line and the manager brings in a reliever, that reliever delivers in close games. However, when the team is trailing by a few runs, fans are more likely to see a reliever who may give up more runs and lead to more blowouts. This can create a lower run differential where teams consistently win close games and lose slugfests.
There’s also a third factor that this run differential can often mean, and it’s a statistic that’s hard to capture given the data in college baseball but is more commonly used at the MLB level. It’s something you feel as a player, as a coach and as a fan at any level, but it is harder to quantify: clutch. With Northwestern this year, they have undoubtedly been clutch.
Center of the iceberg: The clutch factor
Trent Liolios has taken the world by storm this year, and with it, has come a slew of home runs, tying Northwestern’s all-time single-season record. It hasn’t just been a matter of Liolios hitting them, but also when he’s hitting them. Six of his 15 homers have come in the eighth inning or later, often in nail-biting conclusions.
However, it’s not just Liolios. In six of Northwestern’s 15 wins this season, they were tied or losing at some point after the fifth inning. With it has come heroics from Tyler Ganus in extra innings against Maryland and two Ryan Kucherak walk-offs, against Iowa Sunday and against Illinois in March.
Getting to the core: The BABIP conundrum… is this lineup actually underperforming?
BABIP, short for batting average on balls in play, is a stat often used to track how players are performing relative to the factors that are out of their control. This statistic eliminates home runs and strikeouts from factoring into a player’s batting average, trying to create a metric without any of the “three true outcomes” of baseball, those being a walk, strikeout, or home run.
BABIP does have some flaws and trends to keep in mind when using it for analysis as well. Typically, faster players and better baserunners have higher BABIP numbers, as they’re more likely to leg out an infield single, and, in many cases, have a hitting profile that disincentivizes home runs and strikeouts to better capitalize on their speed as a player. Occasionally, BABIP can be consistent year over year, but generally, players with high BABIP numbers, especially when compared to their batting average, are due for regression. In the opposite realm, players with low BABIP numbers tend to underperform and are due for better at-bats. These players are often getting unlucky and consistently hitting the ball to defenders when putting it in play.
While many tout the breakout seasons for members of this lineup, the truth is that this might just be the start of even more of an offensive surge. Among qualified Big Ten hitters, Ryan Kucherak and Bennett Markinson are tied for the third-lowest BABIP in the conference at .250. In Markinson’s case, his batting average is actually higher than his BABIP, a number that is often off the charts for most. Essentially, per the numbers, Markinson has a higher chance of getting a hit when he swings purely for a home run or strikeout as opposed to when he tries to play to his game as someone who hits to all fields. For someone like Markinson, who is borderline impossible to shift against as a defensive unit, these numbers reflect his rotten luck at the plate.
But it’s not just Markinson and Kucherak, either. Five members of the starting nine are in the bottom 20 in the conference in BABIP, with outfielder Jackson Freeman at 22. Liolios has clubbed so many home runs that his batting average is nearly 50 points higher than his BABIP. These numbers feel unsustainably unlucky for a ‘Cats team that scored a combined seven runs in their three-game series against Iowa, who, to their credit, have an incredible pitching staff. Regardless, the ball is simply not getting down and finding gaps in the way that it should on the season as a whole. Don’t be surprised the next time you see an offensive explosion from Northwestern, especially with each game mattering more than the last in an end-of-season race to be one of the 12 teams to qualify for the Big Ten tournament.
This week was a bit of a new look column, diving into advanced stats as opposed to analyzing the approach of a player from a scouting perspective. While it’s likely not a trend that will continue, it was nonetheless a fun thought experiment for a team that has been fun for fans to watch across the country. There will, of course, be more Diamond Deep Dive next week, after a three-game showdown with Michigan State and a midweek game where NIU comes to Evanston.