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RE: Stanford Baseball 2023 - JJJ - 05-19-2023

(05-18-2023, 11:47 PM)Brickcity Wrote:  
(05-18-2023, 11:20 PM)PVTree Wrote:  Stanford with the 7-6 win. Cougs had men on first and third with one out in the bottom of the tenth when they got into a double play.

I'm beginning to think shortstop is our weakest link. Not much hitting, which is ok if it was made up by a sterling glove, but that's not the case.

Cobb is hitting .330 on the year. Yeah, he's a little shaky in the field but he's hit well for us.

I don’t have a screenshot but they had a graphic recently comparing Cobb to Crampton. We were spoiled by Crampton’s stellar D. And I think Cobb is fantastic this year but don’t see how it was an E1 when Cobb couldn’t hang on to the throw on a sac bunt attempt. He should’ve pretended he was a first baseman and stretched away from the bag to make the catch.

RE: Stanford Baseball 2023 - PVTree - 05-19-2023

(05-19-2023, 12:49 AM)JJJ Wrote:  
(05-18-2023, 11:47 PM)Brickcity Wrote:  
(05-18-2023, 11:20 PM)PVTree Wrote:  Stanford with the 7-6 win. Cougs had men on first and third with one out in the bottom of the tenth when they got into a double play.

I'm beginning to think shortstop is our weakest link. Not much hitting, which is ok if it was made up by a sterling glove, but that's not the case.

Cobb is hitting .330 on the year. Yeah, he's a little shaky in the field but he's hit well for us.

I don’t have a screenshot but they had a graphic recently comparing Cobb to Crampton. We were spoiled by Crampton’s stellar D. And I think Cobb is fantastic this year but don’t see how it was an E1 when Cobb couldn’t hang on to the throw on a sac bunt attempt. He should’ve pretended he was a first baseman and stretched away from the bag to make the catch.

Yeah, that's the play that really pissed me off. Cobb should have made that play. Instead, he didn't and they ended up with runners on second and third. I think he also had a weak popup with the bases loaded near that time.

I looked up the stats, out of our 8 every day players, he's last in RBIs with 30. Park who bats after him (leadoff) has 40. Bowser, who bats 2 spots before him has 38. I didn't try to add up all the DH RBIs since it's various players, but it makes me think (and have seen it on tv) that he's not a batter the other teams fear.

I trust 1 through 7 and think they'll get a hit every time they bat. Once we get to our 8th and 9th hitters, I'm just hoping they don't get an out, or, if they do, it's not a double play so the to of the lineup gets a swing.

Crampton was a similar hitter in my memory, but he was terrific defensively. Last year, 1 through 9, I thought we had no easy outs (Crampton being the weakest link on offense). This year, I don't get that sense with 2 positions in our batting order although Cobb may have slightly better offensive numbers than Crampton.

RE: Stanford Baseball 2023 - CTcard - 05-19-2023

(05-19-2023, 12:49 AM)JJJ Wrote:  
(05-18-2023, 11:47 PM)Brickcity Wrote:  
(05-18-2023, 11:20 PM)PVTree Wrote:  I'm beginning to think shortstop is our weakest link. Not much hitting, which is ok if it was made up by a sterling glove, but that's not the case.

Cobb is hitting .330 on the year. Yeah, he's a little shaky in the field but he's hit well for us.

I don’t have a screenshot but they had a graphic recently comparing Cobb to Crampton. We were spoiled by Crampton’s stellar D. And I think Cobb is fantastic this year but don’t see how it was an E1 when Cobb couldn’t hang on to the throw on a sac bunt attempt. He should’ve pretended he was a first baseman and stretched away from the bag to make the catch.

A few posts above (last Monday) I gave a comparison of the two.
Quote:Cobb 2023 vs Crampton 2022 is an interesting comparison. 
Cobb is better offensively, Crampton was better defensively. 
Cobb 2023:    0.337 AVG; 0.503 SLG; 0.625 RBI/gm; 6 HR || 0.919 FLD; 14 errors (48 games - "leads" Pac 12)
Crampton 22: 0.316 AVG; 0.392 SLG; 0.615 RBI/gm; 1 HR || 0.980 FLD; 5 errors (65 games)
While I think the analytics guys' mantra was "defense doesn't matter", maybe it does for a shortstop.

A bit more.
Cobb 2023 is better offensively than Crampton 2022 largely due to power. 
Be careful with how much weight you give to RBIs. That is partially a measure of things to care about (like clutch hitting) but also partially a measure of what the people in front of you in the order are doing. Cobb has hit in the #9 spot basically all season. The #8 spot has been troublesome (DH). The #7 spot has been whomever among our big sluggers is struggling the most. 

Defensively, Cobb is kind of the anti-Crampton. Crampton became well known as a guy who didn't make many spectacular plays but didn't miss routine plays. His 5 errors last year were quite low for a short stop. Cobb has made several plays bordering on the spectacular, including a very nice play last night in the bottom of the seventh on the ball that bounced off Bowser's glove. But, Cobb makes a lot of errors (14 so far), and a lot of plays that aren't quite errors but miss a chance for an out (for example, a few times I have seen him be quite slow getting a throw off to Bowser that negates a possible double play). 

Anyway, the comparison isn't all that meaningful. It's not as if Crampton was benched in favor of Cobb. 
Rather than focusing on his shortcomings, I'd rather note that after three years of not being able to hold a starting job due to his hitting Cobb did a tremendous job improving at the plate so he could be a strong contributor this year. 

Finally - on the scoring of the Dowd to Cobb throw. From what I have seen, most scorers will tend to give the error to the throw when there is a throw vs catch error question. So, this is typical. It resembles the scoring decision in the play that gave Stanford softball their quarterfinal win over Oregon, where the error was given to the 2B who made an inaccurate throw rather than the 3B whose glove the ball bounced off of. 
Dowd has had trouble making throws to the bases this year, with a 0.455 fielding percentage - that's 6 errors in 11 attempts.

RE: Stanford Baseball 2023 - StanfordMatt - 05-19-2023

I thought the play that Cobb made to start the game-ending douple play was also tremendous. To cleanly pick that quasi-grounder/quasi-liner on a short hop is not easy.

The player whose hitting I'm most worried about these days is Bowser. Need him to get hot.

Coincidentally, I was looking up last year's PAC-12 Tournament to see how this year's format had changed. We had 2 players named to the all-tournament team last year: Crampton and Bowser.

RE: Stanford Baseball 2023 - JJJ - 05-19-2023

Roxy Bernstein said that Park was battling a stomach bug and didn’t feel well last night.
Campbell is leading off again today.

[tweet]https://twitter.com/stanfordbsb/status/1659670349540364288?s=61&t=u1yJsNemMPmii4Tu_ztWqw[/tweet]

Game started at 3pm PDT but I’m just starting it on DVR.
Cobb isn’t starting. He needed a couple of stitches in his left hand after the collision at 2B yesterday so Temo Becerra is starting, although Cobb is available if needed, and was participating in pregame drills.

RE: Stanford Baseball 2023 - StanfordMatt - 05-19-2023

Thanks for the injury updates. Glad to hear it’s nothing long term.

Currently up 6-4 on the Cougs in B7. Quinn still out there.

RE: Stanford Baseball 2023 - JJJ - 05-19-2023

some tidbits: Bowser had a 12-game hitting streak snapped yesterday but got a hit today to hopefully start another long streak (so maybe he wasn’t hitting all *that* poorly). He also made a fantastic play on a grounder hit to the SS side of the bag with a Jeter-esque jumping throw to gun down the runner. Graham has a 17-game streak going, looked like he might’ve tweaked his left ankle trying to head to second on a single when he slipped and fell (and almost got thrown out back at first but was overturned on video replay) but got to third on the subsequent single so hopefully he’s fine.
Stanford wins 7-4 to take the series.
Mathews notches 7th W, RBruno his 8th save.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/stanfordbsb/status/1659730136286253056?s=61&t=u1yJsNemMPmii4Tu_ztWqw[/tweet]

RE: Stanford Baseball 2023 - Maple Leaf - 05-20-2023

In Friday's game against WSU Stanford only had one extra base hit, a double by Moore.  All the other hits were singles.

RE: Stanford Baseball 2023 - BobK - 05-20-2023

Dixon on the mound. Park in CF
Becerra at SS. Today

RE: Stanford Baseball 2023 - JohnR34231 - 05-20-2023

(05-20-2023, 11:18 AM)Maple Leaf Wrote:  In Friday's game against WSU Stanford only had one extra base hit, a double by Moore.  All the other hits were singles.

The Wazzu pitcher(s) were probably doing their best not to serve up any gopher balls. They were successful at that.

RE: Stanford Baseball 2023 - TonyLima - 05-20-2023

24-7 in Pac-12. Most conference wins for our guys since … 1990. So sez Roxy Bernstein.

RE: Stanford Baseball 2023 - MiniBlueHawkCard - 05-20-2023

With another series sweep I think that makes the squad 26-2 in the month of May dating back to last May. Remarkable regardless of competition. When there is a committee of folks looking for reasons to slide Stanford out of the top 8* (see the 2021 season, sending the team to Texas Tech in the 8/9 matchup) destroying the competition in May makes it mighty hard to do anything but reward the team with a top 8 seed. I still don't like having a Pac-12 baseball tourney but I suppose you might as well win the thing again (maybe without Mathews throwing 120 pitches...)! 


*Yes I am cynical, but having attending the super regional in Starkville, MS there is no doubt that "it just means more" to a lot more fans down there than it does on the Farm. Other teams in contention to host super regionals typically draw more (potentially much more) and have a different type of crowd.

RE: Stanford Baseball 2023 - Madera86 - 05-20-2023

(05-20-2023, 04:39 PM)MiniBlueHawkCard Wrote:  With another series sweep I think that makes the squad 26-2 in the month of May dating back to last May. Remarkable regardless of competition. When there is a committee of folks looking for reasons to slide Stanford out of the top 8* (see the 2021 season, sending the team to Texas Tech in the 8/9 matchup) destroying the competition in May makes it mighty hard to do anything but reward the team with a top 8 seed. I still don't like having a Pac-12 baseball tourney but I suppose you might as well win the thing again (maybe without Mathews throwing 120 pitches...)! 


*Yes I am cynical, but having attending the super regional in Starkville, MS there is no doubt that "it just means more" to a lot more fans down there than it does on the Farm. Other teams in contention to host super regionals typically draw more (potentially much more) and have a different type of crowd.

What's the postseason pool play pitching plan? The games are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I would guess that we save Matthews for the final or semifinal? Assuming we can win at least one game in pool play, we would have the edge on tiebreaker for the wild card spot.

RE: Stanford Baseball 2023 - TonyLima - 05-20-2023

(05-20-2023, 11:23 AM)BobK Wrote:  Dixon on the mound. Park in CF
Becerra at SS.  Today

Game really doesn’t mean anything. Get Cobb really healthy. Plus Becerra has looked pretty good, esp in the field.

RE: Stanford Baseball 2023 - PVTree - 05-20-2023

(05-20-2023, 04:39 PM)MiniBlueHawkCard Wrote:  With another series sweep I think that makes the squad 26-2 in the month of May dating back to last May. Remarkable regardless of competition. When there is a committee of folks looking for reasons to slide Stanford out of the top 8* (see the 2021 season, sending the team to Texas Tech in the 8/9 matchup) destroying the competition in May makes it mighty hard to do anything but reward the team with a top 8 seed. I still don't like having a Pac-12 baseball tourney but I suppose you might as well win the thing again (maybe without Mathews throwing 120 pitches...)! 


*Yes I am cynical, but having attending the super regional in Starkville, MS there is no doubt that "it just means more" to a lot more fans down there than it does on the Farm. Other teams in contention to host super regionals typically draw more (potentially much more) and have a different type of crowd.

#1, 2, 5 and 6 all lost.

#4, 7, 8 (double header sweep), 9, and 10 all won.

Could we move up from #3?

RE: Stanford Baseball 2023 - CTcard - 05-20-2023

Despite the angst about pitching depth and hitting at the bottom of the order, Stanford finishes strong in one of their better conference seasons in history. 

So, Stanford finishes 37-14 overall, 23-7 in conference, 14-7 out of conference. 
The worst day of the week for Stanford was Tuesdays. On that day they went 2-4. 
Despite the pitching depth problems, Stanford went 11-2 on the final game of their series of 3+ games this season. 

In the Pac 12, teams play a 30 game season. 
23-7 (0.767 winning ratio) is Stanford's best ever Pac 12 record. Second best was 22-7 in 2019 (one rain out). 
In the Pac 10, teams only played 24 games. 
Stanford's best seasons there were 1999 (19-5, 0.792) and 2003 (18-6, 0.750).
In the Six-Pac teams played 30 conference games (home and away versus other 5). 
Stanford's best seasons there were 1990 (24-6, 0.800) and 1985 (23-7, 0.767).
So, this year tied for the second most conference wins in Stanford history, but tied for third best winning percentage. 

Stanford finishes the regular season with the exact same overall regular season record as last year's team that went on to Omaha (37-14), better than the team from the year before that went to Omaha (33-14). 
However, over Marquess' final year and Esquer's first two, Stanford had better regular season records but couldn't make it to Omaha, losing once in a superregional and twice in a home regional.  
Below are Stanford's regular season records and eventual NCAA seeds since Marquess' final year. Postseason included the Pac 12 tournament starting last year, so that result factored into the NCAA seed. Stanford hosted a regional in each of these five years. 
2022: 37-14; NCAA Seed #2
2021: 33-14; NCAA Seed #9
2019: 41-11; NCAA Seed #11
2018: 44-10; NCAA Seed #2
2017: 40-14; NCAA Seed #8

RE: Stanford Baseball 2023 - JJJ - 05-21-2023

I missed watching today and only just saw this. Tommy “Ty” Troy?

[tweet]https://twitter.com/stanfordbsb/status/1660060257786163201?s=46&t=XNaRgdsv48Gp-v_murI6sA[/tweet]

RE: Stanford Baseball 2023 - StanfordMatt - 05-21-2023

There is no question that this is a very good club. However, I’m not sure if they are quite as strong as their record would suggest. My gut tells me that we were exceedingly “clutch” with a dash of luck when it came to one or two-run games. It sure did make for some memorable regular season walk-off’s.

RE: Stanford Baseball 2023 - StanfordMatt - 05-21-2023

(05-20-2023, 06:33 PM)Madera86 Wrote:  What's the postseason pool play pitching plan? The games are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I would guess that we save Matthews for the final or semifinal? Assuming we can win at least one game in pool play, we would have the edge on tiebreaker for the wild card spot.

We are the last team to play its first pool game - Wednesday at 7pm vs. #9 Cal. The Bears open on Tuesday against the other team in Pool A, #6 Oregon. We play the Ducks on Thursday at 7pm.

To Madera's point, if I'm reading the tiebreaker protocol correctly, I believe winning one of the two pool games will guarantee us a spot in the semis. There can only be one 2-0 team for each of the three groups and the second tiebreaker for the wild card, after tournament record, is tournament seed which we'd hold over the other eight teams.

RE: Stanford Baseball 2023 - Nan3cy - 05-21-2023

Just want to say I saw Tommy Troy play a while ago. When he was (I think) ten and playing with my grandson. He was pretty good then too. (So was my grandson but he’s playing water polo now.)