Baseball: Runs Scored Per 9-inning drop
Michigan has seen their runs scored per nine innings drop about a run per game on their season cumulative average over the last 5 games. That's pretty sizable. Coming into the Iowa series, Michigan averaged 8.9 runs per nine innings. Over the Iowa series and the first two games of the Ohio State Series, Michigan has averaged 3.7 runs per nine innings. Yikes.
Looking at the other offensive charts, I think the culprit is pretty clear.
Biondi's current 0/20 is killing the team's production. He's the spark plug that sets the top of the order in motion. He's not getting on, not putting pressure on pitchers, manufacturing runs. With out that, Michigan's 1-5 hitters have had a rough going.
Game 3 with OSU is tomorrow. IF the game manages to be played despite the bad weather, Biondi needs a slump buster against OSU's weak 4th starter. I will be praying to Jobu, offering him plenty of rum and cigars, for there to be no rain and for Biondi take the fear from his bats. If it comes to it, I may go to KFC and sacrifice a chicken. I encourage all of you to do the same.
Hopefully some full-figured lady will step up and take one for Biondi and the team.
If his eyelids are jammed?
got the rose in the back.
"He's not putting pressure on pitchers, manufacturing runs. With out that, Michigan's 1-5 hitters have had a rough going."
I really doubt that's at all a problem. Baseball is an individual sport. If the top half of the lineup hasn't been hitting, it's individually their fault. Slumps happen. If their production lately has been 4/9 of what it was and the top of the lineup is struggling, then Biondi is merely 1/5 of the problem.
The guys behind him aren't doing that badly. With his drop in being on base, I would argue that it's responsible for a drop of at least 1.5 runs per game. That doesn't even begin to account for possibilities of the guys getting better pitches from the pressure, creating more baserunners in a slippery slope type logical fallacy. I can't assume that it would be a chain reaction, but it is a possibility.
That if he's not on, he can't steal.
called BaseRuns. You could definitely find the actual difference between a productive Biondi and an 0fer Biondi. And I could see 1.5 per game being pretty reasonable if the gap is 5 runs total.
I'll run the numbers later. I went running through each of his at bats looking at how often we score when he reaches base. I think it was something like 58% of all our runs are score in those innings. Working on a better way to metric how important he is to the process. The percentage of times we scored on time he reached base is pretty ridiculously high as well. I just should be spending time looking up information for a 10 page research paper due this week instead.