Clemson Baseball - Inside the Numbers

After a 16-1 start Clemson fell back to earth a bit last weekend, getting swept at home by a power-hitting North Carolina State team and the schedule doesn't get any easier this week as the Tigers travel to Conway tonight and then trek to Louisville over the weekend for their first road ACC series.

After opening ACC play with two series and six games at home, the Tigers only have nine remaining ACC games at home and 15 on the road.

Resume 

The resume still looks good, just not as sparkling as it did last Friday morning.  The four games this week will give us four more data points in a long season and, more importantly, four opportunities at quality wins. 

This early in the season RPI and strength of schedules tend to fluctuate from game to game and week to week as do the RPI groups above.

Tale of the Tape

Holt Jones (2-0, 1.04 ERA and 1.04 WHIP) will get his second consecutive Tuesday start, but this one comes against a Coastal Carolina team batting .300 and averaging 9 runs a game, including a 26 run outburst last weekend against Arkansas State.

Stranded

Carson Spiers was touched for a run on Saturday, but he's stranded all 13 runners he's inherited on the season.

Pitching

Leading Off

Logan Davidson started off Sunday's game with a bomb, but is down to .270 on the season with only 5 extra-base hits in 20 games.

Funk

This is not a team that's going to hit for average, not with Kyle Wilkie just getting over .200 and Bryce Teodosio at .164.  Add in Drew Wharton in the .220 range and Seth Beer in the .250s, and you have a team average of .257.  

Note that Seth is really struggling against left-handed pitchers batting ust (.083).

Batting

Quality At Bats

There were not a lot of quality at-bats last weekend when you score 5 runs in three games.

This metric is calculated different ways by different teams and at times can be subjective depending on who is measuring the at-bat.  The goal was to capture as much data as possible to better understand decisions made by the coaching staff.

Defense

Clemson struggled Friday night defensively, but mostly it was Jacob Hennessey and not the regular fielders, though Patrick Cromwell wasn't his usual self at 3rd, 

The Tigers .976 fielding percentage is good for 52nd nationally, but they were 25th last week.

Actual vs. Expected Record

Clemson is now 7-2 in 1 run games on the season.  "Luck" has been on Clemson's side to some extent, and that's reflected in the numbers below.  

Upcoming Schedule

*Baseball resume information via WarrenNolan.com.