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As we get set for the start of college baseball regionals on Friday, here’s a statistical cheat sheet highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of all 64 NCAA Tournament teams.
Each graphic is color coded, with green shading indicating above-average numbers (relative to the NCAA 64-team field) and red indicating below-average numbers. The darker the color, the better (or worse) the statistical metric for that team.
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Ranks included are from our ranking of all 64 teams and how they stack up in the postseason. This is a very different ranking than our College Top 25 rankings. The Top 25 rates teams based on how they have performed in terms of wins and losses. This tournament-specific ranking, which used many of these same metrics to generate the final order, looks at how each team stacks up talent-wise for the NCAA postseason while also attempting to account for key players expected to miss the postseason.
Let’s dig into the data.
Runs
The simplest metric is, in many ways, still a very useful one. Below is a look at how many runs each team scored per game, how many runs they allowed per game and their per-game run differential.
As will be the case in multiple offensive categories, Georgia Tech ranks exceptionally high in runs scored metrics. A side effect of that is that very few teams rate as “green” for that category.
Overall, teams range from 5.6 to 10.8 runs per game, with 8.2 runs serving as the midpoint. But only 10 teams in the tournament scored more than 8.2 runs per game.
Offense
Now let’s see how each of the 64 tournament teams line up in a variety of other offensive categories. For some stats, park effects could play a role in how the teams statistically rate. But in that case, anyone who benefits or is punished in offensive categories by their home park should see the opposite occur in the pitching categories.
Much like the runs scored metric above, Georgia Tech and Georgia are so exceptional when it comes to wOBA and OPS metrics that very few other teams climb above average, so there is a lot more red than green in those categories. Georgia Tech leads the way in wOBA at .466, while Lamar is last at .338. The midpoint is .402, but only seven teams had a wOBA better than .402.
RV/100 is a team’s run value per 100 plate appearances. Barrel% is the percentage of barrels among balls a team puts in play.
Pitching
Lastly, let’s examine how teams stack up across a variety of pitching categories. Average fastball velocity is included here, as our studies have shown that for Division I pitchers, throwing harder correlates with increased success.
Strike% is simply the percentage of pitches thrown for strikes. Miss% is the percentage of misses a team gets on opponent swings.
