Happy Valley Hardball with a sabermetrics twist

Baseball – Penn State University Official Athletic Site via kwout

Baseball – Penn State University Official Athletic Site via kwout UncleLar Take: Last week the SID took a little shortcut by combining the game notes for Lasalle and Youngstown State. It appears the shortcut this week is to just not produce a game notes for Villanova at all. Unfortunately, the Villanova SID doesn’t produce game [...]

Baseball prepares for more midweek games next season – The Daily Collegian Online via kwout UncleLar Take: Wine should consider playing a few weekend games in the fall. The games will count against the 56 game limit the team has but it might alleviate some of the pressure to fill up the schedule with midweek [...]

Penn State inched up another spot to eighth in the conference despite giving up a ton of runs, forty nine to be exact, to Illinois in the four game set this weekend. It helped that the Nits also scored forty two on the Illini hurlers. Still the Nits projection is significantly behind their actual winning [...]

Michigan had been slowly building a case for themselves as worthy of an at-large bid should they falter in the Big Ten Tournament. Their split with Indiana this weekend didn’t do their case any good as they slipped 5 spots to 44. At 44, they would definitely be a bubble team not an at-large lock. [...]

Fitting farewell | Altoona Mirror via kwout UncleLar Take: I think I owe John Wilson an apology. It’s not that I publicly questioned his start for the Penn State Altoona ball club on senior day (I did link to a bunch of articles here on the blog) but privately I thought it was a nice [...]

Lions win two on road – The Daily Collegian Online via kwout UncleLar Take: Joe Blackburn’s comment ““I definitely don’t wanna say their pitching was weak but we’ve definitely seen better in the Big Ten” brought a smile to my face. If Blackburn had questions about the Illini staff, who gave up 43 runs to [...]

PSU (10-10) at Illinois (11-9) Friday: Illinois 20 Penn State 11 Saturday (1): Penn State 16 Illinois 5 Saturday (2): Penn State 10 Illinois 7 Sunday: Illinois 17 Penn State 6 Michigan (17-3) at Indiana (6-15) Friday: Michigan 14 Indiana 6 Saturday (1): Indiana 2 Michigan 1 Saturday (2): Michigan 11 Indiana 4 Sunday: Indiana [...]

FIGHTINGILLINI.COM // THE OFFICIAL SITE OF UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS ATHLETICS via kwout

Baseball – Penn State University Official Athletic Site via kwout

The offensive onslaught in Champaign continued as, like Friday, it was the Illnini’s turn to light up the scoreboard. Illini scored two in the first, then broke it open with eight runs in the fourth to take an 11-0 lead. The good news for the weekend is the Nits did what they had to, earned [...]

Baseball – Penn State University Official Athletic Site via kwout

PSU rebounded from the first game pounding that Illinois laid on them, to sweep the Illini this afternoon. The 2-1 start to the weekend moves the Nits into a tie with the Illini for fourth place a half game behind Ohio State who also started the weekend 2-1 over Northwestern.

Baseball – Penn State University Official Athletic Site via kwout

Double plays in the bottom of each of the first three innings quieted the Illini bats while Cory Wine and Scott Kelley each hit a pair of homers to lead the Nits to a 16-5 win in the first game of today’s scheduled doubleheader. Mike Wanamaker picked up the win with a 7 inning complete [...]