Happy Valley Hardball with a sabermetrics twist

I’ve made a slight change to the charts that I’m using for the Pythagorian Percentages. Rather than tracking the change from week to week, I’m going to note the difference between the projected Pythagorian winning percentage and a team’s actual winning percentage and include it in the charts labeled as Delta. Penn State finally made [...]

Michigan’s winning ways continued to inch them up the RPI chart. They now sit at 39, up ten in the last week. PSU also continued their move upward. Their sweep of Indiana over the weekend moved them up 16 spots to 153 Team W-L Pct RPI 1 Michigan 28 – 8 0.778 39 2 Illinois [...]

Baseball – Penn State University Official Athletic Site via kwout UncleLar Take: When you’re not winning, it’s hard to pick up saves. Hopefully, the second half of conference play gives Drew many more opportunities to pad his save totals.

Indiana (4-12) at Penn State (8-8) Friday: PSU 7 Indiana 3 Saturday (1): PSU 8 Indiana 1 Saturday (2): PSU 3 Indiana 2 Sunday: PSU 11 Indiana 9 Michigan (15-1) at Michigan State (4-11) Friday: Michigan 8 Michigan State 3 Saturday (1): Michigan 10 Michigan State 4 Saturday (2): Michigan 6 Michigan State 1 Sunday: [...]

Let’s Play Two – The Daily Collegian Online via kwout UncleLar’s Take: In a fitting ending to the weekend, Cianciolo pitched the ninth on Sunday. Paul was handed a six run lead in the ninth and he did manage to close the Hoosiers out. However, Indiana did score four on Paul – only one was [...]

IU suffers 4-game sweep by Nittany Lions via kwout UncleLar Take: Extra props to the PSU pitching staff this weekend. I hadn’t realize that the Hoosiers were leading the conference in hitting until I read this quote by the Indiana student reporter: …the Big Ten’s best offense struggled to put runs on the board for [...]

Sweep brings back memories of last year’s rise via kwout UncleLar Take: When you consider that we’ve already played the toughest teams in the league I suppose a 15-5 finish like last season isn’t out of the question. We’ve got four out of the way already so we “only” need to go 11-5 from here [...]