Summit League Baseball 2023

[TrueBlue82]

With seven schools playing baseball in the Summit, the 24 game conference schedule is, at best, "uneven".  After years of rampant conspiracy theories, it appears that ORU pulled the lucky straw this season when it comes to the Summit schedule.  Each team plays four road and four home series, playing four of the six other teams once - and two of the six teams in home-and-home series.  Obviously, the teams that are drawn for double-duty are key to the prospects for the season.

The four teams that made the conference tournament last season are the same four that are projected to contend for the title this year (ORU. NDSU, SDSU, Omaha) and there's a fairly significant drop-off to the other three teams in the league (UST, WIU and Northern Colorado).

ORU has the easiest schedule of the four contenders, with double series with UST and WIU.  The only downside to the schedule is playing two of the three contenders (NDSU and Omaha) on the road, and only SDSU at home.

Omaha and SDSU have equal schedule difficulty.  They both have double series with NDSU and UNC, and then face the other two contenders (one at home, one away).

NDSU, the defending regular season champions, drew the short straw.  Their double series are both against contenders (Omaha and SDSU), but they do get the benefit of hosting ORU in their other contender matchup.

There are two primary goals within the conference this season - 1) win the regular season to capture the #1 seed and (more importantly) bring the conference tourney back to Tulsa in 2024, and 2) win the tournament in Fargo to return to the NCAA.  Goal #2 is attainable, but will be a challenge on the road.  And, if ORU doesn't succeed in reaching Goal #1, they certainly can't blame it on the unbalanced schedule.

 

[ORUTex]

Good analysis, and nice to see we don't always get screwed by the conference!

[ORUSwagger]

Current SLBB Standings (3/20)

Oral Roberts 3-0 13-8

Omaha 0-0 6-8

South Dakota State 0-0 4-12

Western Illinois 0-0 3-15

North Dakota State 0-0 3-17

Northern Colorado 0-0 2-13 

St. Thomas 0-3 1-12

[ORUSwagger]

Summit League Stats Through 3/19/23

Overall Stats

Batting (Stats through total runs)

1	Oral Roberts	.313	21	745	148	233

2	Omaha	.271	14	472	81	128

3	Western Illinois	.259	19	660	84	171

Pitching (Stats through innings pitched)

1	Oral Roberts	4.40	13-8	21	0	6	186.0

2	St. Thomas	7.15	1-12	13	0	0	107.0

3	South Dakota State	7.26	4-12	16	0	3	124

League Leaders

Hitting

Batting Average

Index	Player	Batting Average
1	Mike Boeve (OMAHA)	.475
2	Jonah Cox (ORU)	.466
3	Nick Mitchell (WIU2023)	.442
4	Dawson Parry (SDSU)	.382
5	Craig Kenny (UNC)	.359
6	Ryan McDonald (SDSU)	.356
7	Matt Hogan (ORU)	.351
8	Cadyn Schwabe (NDSU)	.350
9	Jake Allgeyer (WIU2023)	.342
10	Ricky Pospisil (WIU2023)	.333

On Base Percentage

IndexPlayerOn Base Percentage

1Mike Boeve (OMAHA)0.542

2Ryan McDonald (SDSU)0.506

3Nick Mitchell (WIU2023)0.494

4Jonah Cox (ORU)0.489

5Dawson Parry (SDSU)0.485

6Cadyn Schwabe (NDSU)0.465

7Jake Allgeyer (WIU2023)0.435

8Ricky Pospisil (WIU2023)0.426

9Craig Kenny (UNC)0.419

10Austin Bunn (UNC)0.417

Pitching

Earned Run Average

Index	Player	Earned Run Average
1	Brooks Fowler (ORU)	2.49
2	Gartner, Kolby (UST)	3.00
3	Harley Gollert (ORU)	3.12
4	Caleb Isaacs (ORU)	4.03
5	Caleb Riedel (OMAHA)	4.12
6	Jakob Hall (ORU)	4.20
7	Tyler Kapraun (WIU2023)	4.44
8	Coborn, Duke (UST)	4.60
9	Jack Kruger (SDSU)	4.96
10	Jack Bell (WIU2023)	5.04

[ORUSwagger]

Summit League Stats - 3/19/23

Fielding

Fielding Percentage

Index	Player	Fielding Percentage
1	Jake McMurray (ORU)	1.000
2	Matt Hogan (ORU)	1.000
3	Max Slavens (WIU2023)	1.000
4	Ricky Pospisil (WIU2023)	1.000
5	Dawson Parry (SDSU)	1.000
6	Cade Stuff (SDSU)	1.000
7	Reece Anderson (SDSU)	1.000
8	Peter Brookshaw (NDSU)	1.000
9	Haiden Hunt (OMAHA)	1.000
10	Vujovich, Ben (UST)	1.000

 

Caught Stealing By

Index	Player	Caught Stealing By
1	Eduardo Rosario (OMAHA)	8
2	Ryan McDonald (SDSU)	6
3	Jacob Godman (ORU)	5
4	Will Busch (NDSU)	3
5	James Wright (UNC)	3
6	Bartholomew, Charlie (UST)	2
7	Jackson Meier (UNC)	2
8	Moris, Max (UST)	1
9	Craig Kenny (UNC)	1

[TrueBlue82]

Interesting weekend in the Summit.  NDSU takes two-of-three on the road in Omaha, and SDSU loses two-of-three on the road against Northern Colorado.  And the full STT-WIU series is "indefinitely postponed".  I can't imagine that they will try to reschedule/replay the series, unless either of the teams prove that they could contend for one of four tourney spots, but I don't see that happening.

Early Tourney Seeding Prediction:

1. ORU

2. NDSU

3. SDSU

4. Omaha

[ORUTex]

Good info. For what it's worth, here's the Nitty Gritty report from D1Baseball, with RPI rankings and results (through Saturday I believe). Agrees with your predictions except puts Omaha slightly ahead of NDSU (and farther ahead of SDSU) even after the 1-2 weekend in Omaha. It also makes the competition for the 4th spot in the tourney look considerably tighter, as the bottom 4 teams are all between 252 and 278:

I couldn't get it to paste formatted right, so that's a screenshot, but it's available here: https://d1baseball.com/nitty-gritty/?conference_id=iC3nd

[dave]

11 hours ago, ORUTex said:

Good info. For what it's worth, here's the Nitty Gritty report from D1Baseball, with RPI rankings and results (through Saturday I believe). Agrees with your predictions except puts Omaha slightly ahead of NDSU (and farther ahead of SDSU) even after the 1-2 weekend in Omaha. It also makes the competition for the 4th spot in the tourney look considerably tighter, as the bottom 4 teams are all between 252 and 278:

I couldn't get it to paste formatted right, so that's a screenshot, but it's available here: https://d1baseball.com/nitty-gritty/?conference_id=iC3nd

Another example of how awful this league is for baseball. The Summit League is hurting our baseball program and hinder top level recruits from wanting to attend ORU. I guess there is no way to divorce ourselves from the league, but it would be a good thing if it was possible. 

[Bogus Smith]

1 hour ago, dave said:

Another example of how awful this league is for baseball. The Summit League is hurting our baseball program and hinder top level recruits from wanting to attend ORU. I guess there is no way to divorce ourselves from the league, but it would be a good thing if it was possible. 

The issues with another league is that we will be a big fish in a bigger pond.  In the Summit League, our players are assured of being seen by the scouts in this area and many with good skills will get a fair chance of being drafted.  We found from playing in the Southland that we would not have a great chance of getting into the NCAA postseason tournament, like we do with the Summit League.  If a player wants to play on a championship team and be seen by the scouts at the next level, ORU is a great place to participate and get a good education along the way. 

NOW.....if we want to talk about the quality of the recruits that we attract to ORU....THAT is a different discussion. 

Just one person's opinion.

[ORUSwagger]

5 hours ago, Bogus Smith said:

The issues with another league is that we will be a big fish in a bigger pond.  In the Summit League, our players are assured of being seen by the scouts in this area and many with good skills will get a fair chance of being drafted.  We found from playing in the Southland that we would not have a great chance of getting into the NCAA postseason tournament, like we do with the Summit League.  If a player wants to play on a championship team and be seen by the scouts at the next level, ORU is a great place to participate and get a good education along the way. 

NOW.....if we want to talk about the quality of the recruits that we attract to ORU....THAT is a different discussion. 

Just one person's opinion.

[dave]

7 hours ago, Bogus Smith said:

The issues with another league is that we will be a big fish in a bigger pond.  In the Summit League, our players are assured of being seen by the scouts in this area and many with good skills will get a fair chance of being drafted.  We found from playing in the Southland that we would not have a great chance of getting into the NCAA postseason tournament, like we do with the Summit League.  If a player wants to play on a championship team and be seen by the scouts at the next level, ORU is a great place to participate and get a good education along the way. 

NOW.....if we want to talk about the quality of the recruits that we attract to ORU....THAT is a different discussion. 

Just one person's opinion.

Good points Bogus. So, if I understand you correctly, your belief is that ORU is not really interested in developing a program where the team excels on a national level. They are more interested in getting players drafted and squeezing into the NCAA tournament by winning a "championship" of an extremely weak league. I respect your analysis. And, if that is the case, then they are doing a great job of achieving that goal. I have to wonder if that is the goal of schools like Liberty and DBU. Somehow, I don't think so. Maybe I am wrong. There may be absolutely nothing ORU can do about it, but I just think it is a shame that our team has to play 24 games against teams that are ranked 100 points below us and some play on fields that are worse than some high schools where I live in Pennsylvania. Winning the SL championship has not been that easy the last few years. Is it because we are elevating the rest of the league to our level, or are we playing down to the level of our competition. I fear it is the latter. The team needs to attract better players if we ever want to get back to a super regional. They aren't going to come to play Northern Colorado, Wester Illiinois and St. Thomas, et all.

[Texasgrip]

1 hour ago, dave said:

Good points Bogus. So, if I understand you correctly, your belief is that ORU is not really interested in developing a program where the team excels on a national level. They are more interested in getting players drafted and squeezing into the NCAA tournament by winning a "championship" of an extremely weak league. I respect your analysis. And, if that is the case, then they are doing a great job of achieving that goal. I have to wonder if that is the goal of schools like Liberty and DBU. Somehow, I don't think so. Maybe I am wrong. There may be absolutely nothing ORU can do about it, but I just think it is a shame that our team has to play 24 games against teams that are ranked 100 points below us and some play on fields that are worse than some high schools where I live in Pennsylvania. Winning the SL championship has not been that easy the last few years. Is it because we are elevating the rest of the league to our level, or are we playing down to the level of our competition. I fear it is the latter. The team needs to attract better players if we ever want to get back to a super regional. They aren't going to come to play Northern Colorado, Wester Illiinois and St. Thomas, et all.

You said it yourself above. We can't address conference affiliation specific to a sport. But in contrast to basketball, the baseball team usually plays several quality OOC teams. The best we can hope for is to clearly be head and shoulders above the rest of the Summit, and hold our own against the better teams. It seems like we have a pretty good team assembled currently - we will know a lot more in a few more weeks!

[Bogus Smith]

1 hour ago, dave said:

Good points Bogus. So, if I understand you correctly, your belief is that ORU is not really interested in developing a program where the team excels on a national level. They are more interested in getting players drafted and squeezing into the NCAA tournament by winning a "championship" of an extremely weak league. I respect your analysis. And, if that is the case, then they are doing a great job of achieving that goal. I have to wonder if that is the goal of schools like Liberty and DBU. Somehow, I don't think so. Maybe I am wrong. There may be absolutely nothing ORU can do about it, but I just think it is a shame that our team has to play 24 games against teams that are ranked 100 points below us and some play on fields that are worse than some high schools where I live in Pennsylvania. Winning the SL championship has not been that easy the last few years. Is it because we are elevating the rest of the league to our level, or are we playing down to the level of our competition. I fear it is the latter. The team needs to attract better players if we ever want to get back to a super regional. They aren't going to come to play Northern Colorado, Wester Illiinois and St. Thomas, et all.

Dave, there is not much we can do with our conference affiliation.  There aren't that many conferences looking for a mid-major non-football program in the middle of the US that we can afford.

ORU must make strides to find the players that can get them into the Super Regionals again.  When we were at the DBU series, DBU was bringing out relievers from their bullpen throwing 92-96; our bullpen (with the exception of Cade) were in the high 80's - low 90's.  We need to find and bring in the type of talent that is better than Class 3A baseball in a Class 6A system.  Will we be able to attract those area players (and those in the surrounding states) that are also offered by the P5 schools?  Probably not, but we should be able to utilize the portal to get the players on the rebound or looking for that last chance to show their stuff.  We have the facilities; we have the coaches; we have the academics.  We need to sell our positives to get gems (and I know our coaches are doing their best to do that).

[ORUSwagger]

On 3/27/2023 at 8:52 PM, Bogus Smith said:

Dave, there is not much we can do with our conference affiliation.  There aren't that many conferences looking for a mid-major non-football program in the middle of the US that we can afford.

ORU must make strides to find the players that can get them into the Super Regionals again.  When we were at the DBU series, DBU was bringing out relievers from their bullpen throwing 92-96; our bullpen (with the exception of Cade) were in the high 80's - low 90's.  We need to find and bring in the type of talent that is better than Class 3A baseball in a Class 6A system.  Will we be able to attract those area players (and those in the surrounding states) that are also offered by the P5 schools?  Probably not, but we should be able to utilize the portal to get the players on the rebound or looking for that last chance to show their stuff.  We have the facilities; we have the coaches; we have the academics.  We need to sell our positives to get gems (and I know our coaches are doing their best to do that).

[ORUSwagger]

 

 

[ORUSwagger]

2023 Baseball Standings

 

2023 Baseball Standings

MEMBER	LEAGUE	OVERALL
Oral Roberts	9-0	23-10
North Dakota State	4-2	8-22
Omaha	4-5	11-14
South Dakota State	4-5	8-17
Northern Colorado	3-6	5-22
St. Thomas	2-4	4-17
Western Illinois	1-5	4-22

Edited April 9, 2023 by ORUFanbase

[ORUSwagger]

ORUBase RPI is 91 on WarrenNolan.com

The Summit League as a whole RPI 28th out of 31 conferences on WarrenNolan.com

D1Baseball has ORU ranked #97

Edited April 9, 2023 by ORUFanbase

[theeagleman5]

Summit League Baseball is pathetic except for ORU....not one team except for the Good Guys above .500.....no reason that ORU shouldn't have the regular season title wrapped up by early May.....