The Rice Owls are enjoying their sixth trip to the College World Series in Omaha so far as the Owls have won their first two games, have a couple of days to rest their pitchers before facing the winner of Tuesday’s North Carolina-Louisville Loser’s Bracket game on Wednesday, and are set up well to compete for one of the two spots in the best two-out-of-three final championship series that determines the champion. The Woodlands boys on the Owls are playing particularly well, which makes watching the Rice games in the series all that more interesting for me. Here is the bracket for the entire World Series, the World Series website, the World Series blog, as well as the local Rice Owls Baseball blog. Go Owls!

In driving back to the office today, I was listening to Charlie Pallilo — who, like me, analyzes baseball using mostly objective criteria — and reminded me of a point that I meant to make in my most recent periodic review of the Stros season — that is, subjective perceptions about baseball are usually quite inaccurate (a point noted in this post from the midway point of the 2006 season).
A case in point this season is Stros LF Carlos Lee. The consensus among most of the media that covers the Stros is that Lee is having a great season and that 1B Lance Berkman is having a lousy season. Well, that latter part of that statement is certainly correct — Berkman, by his lofty standards (career 357 RCAA/.414 OBA/.556 SLG/.971 OPS), is having a bad season (2007 stats: 4 RCAA/.383/.381/.765).
However, the reality is that Lee has not been any more productive than Berkman. Going into last night’s game with the A’s, Lee has generated exactly the same number of runs as Berkman (i.e., 4) over what an average National League hitter would have created for the Stros using the same number of outs as Lee has used. Lee’s key stat line (4/.340/.496/.836) is a bit better than Berkman’s this season, but not all that great by league leader standards. Moreover, Lee’s high number of RBI’s (52) is largely the result of where he hits in the order, not any great hitting performance. Lee’s hitting is largely undermined by the fact that he leads the league in grounding into double plays (14) and his low walk rate (18, compared with Berkman’s 46).
As noted earlier here, Lee’s career numbers (82/.344/515/.859) are nowhere near as good as Berkman’s and really not all that much better than 3B Morgan Ensberg, who is mostly riding the bench these days. Even Luke Scott, who has a 3 RCAA for the season, is about as productive as Lee, while Mark Loretta — who most folks believe has been much more productive than Scott this seaon — has actually been slightly less productive (2 RCAA) than Scott. Meanwhile, Biggio — who has been one of the least productive hitters in the National League from June 12, 2006 through June 12, 2007 (-31 RCAA!) continues to leadoff regularly.
The point of all this is that baseball is not rocket science, but many folks still make it more complicated than it is. Over a long season, a club’s best hitters based on career performance are generally going to produce the most runs for the team. The Stros need to play Berkman, Lee, Ensberg, Scott, and Hunter Pence regularly, fill in the other spots with the most productive players available and and then let the chips fall where they may. It’s highly improbable that the Stros will score more runs taking any other approach.

Back when the Stros were close to a .500 ball club, I concluded the previous periodic Stros season review (all previous 2007 reviews are here) as follows:

Thus, my sense is that Stros management, for all their declarations of trying to field a playoff contender, is really biding its time this season as Biggio trudges toward his 3,000th hit. There is simply no way that this club will be much better than a .500 ballclub with its current starting pitching staff and Biggio, Everett, Ausmus and the pitcher burdening the hitting lineup on most nights. The Stros should be honest and concede that the club is attempting to compete as well as possible while supporting Biggio’s climb toward 3,000 hits and dispense with the ruse that this club, as presently configured, has any meaningful shot at the playoffs.

Well, as if on the cue, the Stros (26-35) went into the tank immediately thereafter, posting a 6-14 record during the past 20 games (after going 9-12 and 11-9 in the first two eighth segments of the season), including an excruciating 10 game losing streak in which the club gave up a total of 72 runs while scoring only 20. To make matters worse, overmatched Stros Manager Phil Garner panicked as the streak worsened, using nine different lineups, four right fielders, three first basemen, three third basemen and three leadoff hitters. The Stros responded by scoring fewer than two runs in a game five times and allowing eight or more runs in a game five times.
So, just a little over a year and a half since the club’s first World Series appearance, the Stros have turned into one of the worst teams in the National League — only the Reds (24-38) and the Nationals (25-36) have worse records through 37% of the season than the Stros. In fact, the Stros are not much better than the worst teams in all of Major League Baseball, the Rangers (23-39) and the Royals (23-40).
The Stros have continued their long trend of poor overall team hitting, scoring 12 fewer runs than an average National League team would have scored using the same number of outs as the Stros have used through this point in the season (“runs created against average” of “RCAA,” explained here), which is 10th among the 16 National League clubs. But the pitching overall has been even worse, giving up a total of 21 more runs than an average National League staff would have given up through this point of the season (“runs saved against average” or “RSAA,” explained here), which is 12th among the NL clubs. When a club is running a net deficit of -33 runs to what an average National League club would generate hitting or give up pitching, you know that team’s record will be decidedly below-average.
The season statistics for the Stros to date are below, courtesy of Lee Sinins‘ sabermetric Complete Baseball Encyclopedia. The abbreviations for the hitting stats are defined here and the same for the pitching stats are here. The Stros active roster is here with links to each individual player’s statistics:

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No question about it — the toughest ticket to a series of baseball games in Houston this season will be to this weekend’s NCAA Super-Regional baseball tournament series between the Rice Owls and the Texas A&M Aggies at Reckling Park on the Rice University campus in the shadow of the Texas Medical Center. The winner of the best-of-three series moves on to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, which begins on June 15. Ryan over a Texas A&M & Baseball INPO provides a good preview of the matchup.
Inasmuch as Houston is one of the most prominent high school and college baseball hotbeds in the country, the series sold out shortly after tickets went on sale earlier this week. The Owls (52-12) have been a college baseball power over the past decade under the driving force of Coach Wayne Graham, while the Aggies (48-17) this season revived a generally strong program that had been underperforming for the past several seasons. Game times are today at 6 p.m. (ESPN); Saturday: 5 p.m. (ESPNU); and Sunday, if necessary at 6:35 p.m. (ESPN2).
I’ll be pulling for the hometown Owls in this series because I had the privilege of coaching a couple of the Owls’ players — LF Jordan Dodson and C Danny Lehmann — during their youth baseball days in The Woodlands. Both players were able to overcome my coaching to become starters at The Woodlands High School and at Rice, where they have already enjoyed one trip to the College World Series over the past three seasons. Although I cannot take any credit for either Jordan or Danny’s baseball accomplishments, I am proud of the fact that both of them are high on-base percentage guys with solid slugging percentages who understand that the teams that create the most runs are the ones with players who get on base and hit the ball hard a high percentage of the time.
By the way, this earlier post reported on pointed criticism that Owls Coach Graham was receiving around some baseball circles for the high injury rate of minor league baseball pitchers coming out of the Rice program over the past several years. The Chronicle’s John Lopez recently wrote this profile of Coach Graham in which he addresses that criticism head on. Check it out.

Don’t you know that an eyebrow or two was raised around town with the following disclosure deep within Jose de Jesus Ortiz’s Chronicle article today on the return of the Stros off-season acquisition Jason Jennings from a bout of tendonitis in his pitching elbow:

Jennings, who is earning $5.5 million this year, was 9-13 with a 3.75 ERA last year with the Rockies. The workload was a testament to his pain tolerance. He dealt with discomfort since June and skipped bullpen sessions between starts for most of the second half. It’s too early to tell whether he’ll need surgery to fix his elbow.

Jennings is eligible to become a free agent after this season, so it was a bit odd that the Stros announced that they had put contract negotiations on hold with Jennings until after the season shortly after Jennings went on the disabled list. Jennings is a proven MLB starter and overuse injury risk is a fact of life for MLB pitchers. However, if Jennings and the Rockies did not disclose that Jennings was dealing with the condition last season when the clubs consummated the trade for Jennings, or if the Stros medical team believes that the condition is more serious than mere tendonitis, then that would certainly explain the Stros’ stance in backing off of contract negotiations. One can’t blame Stros management for being a bit miffed that the club traded away its best minor league pitching prospect, Jason Hirsh, for goods that the club did not know were damaged.
By the way, the other players involved in the Jennings deal haven’t set the league on fire. Hirsh has been slightly above-average for the Rockies with a 2 RSAA and 4.30 ERA in 60 innings of work so far this season (10 starts, 2-4 record). The other two former Stros players included in the deal — CF Willy Taveras (-4 RCAA/.378 OBA/.340 SLG/.719 OPS) and pitcher Taylor Buchholz (-4 RSAA/5.81 ERA) — continue to be well below-average MLB players. The throw-in from the Rockies to the Stros in the deal — Miguel Ascencio — has been horrible at AAA Round Rock, giving up 23 earned runs and 37 hits in 23 innings of work, which computes to an atrocious 8.75 ERA as a reliever. Somehow, he retains a spot on the Stros’ 40 man roster.