The underrated stat that's become so important to South Carolina's offensive success
There are plenty of ways to measure what good offensive baseball looks like. But one statistic that usually gets overlooked nowadays is batting average.
The value in that metric isn’t what it used to be. It’s like wins and losses for a pitcher, it doesn’t really tell the whole story. More baseball-minded people seem to hone in on how often a player gets on base and what else they’re able to do.
But for Mark Kingston, he still sees batting average as an important stat. In fact, it’s something he looks at when putting together his lineups.
“.300 is kind of the old-fashioned number of hey, when a guy hits .300 you know he’s a good hitter,” Kingston said. “And I still place value on that because it is hard to get hits.”
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For the last seven games, Kingston has ran out the same starting nine, taking more offense for less defense. And so far, the results have been very good. South Carolina is 5-2 since the lineup changes were made. The offense is averaging more than 10 runs per game.
“I mean, we’ve put ourselves in a really good spot,” said Dalton Reeves, who is currently hitting .309 on the year. “I feel like we’re really coming into our own of being that South Carolina offense where we’re really dominant. We’re taking good AB’s one through nine, we’re swinging at good pitches and we’re laying off the bad ones.”
When looking at the current lineup, six hitters in the order are batting .300 or better. Kingston has arranged it to where the first four hitters are above that plateau. When’s the last time you could say that about the Gamecocks, who have been a home run or strikeout team in the past?
“We’ve gone back and forth in the moneyball era of batting average means nothing, it’s all about on-base percentage,” Kingston said. “And then you have OPS, then you have OPS+. There’s a million different NASA stats that they have out there. But I still there’s some value to just the .300 hitter. The ability to get hits is hard.”
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Kingston brought up a good point that your on-base percentage goes down when you face a pitcher who throws strikes because you don’t walk as often. He still believes getting on base is important but so is getting hits.
“It’s all still important. Batting average with runners in scoring position, getting runners in with a runner at third and less than two outs is important. What are your left-right splits? Those are important. All those things are important,” Kingston said. “And at the end of the day, you want to have nine guys that feel like they all complement each other. We’ve gone to the right-left-right-left-right-left, which I think has really helped us. And so, all those factors matter.”
