Hitter of the week
Grayson Barrett- Texas Wesleyan- 9-18, .500avg, 9 runs, 2 doubles, 6 homeruns, 16 runs batted in.
Pitcher of the week
co-pitchers this week with:
Ethan Underwood- Olivet Nazarene- no hitter vs TIU, 7ip, 0h, 0r, 1bb, 10k
Mikito Barkman- Benedictine Mesa- no hitter vs PC, 7ip, 0h, 0r, 2bb, 14k
Touching Base- Week 10
A few thoughts from some of the happenings of the last week.
Missouri Baptist dominates our Big Series of the Week in style! MoBap out scored William Woods 32-7 over 24 innings this past weekend. Game 2 of the series was the best by far, which featured a 1-0 MBU win on a Joe Schmidt single up the middle in the 5th. Skout Rallo would come in to close the door in the 7th for a clean inning throwing 13 pitches for his 5th save of the year. With the sweep, Missouri Baptist is 30-4 and holds a 2 game lead with tie breaker over Columbia headed into the final few weekends. What’s left for the Spartans is Williams Baptist, Lyon, and HLGU. Missouri Baptist has been the surprise of the year for me, they were 25-23 last year and are chasing their first 40 win season since 2017.
Kansas Wesleyan had an extremely impressive weekend with a Top 25 sweep of #23 Oklahoma Wesleyan. The offense found plenty of ways to score in the series totaling 28 runs including 8 home runs on the weekend. Zack Beatty had a 2 home run performance in game 1 and tallied 4 runs batted in on the weekend. With the sweep the Coyotes now open up a slim 1 game lead on McPherson who was swept by Ottawa (KS) this past weekend. The race for the KCAC regular season title will be one to watch as it comes down to the wire, there are essentially 5 teams vying for the leagues automatic bid to the Opening Round.
As we move closer to selection day and finding out where teams will be placed, for the fans of the game and even players it is important to remember what exactly is important to the selection committee. There are primary criteria and even secondary criteria that the selection committee will look at for both seeding and at-large picks. Primary criteria will be things like your Bo-Chip rating, record, record versus coaches poll top 25, and your ARC (area ratings that often aren’t released publicly; because I don’t know why not). Notice what is not part of that list? Coaches poll ranking is a secondary criteria, essentially the league coaches poll is not considered ‘primary’ to the postseason selection (which is probably a good thing honestly). Keep in mind those primary factors when thinking about your postseason opportunities. There are only 15 at-large bids available so if you might be on the bubble, you might want to root against Cinderella.
- Robby Gutierrez