MVC Post Season Awards

[Cdizzle]

Gillaspie wins Joe Carter MVP

"Gillaspie, a junior first baseman from Omaha, Neb., leads the league in batting average (.406), hits (80), RBI (50), home runs (15), on-base percentage (.530) and slugging percentage (.721). His 24 multi-hit games and 15 multi-RBI games both lead the MVC, and he ranks in the nation's top-10 in walks (1st), on-base percentage (1st), slugging percentage (3rd), home runs (5th) and total bases (7th). Gillaspie has reached base safely in all but two games this season and also had a league-high 20-game hitting streak earlier this season. Gillaspie is the 16th Shocker to earn the Valley’s Joe Carter Player of the Year honor. "

Really impressive numbers. Ridiculous numbers if you consider the amount of help he isn't getting.

1st Team
Casey Gillaspie (1B), Dayne Parker (UT) and A.J. Ladwig (SP).

2nd Team
Chase Simpson (3B), Tyler Baker (C), Daniel Kihle (OF) and Cale Elam (SP)

In years past, WSU has not received some of the post-season individual awards they deserved. Either they were awarded some they did not deserve this year, or it would be very safe to say this team under-performed in the W/L column.

http://www.mvc-sports.com/baseball/news/2013-14/7354/mvc-announces-baseball-all-conference-teams/?utm_content=buffer28f3b&utm_medium=social&utm_sou rce=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

http://www.kansas.com/2014/05/19/3463784/wichita-states-gillaspie-named.html

[shocker3]

The Shockers got more players named to the first or second team then any other team. We had 7, Evansville and Indy St had 5, DBU had 4 and everyone else had fewer.

[ShockerFever]

The Shockers got more players named to the first or second team then any other team. We had 7, Evansville and Indy St had 5, DBU had 4 and everyone else had fewer.

Go figure. First year under a new regime.

You can tell Gene was hated.

[Veritas]

Gillaspie wins Joe Carter MVP

"Gillaspie, a junior first baseman from Omaha, Neb., leads the league in batting average (.406), hits (80), RBI (50), home runs (15), on-base percentage (.530) and slugging percentage (.721). His 24 multi-hit games and 15 multi-RBI games both lead the MVC, and he ranks in the nation's top-10 in walks (1st), on-base percentage (1st), slugging percentage (3rd), home runs (5th) and total bases (7th). Gillaspie has reached base safely in all but two games this season and also had a league-high 20-game hitting streak earlier this season. Gillaspie is the 16th Shocker to earn the Valley’s Joe Carter Player of the Year honor. "

Really impressive numbers. Ridiculous numbers if you consider the amount of help he isn't getting.

1st Team
Casey Gillaspie (1B), Dayne Parker (UT) and A.J. Ladwig (SP).

2nd Team
Chase Simpson (3B), Tyler Baker (C), Daniel Kihle (OF) and Cale Elam (SP)

In years past, WSU has not received some of the post-season individual awards they deserved. Either they were awarded some they did not deserve this year, or it would be very safe to say this team under-performed in the W/L column.

http://www.mvc-sports.com/baseball/news/2013-14/7354/mvc-announces-baseball-all-conference-teams/?utm_content=buffer28f3b&utm_medium=social&utm_sou rce=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

http://www.kansas.com/2014/05/19/3463784/wichita-states-gillaspie-named.html

Congrats Casey! Nice to see a lot of Shox recognized.

[tru2thaduce]

When you consider the lack of protection and the bbcor bats,I believe Casey has put together the best hitting season in Shocker history.I know some will say Carter,Stephenson or Magness but for my money Casey has topped them all considering the circumstances.

[Cdizzle]

Stephenson's numbers were straight up video game crazy.

I would definitely put Gillaspie up there a ways though.

[1972Shocker]

When you consider the lack of protection and the bbcor bats,I believe Casey has put together the best hitting season in Shocker history.I know some will say Carter,Stephenson or Magness but for my money Casey has topped them all considering the circumstances.

And the schedule Casey has played. Not too many Bemidji State's in there. Carter, Stephenson and Magness were simply outstanding. Hard to compare players but I think Joe, Phil and Pat would have been great in today's game as well. Casey is right there with those guys though.

[WSUwatcher]

1st Team[/U]
Casey Gillaspie (1B), Dayne Parker (UT) and A.J. Ladwig (SP).

2nd Team
Chase Simpson (3B), Tyler Baker (C), Daniel Kihle (OF) and Cale Elam (SP)

In years past, WSU has not received some of the post-season individual awards they deserved. Either they were awarded some they did not deserve this year, or it would be very safe to say this team under-performed in the W/L column.

I'd say both, dizzle. Nothing against Simpson, but if that was even a second-team all-league season his position must be extremely weak this year. It's one thing to acclaim a relatively light-hitting catcher like Baker because of defense, but a corner infielder?

And it's hard to doubt that there was some pretty significant underperformance by this team. They came into the Valley tournament playing .527 ball, with runs for-against totals that would have predicted a .625 regular season (i.e., between 34-21 and 35-20). Even allowing for the difficulty of using traditional sabermetric Pythagorean analysis in college ball, which tends to have more blowouts than pro ball does, that's a significant deviation.

Maybe we'll see next year's team revert to the norm; I certainly hope so. But I can't help thinking that, even though the need for a change was becoming ever more apparent, the Gene bashers who wanted him gone immediately and finally got their way are being reminded to be careful what you wish for.

[1972Shocker]

I'd say both, dizzle. Nothing against Simpson, but if that was even a second-team all-league season his position must be extremely weak this year. It's one thing to acclaim a relatively light-hitting catcher like Baker because of defense, but a corner infielder?

And it's hard to doubt that there was some pretty significant underperformance by this team. They came into the Valley tournament playing .527 ball, with runs for-against totals that would have predicted a .625 regular season (i.e., between 34-21 and 35-20). Even allowing for the difficulty of using traditional sabermetric Pythagorean analysis in college ball, which tends to have more blowouts than pro ball does, that's a significant deviation.

Maybe we'll see next year's team revert to the norm; I certainly hope so. But I can't help thinking that, even though the need for a change was becoming ever more apparent, the Gene bashers who wanted him gone immediately and finally got their way are being reminded to be careful what you wish for.

Good post, although I think it is much too early to make the HCTB is a failure determination. One thing we do know is that the program was clearly on the decline at the time the change in leadership was made. We will never know for sure whether Gene could have gotten things turned around or not. He himself had publicly expressed doubts back in 2005 about be able to win at WSU going forward. Whether or not HCTB can get the job done remains to be seen. Will pretty much know the answer to that over the next 3 years.

[WSUwatcher]

Absolutely, 1972 -- I agree that it's way too soon to doubt Butler's ability to turn things around. Even next year is probably too soon (yes, I know basketball is a different sport, but if you look at Coach K's career at Duke, his two worst records were in years 2-3).

Still, the early returns are not as good as one might have hoped, and the underperformance vs. expectations is especially disappointing. Let's hope that a couple of years from now people are comparing WSU's baseball trajectory to the basketball trajectory under the Marshall plan.

In any case, many kudos to Casey for a truly extraordinary year. Bad day today, but stuff happens in baseball, and sometimes all you need to know about a game is how one team's pitcher performed. Today was that day for IlSt and Savas, who has shown his talent in the past. Let's hope Evansille doesn't slip up in their game.

[Cdizzle]

Today was not about Savas. Today was about offensive ineptitude. Savas was basically throwing fuel on a fire that the offense never lit.

[1972Shocker]

I was surprised that Tyler Baker was picked over Mike Hollenbeck of Illinois State for 2nd team at the Catcher position. What that is telling me is that performance in the conference season is pretty heavily weighted vs overall season performance.

Overall, Hollenbeck hit 0.348 with a 0.455 SP and a 0.423 OBA for an 0.878 OPS with 39 RBI.

Baker hit 0.247 with a 0.363 SP and a 0.312 OBA for an 0.675 OPS with 18 RBI.

However, in conference games only:

Hollenbeck only hit 0.250 with a 0.316 SP and a 0.314 OBA for an OPS of 0.630 with 14 RBI.

Baker hit 0.277 with a 0.400 SP and a 0.365 OBA for an OPS of 0.765 but only had 6 RBI.

I couldn't really say what kind of defensive catcher Hollenbeck is but we know Baker was pretty good and maybe that was the swing factor.

[1972Shocker]

I'd say both, dizzle. Nothing against Simpson, but if that was even a second-team all-league season his position must be extremely weak this year. It's one thing to acclaim a relatively light-hitting catcher like Baker because of defense, but a corner infielder?

Yeah, Chase Simpson is a bit of a head scratcher. He really struggled with RISP this year and he probably had more chances than anyone else on the Shocker team. Tyler at least was on the All-Defensive team. Chase was not. The really interesting thing though is that Chase was put on the 2nd team at the Shortstop position. That I can't explain.

[shox1989]

Gillaspie wins Joe Carter MVP

"Gillaspie, a junior first baseman from Omaha, Neb., leads the league in batting average (.406), hits (80), RBI (50), home runs (15), on-base percentage (.530) and slugging percentage (.721). His 24 multi-hit games and 15 multi-RBI games both lead the MVC, and he ranks in the nation's top-10 in walks (1st), on-base percentage (1st), slugging percentage (3rd), home runs (5th) and total bases (7th). Gillaspie has reached base safely in all but two games this season and also had a league-high 20-game hitting streak earlier this season. Gillaspie is the 16th Shocker to earn the Valley’s Joe Carter Player of the Year honor. "

Really impressive numbers. Ridiculous numbers if you consider the amount of help he isn't getting.

1st Team
Casey Gillaspie (1B), Dayne Parker (UT) and A.J. Ladwig (SP).

2nd Team
Chase Simpson (3B), Tyler Baker (C), Daniel Kihle (OF) and Cale Elam (SP)

In years past, WSU has not received some of the post-season individual awards they deserved. Either they were awarded some they did not deserve this year, or it would be very safe to say this team under-performed in the W/L column.

http://www.mvc-sports.com/baseball/news/2013-14/7354/mvc-announces-baseball-all-conference-teams/?utm_content=buffer28f3b&utm_medium=social&utm_sou rce=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

http://www.kansas.com/2014/05/19/3463784/wichita-states-gillaspie-named.html

I think there is no doubt this team under acheived in the win/loss column. Besides getting more players on the first and second All MVC teams, this team was picked by the other media and coaches to finish first this year in the pre-season poll. It was definitely a disappointing season. If Gene were still coach and the team would have done this badly (I think they would have done better but we will never know for sure), there would be over a 100 pages of posts calling for his head.

[1972Shocker]

I think there is no doubt this team under acheived in the win/loss column. Besides getting more players on the first and second All MVC teams, this team was picked by the other media and coaches to finish first this year in the pre-season poll. It was definitely a disappointing season. If Gene were still coach and the team would have done this badly (I think they would have done better but we will never know for sure), there would be over a 100 pages of posts calling for his head.

That's one way of looking at it. It also points to how thin this year's roster was in term's of quality players beyond these 7 guys.

Baseball is still a game of pitching and we were definitely not deep behind Elam, Ladwig and Tewes.

We basically had no one to protect Casey Gillaspie and teams simply pitched around him in key situations.

You also failed to take into account the suspensions and the injuries this team suffered through.

Add that to the fact that transition years from one coaching regime to a new coaching regime often are difficult.

While hopes may have been higher before the season started and with the benefit of hindsight it is not really that surprising that this team "underperformed". The question is did this team really underperform. As the inestimable Bill Parcells so succinctly put it "you are what your record says you are".

Preseason polls and post season individual awards have little to do with a team's performance overall on the field of play.

A great example of this is A.J. Ladwig. A.J. absolutely deserved 1st team All-Valley recognition. But the team was well below 0.500 in his starts. The team was only slightly above 0.500 in the games started by Ladwig, Elam and Tewes combined.