The Sweet 16 of Smooth Fielding
March 24, 2010
It's still early for a lot of D-1 teams, but we're chomping at the bit to start analyzing the nationwide returns.
Here's our "Sweet Sixteen" of D-1 team defenses, as measured by percentage of balls in play turned into outs (defensive efficiency).
Exact placement on this list isn't very important, especially outside of the top few, but inclusion on the list is a good sign. At the very least, all of these guys know they're catching the ball a lot better than Chicago State (.512).
SCHOOL DefEff Tennessee 0.734 Oregon State 0.732 South Carolina 0.729 Louisville 0.724 Texas Christian 0.720 Texas Pan American 0.718 Stony Brook 0.717 Jackson State 0.715 Virginia 0.715 Southeastern Louisiana 0.715 Liberty 0.714 Texas 0.713 Toledo 0.712 St. John's 0.711 Long Beach State 0.709 Arizona State 0.709
Oregon State, Virginia, and Arizona State (among others) are no surprise on a list like this. But Stony Brook and Jackson State? In late March, we can always cry "small sample size." We prefer to hope that some high-quality baseball is being played in unlikely places.