Baseball has a long history of rewarding the boring teams. National League fans call it the sport in its purest form, steroid-era apologists dub it mundane.
On the other end of the spectrum, young fans of the Texas Rangers grew up watching the Arlington jet-stream carry the prizes of sluggers like Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira to everywhere but the playoffs. It was a fun product, perhaps. But losing pretty is still losing.
A year ago, Stephen F. Austin had one of the more exciting teams in college baseball and certainly in the Southland Conference. The electric offense and red hot bats stole wins from Oklahoma State, Kansas State, and plenty of others. The Lumberjacks raked opposing pitchers for a .298 average and .432 slugging percentage. On their way to scoring nearly 400 runs, SFA led the SLC in both extra base hits and total bases.
It was a fun brand of baseball. It just wasn't the winning kind.
SFA Athletics
Head coach Johnny Cardenas pictured with Lumberjacks' first baseman Alex Hrinevich.
SFA would finish the season good enough to beat anyone and equally capable of dropping anything. They paced the league in defensive errors, were last in successful pick offs, last in runs allowed, and next to last in earned runs with a 5.50 team ERA. In other words, as great as they were offensively, they were equitably unable to stop opposing hitters and base runners.
The result was about what you would expect. SFA was average, if not slightly below, finishing tied for 7th in a 13 team league. SFA snuck into the postseason and did do a bit of damage as the #8 seed. Yes, they could win any game with a big inning or two. Just not consistently.
A year later, the roster hasn't changed nearly as much as the surface statistics would have you think. Winners of their last nine, the Lumberjacks have a very different identity in 2017. Statistically, SFA's offensive numbers are skewed upwards as a result of a ridiculous 62 run weekend against Incarnate Word over the past several days - but they're still, well, mostly average with the bats this year.
The Lumberjacks, albeit through a tough non-conference schedule and only three series of SLC play, are hitting safely at a .283 average; good enough for 7th place in the conference. Individually, some notable players such as lead-off man and on-base specialist Tyler Kendrick, started the new season slowly by their standards. Add in that 2016's pitching ace Patrick Ledet, one of the few bright spots defensively a year ago, stumbled a bit early, and that catcher Clark Kahawaii is done for the season with a knee injury, and it's hard to fathom that SFA is in the thick of the league's early race.
But they are. And sitting at 6-3 (third place) and riding the third longest winning streak in program history, the bats seem to be coming to life. Don't let the offensive onslaught of this past weekend fool you, though; the Lumberjacks are in this position because they have been playing solid defense, for a change, all year.
Ledet turned out an ace-level performance on Friday, allowing just one earned run over seven solid innings. It made no difference in the outcome with SFA racking up a 22-spot for the game, but if Ledet becomes even a fraction of what he was a year ago, look out. Even with some of his early shakiness, SFA has improved their team ERA to 4.60 while leading the SLC in batters struck out. Only Central Arkansas has committed fewer than SFA's 26 errors in the field and while teams have still been able to score on the 'Jacks from time to time, there has been a restoration in respectability for the much-maligned defensive unit from a year ago.
And now that this team is scoring points, too? You never know with baseball, but SFA could be on the verge of getting pretty darn good.
There's certainly stiff competition ahead. Unlike a variety of other Southland Conference sports, this is an excellent mid-major league in baseball. McNeese sits at #22 in the national RPI, even after dropping two of three over the weekend. Sam Houston State remains undefeated at 9-0 after three-straight sweeps to open league play and Southeastern Louisiana, the embodiment of that boring National League team we described earlier, is a few timely hits away from winning any game they play.
But SFA? Even if offensively they never produce what they did a year ago, this team is remarkably improved. Take away this last weekend and they might be a tinge less flashy (
although walk-off grand slams are hard to beat), but when they need three outs, whether from a starter or a member of the ever-impressive bullpen (led by closer Tyler Starks and his sub-1 ERA), there's a pretty realistic chance they're going to get them.
The Lumberjacks in 2017 embody balance. When all is said and done, those are usually the kind of baseball teams still playing at the end of the season.
As they say, get you a baseball team that does both. Johnny Cardenas apparently has.
