Portland State, BABIP and ISO

by James MacKenzie
Vanguard staff

A quick introduction: I'm James MacKenzie and I write for the sports section in the Vanguard. This is what I hope to be the first in a running series of posts that will analyze the Portland State softball team through sabermetric analysis, a field in which softball is sorely lacking.

Sabermetrics are so absent from softball, that when you type it into Google it asks, "did you mean: football sabermetrics?" Which is a pity, because really, doesn't softball in all of its similarity to baseball, deserve to be picked apart, scrutinized and analyzed with every stupid number one can throw at it in the same way that baseball is? I would answer that it does and that's the aim here. 

I would, however, like to add the caveat that since sabermetrics are absent from softball in most available statistical archives, I have derived most of the statistics used here from my own work provided by the raw statistics available at goviks.com. That being said, I'd like to say that I am an amateur statistician at best and as always when you read things on the internet, take it with a grain a salt.

Through twelve games, it's safe to say that Portland State's offensive production has been nothing short of putrid. The raw slash line of .212/.290/.260 is rough, as is the .550 OPS it amounts too. Portland State ranks second to last in batting average and slugging in the Pacific Coast Softball Conference ahead of only Santa Clara and ranks third to last in on-base percentage. Quite simply, the Vikings aren't hitting.