Post 11 Back In Action Tonight At Home

Note: The BellSouth link on the right has a rundown on all the Post 11 teams, including scores and stats, up to 1993. I'll continue work on that this week.
Note 2: Kinston defeated Pitt 39 15-8 Sunday night.

Undefeated Wayne County resumes play tonight against New Bern Post 24. (It's about @#$%&#@$% time!)
From what I know about the opposition the team has seen, Wayne has not played a tough schedule. That's about to change with New Bern, Pitt 39 and Kinston on the horizon. What can we expect to see in the next few weeks? You guess is as good as mine, considering that we have only six games to go on, but I wanted to take the opportunity to look at what the team has done so far and compare it to what recent Post 11 teams accomplished. What will it take for this team to be a major contender for the Area I East title and a spot in the state tournament in Gastonia?

Here are lots of comparative numbers for Post 11 teams from 1990-2007. Wayne has played for the league championship 11 of the past 14 seasons. From 1994-2004, Wayne missed the title round once, and that was due to how the playoffs were configured. What do the numbers from the admittedly small sample show so far?

Offensively, Wayne is scoring 8.5 runs/game. That is in the middle of the 18 teams. The .280 batting average is third worst; yes, good Legion teams hit the ball very well. The best news is that this team is adept at scoring runners. The 52 percent mark is third best.

Pitching? That was a concern from the beginning due to all the inexperience. Wayne lost 90 percent of its innings pitched from the state runnerup team. So, how have the youthful arms responded so far?

Wayne is allowing 4.3 runs/game, tied for fifth. The pitches per inning are 15.3. I don't have numbers on that but my experience tells me that's good. The opposition batting average of .245 is below average. At this point in the season, the mark should be more dominant.

The best stat so far is that the opposition is scoring only 31 percent of its runners. That's tied for the best mark. The other three teams that did that well won the league championship.

Walks? The 3.1 mark is third best. It's probably a number that will be vital to this team as it can't afford to give the opposition a lot of runners via that route. The 1997 team that lost to Cherryville for the state title had a much worse mark but it had a lights-out offense and a great strikout percentage from its pitchers.

The most worrisome state is the 6.3 strikeouts per nine innings. That's a solid number if you're in professional baseball but not at this level. It's the worse K/9IP of the group. These pitchers do not miss enough bats. That's going to put added presure on the defense to make the ordinary plays. Already two-thirds of the runs allowed have been unearned, as evidence by the 1.67 ERA. That number stands out like a sore thumb, but an extremely low ERA is not unusual that this point in the season, so I hesitate to make much of it. The pitchers don't have to be good. They just have to be mediocre if the bats will come through. There's something to be said at times for mediocrity.

Well, that's a rundown of the numbers. Now, let's play ball.