Some baseball guys and gals swear by the old idiom that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153defense and pitching wins championships.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Others are more inclined to go with the more recently popular \u00e2\u20ac\u0153chicks did the long ball.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Still others believe the best way to win is to out hit your opponents and you most often do that by leading the league in team batting average. In the Southeastern Conference the jury is still out on which one is more important.<\/p>\n
Looking briefly at the last 29 years of conference records it seems more likely that the conference champs led in at least one of those categories, but 13 of the 29 years a team won the championship without leading either in team Batting Average (BA), Earned Run Average (ERA) or Team Home Runs (HR). The 16-13 stat is not an overwhelming vote of confidence one way or the other. So let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s see what the stats really have to say in this matter.<\/p>\n
The team with the best BA won the league championship the least amount of time. SEC teams who led the league have won 5 of the 29 championships between 1980 and 2008. The last team to win the championship while leading the league in BA was the \u00e2\u20ac\u212207 Vanderbilt Commodores. They were also the last team to lead the league in two of the three categories and also win the conference title. The negative side of that is that if you lead the conference in average you have a roughly one in six chance to win the conference championship.<\/p>\n
The team that had the best pitching numbers in terms of ERA has won the title 8 times during that same span. The previously mentioned \u00e2\u20ac\u212207 Vandy team and the \u00e2\u20ac\u212296 LSU Tigers were the only two teams to lead in both ERA and BA and win the championship. Three other teams, \u00e2\u20ac\u212208 Kentucky Wildcats, \u00e2\u20ac\u212299 Mississippi State Bulldogs, \u00e2\u20ac\u212297 Auburn Tigers, led in both of those categories but failed to win the conference championship. Your chances of winning the SEC are greater if you lead the league in ERA but overall, you are still more likely to not win it.<\/p>\n
How did the team that led the SEC in home runs fare? Nine conference champs have led the league in the long ball category while taking home the trophy. The \u00e2\u20ac\u212206 Kentucky Wildcats are the last team to do so. They shared the title with Alabama who also led the league in ERA that season. Four teams during that 29 year span led the league in both HRs and BA and failed to win the championship, \u00e2\u20ac\u212280 and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc87 Georgia Bulldogs, \u00e2\u20ac\u212288 MSU Bulldogs, and \u00e2\u20ac\u212292 South Carolina Gamecocks. Only one team, the \u00e2\u20ac\u212296 LSU squad was able to lead in both and win the championship. They were also the only team to lead all three categories in the same year regardless of whether they won the championship or not. There were two years where the HR and ERA leading team won the championship, \u00e2\u20ac\u212200 and \u00e2\u20ac\u212201 South Carolina Gamecocks, and two years when the team leading in both categories did not win the title, \u00e2\u20ac\u212281 MSU Bulldogs and \u00e2\u20ac\u212298 LSU Tigers. If you lead the league in dingers you have a roughly one in three chance to win the league.<\/p>\n
Statistically speaking, the only 100% sure way to win the SEC is to lead the league in all three categories. However, the ironic thing is that the LSU team that was the only team to do so in the last 29 years, had to share the title with Alabama and Florida. So if you want to give your team a better than 50% chance to win the title, you need to lead the league in one of the categories mentioned above. The problem is that you never know which year will be the year of the pitcher, the hitter, or the slugger. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why we love the game, because victories often hinge on things that don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t show up in the box scores. Although I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure there are some who will disagree with that statement as well. Ah, I love this game!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some baseball guys and gals swear by the old idiom that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153defense and pitching wins championships.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Others are more inclined to go with the more recently popular \u00e2\u20ac\u0153chicks did the long ball.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Still others believe the best way to win is to out hit your opponents and you most often do that by leading the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3896,5510,5519,631,5520,5515,5518,5507,5517,5508,5506,5505,3149,5511,5512,5514,1354,5513,5516,5509],"class_list":["post-3710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-amount-of-time","tag-auburn-tigers","tag-ba","tag-batting-average","tag-briefly","tag-bulldogs","tag-chicks","tag-conference-champs","tag-gals","tag-kentucky-wildcats","tag-lsu-tigers","tag-mississippi-state-bulldogs","tag-opponents","tag-overwhelming-vote","tag-sec-teams","tag-southeastern-conference","tag-stat","tag-statistical-leaders","tag-vanderbilt","tag-vote-of-confidence"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}