Everyone on the Robert Stock bandwagon! Per Goold -
Robert Stock, first 2009 pick w/ Grapefruit debut, gets a base hit on first pitch he sees. Color me perplexed by college average.
Allow me to explain his low batting averages. One fact we all know about, that he left school early and started his college baseball career at the tender age of 17. It was expected that there would be a learning curve for Stock.
Two, his up and down luck when it comes to his batting averages of balls on play:
- Freshman, ’07 – .248 batting average, .260 BABIP.
- Sophomore, ’08 – A much healthier .295 BA, not surprisingly he had a .302 BABIP.
- Junior, ’09 – .219 batting average, .224 BABIP. Ouch.
- Pro debut, ’09 – .289 BA, .331 BABIP.
Over this time he averaged 159 at-bats per season. There’s a lot of randomness that can happen over the course of 159 at-bats. Felipe Lopez hit .385 in 156 at bats in his last stint as a Cardinal. Hanley Ramirez once hit .230 over a span of 174 at-bats.
Is Stock a good hitter or a bad hitter? In time we’ll find out. In the meantime, I’d go more by what the scouting reports say than handfuls of at-bats per season at the Division 1 level and rookie ball level while he was teenager. By making any judgments calls now (good or bad) based on his stats apart from what trained eyes say, you’re going to come up with some fuzzy assumptions.
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Props for taking the time to calculate BABIP on Stock’s NCAA stats. Worthwhile effort.
@Liam: Minor League Splits did all the work for me, actually. I forgot they kept track of that.
Great catch, Erik. I had no idea those stats were available. I’ve read that USC’s home field has a brutal hitting environment, but I don’t know how his home and road hitting and pitching stats compare. If his pitching was dramatically better at home and his hitting was worse, that could explain a lot about why he was regarded as a better pitching prospect.
The big caution flag I want to wave right now concerns his hitting at Johnson City. Lots of guys tear that league up. One random example: Yadi slugged .405 at JC in 2001 … and hasn’t slugged .400 in a full season since.
And then there’s the heartbreak of Niko …
Shu, minorleaguesplits.com has those home/away numbers if you want them but to summerize, Stock slugged about .200 higher in his minor league career at home!
Wow, I never noticed they provided ncaa splits. Checked here and didn’t see it.