Friday, July 25, 2014

Harry Bell is not a happy camper these days. The second-year owner of the Kalamazoo Badgers is becoming ever more impatient with the team’s performance. Notwithstanding the myriad of “off the record” outbursts and impromptu managerial lambasting, he has gone on record as being very critical of the team’s training staff this year, primarily due to the high rate of injuries to Badgers’ players throughout all organizational levels.

Bell went into the 2013 season with expectations of the Badgers winning the Great Lakes Division championship at an absolute minimum. This year, Bell lowered his expectations somewhat, expecting the club to have a winning record. We all know how 2013 ended and we can speculate with a high level of confidence how the 2014 season will end.

Bell is now demanding a complete review of baseball operations at all levels, from Ketchikan to Kalamazoo. Not being one to embrace sabermetric analysis yet, Bell requested, as a start, a basic overview of league batting and pitching trends since 2007, the first year of the PEBA’s existence. Bell hopes that his baseball operations managers will begin to understand the Badgers performance relative to the other teams in the league and to begin to zero in on problem areas.

The following material serves as a very basic charting of PEBA batting average, home runs and earned run average from 2007 through 2013. For comparison’s sake, data for LRS teams has been included, as well.

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