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Division II Offensive Baseball Trends

Writer's picture: Robert FreyRobert Frey

Robert here.


I was working on a different project when I found something curious in the landscape of Division II Baseball. Offense is going up, but strikeouts are going down?


Looking below at this figure:




We observe that on a per plate appearance basis, strikeout rate (K%) has gone done a full one-and-a-half percent. However, Batting Average (BA), On Base Percentage (OBP), and On Base Plus Slugging (OPS) have consistently gone up in recent years, while Slugging Percentage (SLG) has gone back up after trending down in 2023. Needless to say, this is good for the sport. More offense mixed with less strikeouts is good!

Let's look at one stat that does a relatively good job of assessing offense and is easy to explain, OPS. OPS, known as On Base Plus Slugging, measures On Base Percentage, how often a player reaches base, and Slugging Percentage, how much a player's hits is contributed to hitting for extra bases (2B, 3B, HR). Compare it with K% and only three conferences have consistently gone up in OPS while going down in K%, the Great Northwest (GNAC), the Lone Star, and the SAC.





Interestingly enough, it was announced that the GNAC will be losing its automatic bid in the postseason, so how does that offense differ?


The NSIC

In today's landscape, some conferences have taken a big leap in terms of production. Take the NSIC for example.





The NSIC since 2022 has jumped over nearly 100 OPS points as a league from 2022 to 2024. For context, that's like going from a career MLB hitter like Michael Young or Fernando Tatis Sr. to a career MLB hitter like David Wright or Jose Canseco.


One big reason of this jump in 2024 is this boxscore. OPS translates to more runs and runs were a-plenty in this March 22nd conference game between Minnesota Crookston and Concordia-St. Paul. Thirteen home runs were hit in this game, and this was the norm.



Source: UMC Athletics


Here's the runs per game for both teams in NSIC vs NSIC games (including conference tournament games) over the last three years.

2022: 11

2023: 13.6

2024: 13.7


That's nearly a full three runs per game difference in the NSIC. No other conference has seen that big of a jump in run scoring in that time span.


The RMAC

Speaking of run scoring, no conference in Division II Baseball scores like the RMAC. In the high altitude environment in Colorado that all but one school experience in the RMAC, it seems there's a lot of opportunities to score runs.


Here's a breakdown of their OPS in each of the last three years:





The OPS trends down, however, it is by far the highest OPS across any conference in Division II Baseball. Now let's look at the run scoring environment by year in RMAC Conference Games (including conference tournament):

2022: 16.7

2023: 17.7

2024: 17.9


What does this mean? Against non-conference opponents the RMAC run-scoring environment drops a lot since the league's OPS has gone down. In RMAC non-conference games in 2024, the average run-scoring environment is 16.3 runs, a full run and a half lower that RMAC conference games.

Then, when an RMAC team goes on the road in non-conference games, the run environment drops even MORE, to 12.6 runs per game, which is below the league average of 13 runs.


To finish up, let's look at the runs per game in conference games (including conference tournaments) over the last two years.





Of the 22 listed conferences (SAC not included due to incomplete data), 15 experience an uptick in run scoring. The MEC and the CCAA experience over a 2 runs per game increase in conference play.

Two conferences had no change, the GLVC and the GLIAC (Interestingly, both in the Midwest Region).


Five conferences experience a drop in scoring, most notably the Sunshine State conference, where runs dropped by over a run per game in 2024 and is the conference of defending national champion Tampa.

 


What does this mean? Well, we should continue to expect higher offense as a whole in Division II Baseball in 2025. Some conferences are reaching 15 runs per game, while others are dipping below 12 runs per game.


Thanks for reading.


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