Bandits Batting - The Bash Brothers and Our Japanese Brethren

This weekend was another disappointing series for the Bandits - and it was beginning to show in the dugout... thrown helmets, broken chairs, three ball strikeouts. As touched on in my last blog, another challenge also awaits - our adopted Japanese Bandits will soon be jetting back to Japan to prepare for the NPB season. This not only includes the dominant Yohei Yanagawa, but also a large chunk of our batting roster - Yamashita, Nakahara, Imamiya, and Makihara. With this in mind, I thought I would look at the importance of the Japanese contingent to the Bandits lineup. I'm also aware I've written a lot about pitching and not much about batting on this blog (personal bias), so it seems fair to even things up.

These days there are a lot of advanced statistics in baseball, and more being created everyday. What you still find though, is that batters can be pretty fairly summed up based on three core numbers - forming the 'slash line'. The slash line gives a pretty good indication of a batters hitting ability (average), patience (on base percentage) and power (slugging percentage). These give a good indication of a batters ability on an individual level. Of these, it's often said that on base percentage (OBP) is the most important - followed by slugging percentage (SLG) - leading to the use of the statistic OPS (on base plus slugging). If you're interested in where all these numbers come from, please search the web - there are innumerable baseball statistics resources available - my aim here is to investigate the Bandits batting performances.

With that said, here is the current Bandits slash line. I've also included the number of at-bats as it's important to take into account the number of plate appearances a player has had when evaluating the validity of the stats.

Player	AB	AVG	OBP	SLG
Ayatsugu Yamashita	53	0.340	0.397	0.472
Kevin Hoef	9	0.111	0.385	0.111
Brad Dutton	98	0.306	0.343	0.378
Wade Dutton	81	0.235	0.333	0.346
David Sutherland	97	0.299	0.327	0.443
Joshua Roberts	103	0.301	0.324	0.495
Rory Rhodes	49	0.184	0.310	0.286
Kenta Imamiya	42	0.238	0.304	0.310
Mitch Nilsson	19	0.158	0.273	0.368
Matthew Roxburgh	67	0.239	0.261	0.299
Keiji Nakahara	87	0.207	0.258	0.402
Joel Naughton	40	0.175	0.250	0.275
Andrew Campbell	17	0.118	0.250	0.176
Taisei Makihara	62	0.194	0.219	0.194
Daniel Lamb-Hunt	7	0.143	0.143	0.143
Jay Nilsson	14	0.000	0.125	0.000
Ryan Battaglia	1	0.000	0.000	0.000

The list is ordered by on-base percentage. As you an see, the catcher Yamashita tops the list, leading in both batting average and on-base percentage, and placing second in slugging percentage. The rest of the Bandits Softbank Hawks guests fair less well - the main standout being Nakahara's slugging percentage, courtesy of his team leading four home runs.

The key fact - and this is something most Bandits fans know very well - is that the true heart of the lineup lies in the local boys: Brad Dutton & Wade Dutton (aka The Bash Brothers, or B1 & B2), David "Goofy" Sutherland, and Josh Roberts. This quartet is amazingly consistent and make the Bandits who they are. With Yamashita returning to Japan, the youthful and talented Mitch Nilsson also has a chance to establish himself within the core.

Herein lies the problem, though - the Bandits batting core is Brisbane based, with support in the first half of the season from Japanese players. Which makes it tough to see the team lose a series 3-1 largely thanks to the Adelaide Bites import players - Almote, Anderson, Jones (all from the USA) and Hu (from Taiwan). Import players are great for the standard of the league, but it is very rough for fans when the performance of their team hinges less on the ability of the players their state produces than the international appearances they can secure.

At the end of the day, the ABL needs to strike a balance between encouraging international players to attend and providing opportunities to local talent. On a local level, I feel the Bandits need to ramp up their efforts to attract quality international players (quality over quantity in this regard). The inaugural ABL all-star game (Aussies vs Imports) should be a fantastic event and a good measure of how the balance currently stands.