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.

Who the hell is Steven Chambers?

When an international journey-man like Alex Maestri pitches, you look forward to Ks. When SoftBank Hawks reliever Yohei Yanagawa, boasting a 1.88 ERA in Japan's NBP, decides to stretch himself out down under - you brace yourself for some fireworks. But when a Gold Coast born twenty-one year old takes the mound in the last game of the series - well, you don't expect anything.

Last year for the Bandits Chambers pitched four innings across three games for the Bandits - allowing 9 hits, 8 walks, and 6 runs. Not exactly heart-warming stuff.

In the forth and final game of this years opening series against Canberra, the Bandits - up 8-6 in the middle of the sixth - threw the ball to Chambers. He responded by sending back nine batters straight - 3 IP, 0 H, 0 BB, 2 Ks. Three innings of work in 38 pitches, choking the Calvary offence in what up to that point had been a high scoring contest.

Presumably, he was rewarded for this impressive relief appearance by being given the start in the final game of the next series, this time against the formidable Sydney Blue Sox. His response? 6.1 IP, 1 H, 1 BB, 5 Ks. For those of you not familiar with baseball statistics - at this point in the season he has pitched nine and a third innings and allowed only two batters on base (one hit, one walk) and struck out seven - impressive results on any scale.

So where did this come from? Even Maestri allowed 5 hits and 2 walks in his much praised 10 K performance. It got me wondering - who the hell is Steven Chambers?

After some poking around the Australian Baseball Federation website, I found that although he made the 2011 Queensland U23 team - he only pitched one inning of relief in the tournament. Searching a little deeper, Chambers signed up with Czech Republican team Technika Brno in April of this year. While it's difficult to locate year-wide stat summaries, his performances with Brno in the 2011 European Cup Qualifiers seem very strong. For example, in June he lasted the full nine innings against Bern Cardinals - allowing 4 hits, 5 walks, 0 runs, and notching up 11 Ks - in a mammoth 139 pitch performance. Then in September he went 7 innings, allowing 1 hit and 4 walks - contrasted against 10 Ks.

While there are definitely some gaps to fill in his backstory, it appears Chambers has been spending the ABL off season practicing his craft - and this has so far paid off, with drastic reductions in the number hits and walks allowed. While I greatly enjoy watching our classy imports, providing opportunities for young local players like Chambers to show their stuff is one of the primary purposes of the ABL. It's the young Aussies that will form the backbone of the team in years to come - so let's home Chambers can keep up the heat.