Oregon Ducks Baseball: How Did The Ducks Compare To The NCAA’s Best?

Anyone that followed Oregon Ducks baseball in the 2022 season followed something of the roller coaster emotions that went with it – feelings of the Ducks scoring impressive runs and late-inning comebacks, and frustration at slumps and seemingly inept pitching.

Emotions, however, can’t be quantified. Instead, is there something in the 2022 season stats that can shed light on Oregon’s hits and misses (pun intended)? If so, what is the basis of comparison?

Today we will examine those questions using the best teams of the 2022 baseball season for comparison. The elite teams chosen are the eight teams that appeared in the College World Series: Texas A&M, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Texas, Stanford, Arkansas, Auburn, and Ole Miss.

Complete 2022 season statistics are used for each team. All but one of the CWS teams (Notre Dame) played more games in the season than the Ducks played. Where applicable, I divided statistic categories into a per-game number, multiplied by the number of games that Oregon played (61) and then calculated the average for the eight elite teams. This helped to reduce margin of error in comparisons; if a team has played in 67 games then of course they will have more at-bats, total bases, etc. This method has us closer to comparing apples to apples.

Our statistical comparisons are averages of singular team stats separated into four sets: Offensive statistics where the Ducks reasonably equaled or exceeded the elite teams, offensive statistics where the elite teams exceeded the Ducks, defensive statistics where the Ducks reasonably equaled or exceeded the elite teams, and defensive statistics where the elite teams exceeded Oregon. The sets are as follows: