Scouting Video: Ryan Gebhart

OF Ryan Gebhart
2010 Peninsula Oilers
Height: 6'0" - Weight: 175lb
Bats: Switch - Throws: Right
2010 Level: DI Sophomore
School: University of Missouri
Draft Eligibility: 2011 (DI Junior)
Previous Draft: N/A

Analysis of Runs Created in 2010

Sabermetricising the ABL's most productive hitters.

Bret Schwartz paced the league with 37.15 RC in 2010

Now that the off-season has fully sunk in and the final 2010 statistics are upon us, we can start the work of going through the stat sheets and taking apart the numbers, and try to make sense of it all. During the last off-season, one of my more popular statistical analysis posts was using the Runs Created stat, so I'd like to start this winter off on the right foot by reviving that old buddy -- and expanding upon it.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the term "sabermetrics" or the more advanced stats, here's a quick rundown. The idea is that the simple stats every baseball fan is familiar with all have little flaws that make them faulty or not quite as useful as they could be. For example, you can use AVG to determine if someone is a good hitter, but you're neglecting how often they walk, sacrifice, get extra-base hits, etc. You could look at RBI as a measure of productiveness, but then you're not just looking at one player but also the guys who bat -- and either reach base or fail to do so -- in the order ahead of him. At the end of the day, though, the only thing that matters is how many runs a player helped put on the board, regardless of how he did it. Runs Created tries (rather successfully) to isolate one player's performance, and at the same time, include all aspects of a player's offense. If you read last year's post, I used the exact same formula that I did for the 2009 players, including the constant that I derived empirically to adjust to the ABL.

So here (after the jump!) is the table of the top 25 ABL batters in Runs Created in 2010:

Oilers show no mercy to Rock City

Peninsula team hand Red Sox an early exit via mercy rule

Ryan Gebhart was just one of many hot bats for
the Oilers in Wichita today.

Still licking their wounds from their stunning defeat from the Wichita Elite Sluggers the previous day, the Peninsula Oilers pulled no punches in their outing against the Rock City Red Sox. The Oilers made short work of the opposition in the 8-0 victory, bouncing Rock City from the NBC World Series tournament with a mercy-rule shortened loss.

In contrast to yesterday's loss, the Oilers' pitching in this game was rock solid with Jake Sabol (Central Michigan) pitching an even 6.0 two-hit innings, walking two and striking out four. Ryan Wooley (Alabama Birmingham) pitched the only necessary inning of relief, surrendering two hits but no runs and striking out a pair.

The bats were obviously hot this morning, with everyone reaching base at least once. Ryan Gebhart (Missouri) went 2-for-4 and scored two runs, and Garrett Wittels (Florida Int'l) knocked in a stellar 4 RBI. The team's offensive output was sufficient to put the Red Sox out of their misery and the Oilers were awarded the victory after six and a half frames.

The Oilers will advance to take on the loser of today's 5 p.m. (2 p.m. Alaska time) game between the Liberal Bee Jays and the San Diego Force. Time for the next-round game is TBA. Update: game starts at 1 p.m. central (10 a.m. Alaska).

2010 Player Profile: Ryan Gebhart

Ryan Gebhart
OF - Peninsula Oilers
Bats: S - Throws: R
Height: 6'0" - Weight: 175lb
School: U. Missouri
Year: Sophomore
Hometown: Waco, Texas
All posts regarding Ryan Gebhart

When you think of the top prospects for the 2010 Peninsula Oilers, who comes to mind? I can think of one guy, who shall not be named, that probably comes first on a lot of peoples' lists. But if Ryan Gebhart isn't near the top of your ranking, I think you need to go back and have another look. This is a guy that we could be seeing a lot of in the future, starting with the 2011 MLB draft.

Ryan is an old ABL hand, up for his second year after a successful campaign with the AIA Fire in 2009. One reader commented that Gebhart looked like "a young big leaguer" during the year of '09. At the conclusion of the ABL regular season, Gebhart was adopted by the NBC runner-up Glacier Pilots for the amateur World Series tournament (stats), where he came up big and helped propel the Pilots to the championship game. This past season for Mizzou he was limited to 20 games (all starts). He put up very good numbers in those games, though, and managed to walk 20 times (though he struck out 28).

Reflections/Photo Post: Oilers @ Miners 6/24/2010

I am officially on the Wittels Wagon.

Another crazy game in the valley...don't I say that every time I go to a Miners game? This one was a back-and-forth contest between the Oilers and the Miners, which I thought was destined to go into extra innings as we were all knotted up, down to the final out of the ninth, full count and the bases loaded. Then the unthinkable happened; the Oilers walked in the winning run and the Miners leap-frogged them for first place in the Alaska Baseball League.

There were a lot of stars in this game, but if there was one guy who looked like a big-league player last night, it was Oilers third-baseman Garrett Wittels. I knew going to the ballpark that he was a guy to watch, but I was trying not to drink the Kool Aid. Well, I drank it. He's good. We all know he can hit, but that's not really what stood out to me. He's really got something special going on in two other areas of his game. First, he can flash the leather. He made several gritty plays in the field to save his team some runs. Great work in the dirt by this guy. Second, his makeup. He's a team leader, very fired up and vocal. Maybe a little too vocal sometimes, as the umpire threatened to bounce him and Miners' 3B Quinn Pippin out of the game for exchanging some unpleasant words early on. But he's also constantly encouraging his teammates and making sure everyone is aware of the situation.

Last night was my third look at Miners reliever James Allen, a guy I was really impressed with the first time I saw him. These previous two sightings of him he's been roughed up a little bit and looked like he's just missing his spots a tad. Obviously, since he walked in the tying run, he's not getting the calls that he'd like. But one positive thing I'd like to note about Allen is that I really like his mentality. He comes with a game plan and doesn't let the opposing team rattle his cage. On the other hand, when Wittels tip-toed from first to second to get a prancing stolen base, completely on Allen, without even drawing a throw, it makes me wonder if he's a little too locked in to his own mind, but I digress. My point is that he's unflappable. Even after he walked in the run to tie the game, he came back and struck out Wisdom 1-2-3. And to be fair, he didn't surrender a hit in that inning; it was all walks, one of them intentional, and some good sacrifice hitting by the Oilers.

Reflections: Oilers @ Pilots, 6/10/2010

This is going to be a quick one today; I am packing up to get on the airplane and get to ALASKA! I've got the league schedule up and I'm planning out my first three games so I can see some matches in person and give you real reflections, plus some photos. But I just caught the first half of the audio of this game, so I only have half as many impressions to offer.

For this game, although my impressions were based on the audio, I had the opportunity to confirm my thoughts with some people who were actually there, including Joel London who hooked me up via Twitter: "[Pilots starter Joe] Sawicki was hitting his spots all night, but got hit hard in the 1st and got kinda wild in the 5th" and "[Oilers SP Kolby] Moore was all over the place Thurs but was helped by the Pilots inability to get timely hits. Had 1-hitter thru 4" This is basically the assessment I got out of it.


Joe Sawicki sounded like he was really working the corners and getting most of the calls all night -- despite the protest of some batters. This is the second time we've had a look at Sawicki and so far he seems really good. I think it took him through the first to get settled in, though, and by that time the Oilers' potent offense had seized the opportunity to do some damage. Ryan Gebhart really showed an aggressive streak for the Oilers, lining the first pitch off the game by Sawicki and then swiping second base. He did well in the leadoff spot tonight to get things going and he could be a real spark plug for the Oilers this year. He's got a lot of fans down in Oilerland and I have to say that I'm starting to come around on him.

5/22/10 Odds & Ends

Jesse Meaux: Primetime Performer
Photo Credit: Goldpanners.com

Well, we made it through another week. And that brings us another week closer to the start of the season! I got some good stuff posted up this week, including one very important article just last night...the Top 10 Pro Prospects list. It was kinda hard to rank these guys, and I played with some different cutoffs to see if something felt more natural or if I could make the distribution of the teams a little more equitable, but when it was all said and done, Top 10 just seemed to work the best. But hey, let's not beat a dead horse here, what else happened this week?

- Jesse Meaux (Panners, 2008-09) was picked by College Baseball 360 as a Primetime Performer for the week of May 10-16. The deed that earned him this selection was a one-run complete game shutout for the UC Santa Barbara Guachos, his second collegiate complete game. He invoked four double-plays to get himself through the 8-hit performance largely unscathed. Do you think it's a coincidence that guys named Jesse are so awesome? Jesse Meaux, Jesse Sikorski, and yours truly of course. Yeah, probably not a coincidence.

- The Glacier Pilots are going to be having a season kick-off BBQ and raffle tomorrow night! The shin-dig gets started at 4:00 PM, it's going to be at the Moose Lodge at 4211 Arctic in Anchorage, and the tickets are $100. That hundred gets you admission for two, an entry into the big cash prize raffle with a $10,000 grand prize, and two general admission season passes ($150 value). So if you've got some cash burning a hole in your pocket and want to support a good cause, swing by the Moose Lodge.