An Indiana Stats Question

I received an email from fellow baseball fan Steve Guthrie. Steve has asked for some assistance. As I couldn't give him a definitive answer, I'm tossing this one to BTH readers. Here's Steve's query (with my editing the email into paragraphs at different points, as it didn't exactly copy and paste well; my apologies to Mr. Guthrie):

2006 is the second season I will have made a Big Ten card set available free to people for use on the APBA table baseball game. I get my data almost completely from team websites and have never seen anything like the way Indiana handled their 2006 stats.

The batting stats for three players are included in the 2006 Indiana team totals on their website but are not listed as individual players; hence the player totals don't add up to the team totals. I have never seen this kind of data expulsion done before. There are two pitchers left out of their pitching table, too. None of the five are listed on the fielding table on the Indiana site. (The Big Ten website has all players listed only in fielding tables - the five missing ex-Hoosiers are all listed there.) I did some work to dig up the data for the missing players in the Indiana boxscores.

These player situations really call out for explanations.1) Brett Sager batted 6th starting Game 1 as the Hoosier second baseman. He went 0 for 2, booted his first fielding chance, and was substituted for after six innings. He pinch-ran for the catcher in Game 3 and never appeared again. His stats are gone. 2) Steve Head started 35 of Indiana's first 43 games as their thirdbaseman. He made only one more appearance (in Game 47) going 1 for 2, scoring twice. He never appears again in the last nine games. His stats are gone. 3) Cameron Satterwhite didn't play until Game 16 but soon made an impact as the Hoosier DH. After the team's 37th game, Satterwhite was batting .386, slugging .516, and on base 42.6 percent of the time as the cleanup hitter. He never appeared in a game again. His stats are gone.

What happened to these players? Web searches turn up nothing. I will e-mail 2006 Indiana Batting and Pitching tables as Excel spreadsheets that include the five dropped players to anyone that might want them.

Again, I can't provide Mr. Guthrie with any solid information. I suspect there is a combination of youngsters that dropped out, were dismissed from the school or opted to transfer elsewhere, but that's all speculation. It's also doesn't explain the stats being erased from IU's records.

If anyone has an answer to Steve's inquiry, feel free to post it here or drop me an email. I'd leave Steve's email address, but it would just get filled with all the spam I get now. Thanks to any and all that can shed some light on this matter.

MSU's Grewe Profiled

Much to my amazement, there is a link to a feature about a college baseball coach on the ESPN.com homepage today. Even more astounding is the fact that the baseball coach profiled is from the Big Ten--Michigan State's David Grewe. It's the off-season and a Big Ten baseball coach gets a story on the Worldwide Leader's website? Go figure.

Regardless, it's great for the conference, in general, and for Grewe and the Spartans, specifically.

Cavagnaro's Texas Two-Step

Penn State's Matt Cavagnaro is tearing up the Texas Collegiate League. For the second week in a row, Cavagnaro was named the league's Player of the Week.

Penn State's New Yard

The New York-Penn League, via Minor League Baseball.com, takes a look at State College's new ballpark, Medlar Field at Lubrano Park. Penn State, which is sharing the new facility with the State College Spikes of Class A, begins playing at Medlar Field in 2007. I definitely hope to visit the new park next season.