The 2026 Linn-Benton baseball regular season has come to an end, and the Roadrunners delivered a 35-9 record and collected their seventh consecutive NWAC South title.
Throughout the ebbs and flows of a gritty season, the team had their share of struggles but sustained success thanks to a solid balance amongst the roster. The offense in particular remained free of one or two players holding the spotlight – every game you weren’t sure which guys were going to be the “heroes” that day.
The team’s batting average jumped 30 points from last year, improving to .267, which was good for second best in the South.
The Beak’s pitching staff and the defense behind them also played a huge role in rattling off a 35-win-season. An almost all-freshman staff pitched to a 3.54 ERA, admittedly the worst return in the five-year Andy Peterson era thus far, but still a solid figure. At the mind-way point in the season, you could have made a serious case that the Roadrunners had the best pitching staff in the NWAC, but some second-half struggles brought them back to earth.
Graphs by Joe O’Leary, all stats from nwbaseballstats.com
FIP (fielding-independent pitching) tracks a pitcher’s effectiveness measuring things only in their control (hits, strikeouts, home runs, walks, hit batters).
A player with a significantly lower FIP than ERA, such as Evan Lehnert, suggests that the pitcher has had his share of bad luck or other mitigating circumstances. FIP is a stat that works best when put alongside ERA, as a pitcher’s FIP points to what direction his ERA might be trending.
Almost all Roadrunner pitchers have a FIP higher than their ERA. While on one hand, that suggests luck, it also means that LB defense was pretty stern all year, and that the team was employing a pitch-to-contact strategy.
Cooper Yudishthu led Roadrunner starters with a 2.58 ERA and a 5-0 record in nine starts. Unfortunately for him and LB, in his final start of the year he tore his UCL while tossing a curveball in the fifth inning of his April 29 start at Lane, ruling him out for the playoffs.
The duo of Dayne Castillo and Jake Johnson anchored the team’s relief corps – Johnson ending the year without letting up a single-earned run while Castillo pitched 40 ⅓ innings in relief and brought home a statline to be proud of for his freshman campaign – a 6-1 record, a 1.79 ERA and a 0.99 WHIP.
Castillo also tied for fifth in the NWAC in saves with teammate Kyle Miller, both freshman collecting five saves.
ERA+ is a statistic that puts more perspective on a pitcher’s ERA. It compares a given pitcher to a league average pitcher by putting his performance on a scale – a 100 ERA+ marking the hypothetical average NWAC pitcher. ERA+ also takes into account the favorability of each ball park (things such as dimensions, home/away, etc.)
Castillo technically led the team with a monstrous ERA+ of 256. Johnson doesn’t qualify for an ERA+ because he didn’t allow any runs all year! The Beak rotation (which started as Lane Simonsen, Tyson McGrorty, Emmett Stacher and Cooper Yudishthu) ended up performing in opposite order according to ERA+, with Simonsen finishing at 97, McGrorty at 132, Stacher at 153 and Yudishthu at a balmy 177.
oWAR (offensive wins over replacement) analyzes how directly a player’s offensive output has contributed to winning. This is done by comparing the player to a hypothetical replacement. For example, according to the stat, Bryant Starr’s bat and baserunning ability directly contributed one win to LB’s total over the average NWAC backup shortstop’s bat.
Freshman Noah Scharer held a clean lead of the oWAR race within the clubhouse from season beginning to end. The centerfielder also led the team in hits with 41 and RBI with 27. Players such as Starr and Kellen Segel get mighty boosts in the oWAR totals from fine baserunning all year, the sophomores swiping 16 and 20 bags, respectively.
Freshman Mark Carpenter and sophomore Nick Biagi had a somewhat tightly contested race for the best batting average on the team. Carpenter eventually came out on top, finishing the year hitting .350, albeit in only 91 plate appearances (for reference, Scharer led the team in plate appearances with 183).
All things considered, the LB offense had a good mix of players – contact guys, power guys and guys with a bit of both. At season’s end, the top 10 Roadrunners in OPS all sat at .735 or better.
With the team’s sights set fully on the postseason, the stats are the stats and the past is the past. All that matters now is playoff preparation and execution.
Linn-Benton gets a bye from the NWAC playoff super regionals, and their first game is set for Thursday, May 21. Tacoma and Shoreline face off on May 15. The winner of that game will go on to play Wenatchee in a three-game series – and whoever comes out on top will be the Roadrunners’ opponent.