Reflecting on Alabama Baseball's 2022 Season

Looking back on the 2022 season, Alabama baseball is a team that's difficult to judge.

The Crimson Tide no doubt improved significantly in several key areas, showing incremental growth once again under head coach Brad Bohannon. Ironically, if you were to look at Alabama's season purely from a record standpoint, it'd be easy to see why most don't see the progress.

To close out 2022, Alabama baseball finished with an overall record of 31-27, with a 12-17 record in SEC play. The overall win-loss ratio is just one victory shy of last year's 32-26 finish, with the conference record mirroring 2021 with an identical 12 wins and 17 losses.

It's no secret that the Crimson Tide wasn't able to repeat last year's success with an NCAA Regional appearance despite an oddly similar record. However, Alabama had far too many dark spots on its resume to advance past its deep run at the SEC Tournament.

So what happened? Well, it takes a deeper dive to understand.

Midweek Losses

If fans could point to one singular item as to the key reason why Alabama failed to make the postseason, one glaring issue stands out among the rest: midweek losses.

Overall, the Crimson Tide finished 8-5 in midweek games on the season. The losses, though, stood out far more than the wins.

To start the season, Alabama went 1-4 in midweek games, with losses to UT-Martin, North Alabama, at Southern Miss and at UAB. Another loss to UAB weeks later signified a season sweep at the hands of the Blazers, an opponent that on paper seemed to be relatively inferior.

A loss at Southern Miss is reasonably understandable given the Golden Eagles' status as a regional host. However, the remaining losses to UT-Martin, UNA and UAB are simply inexcusable for an SEC program.

No doubt that's how the NCAA Selection Committee saw things as well.

One-Run Losses

One-run games can be both a sign of improvement as well as a subtle sign of slipping into irrelevancy. The metric of which it is can be pointed to the team's strength of schedule and who the one-run wins and losses came against.

The Crimson Tide finished the season with the third-toughest schedule in all of baseball, according to the official NCAA stats metric. In one-run games, Alabama finished with a 6-12 record — 18 games that were ultimately decided by the narrowest of margins.

Considering that a solid chunk of those wins and losses came at the hands of fellow SEC opponents, this metric can be considered as a decent bit of growth. As Alabama proved this season, gone are the days where the Crimson Tide can be considered eliminated from a series before it even begins.

In all of its series against SEC teams, Alabama avoided being swept in all but two series — road trips to South Carolina and Auburn. With the Auburn series' third game being cancelled due to weather, it is also unfair to call it a complete sweep. That being said, 0-2 is still 0-2, and it should be counted as such.

In total, one-run losses are certainly a discouraging way to see one's season slip away. that being said, Alabama's growth can be shown in its ability to keep games close, which is more that can be said compared to seasons prior.

Pitching Improvements

After so much negativity, one aspect of Alabama's game showed some improvement in 2022: its pitching.

The Crimson Tide jumped from 10th in ERA in the conference up to eighth — a metric that could still rise as the postseason continues. While Alabama pitchers gave up the sixth-most hits with 495 and the most home runs with 83, the Crimson Tide also surrendered the 10th-fewest runs in the conference with 293. While it might not have been incredibly difficult to get on base against the Crimson Tide, it wasn't easy to make it across the plate.

Friday starter Garrett McMillan shined as one of the team's best. The weekend rotation in general of McMillan, Jacob McNairy and Grayson Hitt seemed to get better and better as the season went on. Combine that with a solid bullpen including relievers Ben Hess, Brock Guffey and Dylan Ray, and the Crimson Tide's arms showed considerable improvement over the year prior.

There's also injuries to consider. Ace Connor Prielipp was out for the entire season after recovering from Tommy John Surgery, then opted out the remaining portion of his season in favor of throwing pitches in front of MLB scouts. An odd scenario, to be sure, but one that is now in the past.

Relievers Hunter Hoopes and Antoine Jean also suffered significant setbacks due to injury, with Jean ultimately returning to close out the season with a decent SEC Tournament performance.

Overall, pitching was not the source of Alabama's struggles.

Lackluster Hitting

While Alabama was able to create an offensive spark over the last week of the season and in the SEC Tournament, the rest of the season was far from an offensive showcase by the Crimson Tide.

Alabama finished right in the middle of the pack in batting average, with a team average of .279 — good for eighth-best in the SEC. The Crimson Tide also had the eighth-most hits in the conference with 555, but consistently struggled to drive its runs across the plate. Alabama finished next to last in the conference in runs with just 335.

The Crimson Tide also finished next to last in home runs on the season with just 62.

While Alabama's pitchers time and time again got off to solid starts and put the Crimson Tide in a spot to succeed, the run support simply wasn't there. There were certainly times where Alabama's bats found their rhythm, but those moments were too few and too spread out over the season to make much of a real impact.

Summary

Alabama certainly didn't have the season that fans were hoping for, but that doesn't mean that the season didn't have several bright spots.

Fielding was next to perfect for the Crimson Tide in 2022, with the team tying for second in the SEC with a .981 fielding percentage. Alabama also finished the year with the second-fewest errors in the SEC with 40.

Alabama was able to avoid being swept in eight of its 10 SEC weekend series, a sign of growth for the program. The high point of the season was arguably the Crimson Tide's three-game road series sweep of then-No. 7 Ole Miss, a series that won't be forgotten for quite some time in Tuscaloosa.

Alabama also bested No. 5 Arkansas two games to one to close out the regular season, then beat the Razorbacks once again on Day 2 of the SEC Tournament to go 3-1 in less than a week.

It's truly a shame that so many high points ended with the team missing out on the NCAA Tournament. While that's certainly disappointing, it's perfectly understandable why things happened that way.

Bohannon showed glimpses this season of what Alabama baseball can be under his tenure as head coach. While the progress hasn't been up to the same speed as many Crimson Tide fans would have hoped, there's still no denying that the program has shown incremental improvement each and every season that Bohannon has been a part of it.

There is still optimism for next season and, depending on what Alabama signees come to Tuscaloosa over the MLB, it certainly could be another year of improvement.