In our series about the leaders in the major statistical categories, we are looking today at France.
The Rouen Huskies had a dream season. They won the national championship, the French Cup and finished in second place behind Corendon Kinheim (Netherlands) in the European Cup. They celebrated 20 victories during the regular season and beat the Templiers Senart in the finals.
There were seven teams on the highest level in France. The hardest competitor for Rouen in the preliminary round was Savigny (19-5). They led the league with a team batting average of .331. They even had a better ERA as the first place team. However stats are not everything to win ballgames and they lost in the semi-finals to Senart.
Top 5 Team Batting Average:
Savigny sur Orge .331
Rouen Huskies .323
Stade Toulouse Baseball .280
Montpellier UC .257
Templiers Senart .248
Top 5 Team Earned Run Average:
Savigny sur Orge 2.27
Rouen Huskies 2.75
Templiers Senart 3.21
Stade Toulouse Baseball 4.15
Montpellier UC 4.51
There were two batters with a batting average over .400. Brett ERICKSON (Montpellier UC) and Kenji HAGIWARA (Rouen Huskies) led the league with .443 and .438. Dany SCALABRINI (Rouen Huskies) was the most effective hitter with an average of .389, 13 doubles (No. 2), 40 runs scored (No. 1) and 32 RBI (No. 2). Teammate Boris MARCHE was the RBI-leader with 33. Flo PEYRICHOU (Savigny) was the number one with eleven stolen bases.
Top 5 Individual Batting Average:
Brett ERICKSON (Montpellier UC) .443 (21 R, 28 RBI)
Kenji HAGIWARA (Rouen Huskies) .438 (37 R, 14 RBI, 10 SB)
Jero ROUSSEAU (Savigny sur Orge) .395 (27 R, 26 RBI)
Dany SCALABRINI (Rouen Huskies) .389 (40 R, 32 RBI, 10 SB)
Frederic ROUGE (Stade Toulouse Baseball) .376 (18 R, 19 RBI)
Lefthander Guilla GISBERT (Savigny sur Orge) had the lowest ERA for pitchers with at least 40 innings under their belt. A hurler of Senart dominated the other major categories. Samuel MEURANT led the league in wins, innings pitched and strikeouts.
Top 5 Individual Earned Run Average:
Guilla GISBERT (Savigny sur Orge) 1.02 (3-1, 53 IP, 34 SO, 20 BB)
Samuel MEURANT (Templiers Senart) 1.94 (10-2, 1 S, 120.1 IP, 111 SO, 21 BB)
Keino PEREZ (Rouen Huskies) 2.01 (9-1, 1 S, 89.2 IP, 100 SO, 30 BB)
Nicolas DUBAUT (Rouen Huskies) 2.16 (8-1, 79.1 IP, 61 SO, 32 BB)
Matt WILPERT (Savigny sur Orge) 2.95 (4-3, 64 IP, 41 SO, 44 BB)
Complete statistics on official website of French Baseball and Softball Federation (pdf-file)