2016 College Baseball Thread

Oregon State played three (!!) games against teams inside the top 40 of the RPI and lost all three. The Beavers lost two of three to Oregon (RPI 87) and lost a late midweek game to Portland (RPI 230). System may be rigged, because BC got a hell of a lot more opportunities to beat high-level opponents. But the Eagles did. I think the bigger argument is BC vs. UNC, truth be told.

 

There have been years when they had a legit beef out west. This really isn't one of those years. The Pac-12 was fairly awful with every single preseason Top 25 team missing the tournament. Utah won the league by two games and was terrible in the non-conference, going winless against Minnesota and St. Mary's and 1-3 against the two worst teams in the Big 12. Arizona taking two at Rice the first week of the season might have been the best Pac-12 non-con series win. The way UNC and Duke beat up on UCLA and Cal teams that were supposed to be good might have had as much to do with overvaluing the ACC as anything else.

Fullerton and UCSB are OK and each had nice non-conference series win, but not No. 1 seed resumes. Gonzaga and St. Mary's didn't do anything of note out of conference.

 

UNC won 2 of 3 at UCLA, which placed 10th in the Pac-12. Duke took 2 of 3 over Cal at Durham; Cal took 8th. Hardly "beating up," and Cal or UCLA didn't belong in the tournament anyway, even though Cal had a comparable overall record and better conference record than Ga Tech, BC and Wake. and played a better OOC schedule.

BC lost 2 of 3 to Pitt, RPI 83, and all three to ND, RPI 96. It also lost to Butler, RPI 276. I can cherry-pick numbers too.

Stanford goes 31-23 and has an RPI of 73. Wake goes 34-25 and has an RPI of 25. ASU goes 34-21 and has an RPI of 43. UNC goes 34-21 and has an RPI of 19. Cal goes 31-21 and has an RPI of 68. BC goes 31-20 and has an RPI of 39. OSU goes 35-19 and has an RPI of 44. Georgia Tech goes 36-23 and has an RPI of 20. Washington goes 32-22 and has an RPI of 55. Duke goes 33-23 and has an RPI of 26.

Pac-12 teams that go 10+ games over .500 have an RPI 20-30 spots lower of comparable teams in the ACC. So the RPI says BC, Wake and Tech are top-40 teams, but ASU, Cal or Stanford (for example) aren't, even though all three played much tougher OOC schedules than BC, which, I admit, was probably the second-best team to Bryant in the Mass/Maine/Rhode Island tri-state area.

I concede that Utah's winning the league did not help the Pac-12. In it's defense, it played its first 18 games on the road because of weather. When it finally got to practice outside, and play some home games, it was a decent team, one I expect will win at least two games at its regional.

You can't play teams in top 40 of the RPI if the system is such that teams from your conference can't break into the top 40 of RPI. Garbage in, garbage out.

One thing that vexes me is, how the committee could decide that ASU (RPI 43, overall record 34-21, 16-14 Pac-12) is a No. 2 seed, while Oregon State (RPI 44, overall record 35-19, 16-14 Pac-12) doesn't merit a spot, even though it was 3-0 vs. ASU?

 

I was simply saying that with UCLA and Cal preseason favorites in the Pac, that Duke and UNC winning those series helped shape the perception the ACC was a much better conference early on, right or wrong. One tough thing is, like you said, we are trying to put a value on these games in February and March when a whole changes in the meantime.

I'm not sure I see what was so great about Cal's non conference schedule other than racking up wins against teams near the bottom of the Big Ten and Big 12. Is one win versus Duke and one against Texas Tech better than a three-game sweep of Coastal Carolina.

 

I see your points. I simply think that if you play in a power conference (Pac-12, ACC, SEC, Big 12) for baseball, have a winning conference record and are 16 games above .500 you should be in the field, no questions asked. I can't conceive of an ACC or SEC team with identical credentials 1, ever being left out, or 2, having an RPI of only 44.

(And I don't get the love for Coastal Carolina, which plays in abysmal league, more often than not loses every big OOC series it plays, and has never done very much on the regional or Super Regional level. Have they ever played in the CWS?).

I think there will be very little interest in this year's tournament west of the Rockies.

 

The Pac-12 needs to start heading East early on and playing SEC and ACC teams.

 

Coastal has won two regionals and lost twice in the supers, once to UNC, once to South Carolina. The Big South is usually better than it was this year. Liberty was supposed to be pretty good but majorly underachieved. Re: CCU's performance against power teams ... they usually have to go on the road for those series, though they do usually get some decent Big Ten competition to come down for their early-season tournaments. But ACC/SEC teams aren't coming to Conway for three-game sets.

Micro, I see your points. But the system is the system, and though it may be broken, someone like BC used it to its advantage. Why, if you're BC, would you go out of conference to play tough series when your league schedule includes Florida State, Louisville, Virginia, North Carolina, N.C. State, Clemson, Notre Dame (down this year, but usually stout), etc., etc.?

The Pac got some bad scheduling luck this year, and as Jake pointed out, the fact that teams like Cal and UCLA struggled against bubblish ACC teams didn't help matters.

 

That had better be a subtle Seth Beer reference.

 

Nah. It was a brain fart. That was supposed to go with Notre Dame, not Clemson.

 

Another goofy thing is that two former OSU high-ranking staffers are on the selection committee. They both wanted the OSU AD job that recently went to someone else. A third is a former OSU track guy, who left when the program got axed. No Pac-12 rep on the committee, and only one guy west of Texas.

Every power conference team plays a league schedule like BC's. So what is the incentive for any of them playing a decent OOC, instead of simply loading up on cupcakes?

The RPI is broken, and the selection committee is full of AD's looking out for their own interests and playing quid pro quo. Not sure how to fix it.

 

No, the teams in the Big 12 and Big Ten didn't play a conference schedule like the ACC and SEC teams have the past couple of years. Those conferences are going to dominate the draft. Right now there is a wide discrepancy in talent and depth. It hasn't always been that way and it likely won't stay that way, but right now if you play in the ACC or SEC you are facing pitchers that could be in the big leagues soon almost every week.

 

Not including the Big Ten as a baseball power conference. But certainly the pitching in the Pac-12 historically is as good as anywhere.