D1 Baseball Projected Field

[NukeDogg]

I don't get how Auburn is projected to comfortably host (#10 overall) despite finishing 1 game behind LSU and 2 games behind Arkansas who are both projected 2 seeds. They won the series at Alex Box, but lost the series at home vs. the Hogs. Yeah, Arky is on a skid right now, losing the West to A&M and dropping their final 2 series but Aubie lost to UK last weekend too...

Auburn and Bama had a game rained out where Auburn was going for the sweep, seems like the D1 guys are giving them credit for it already.

 

[8dog]

Because RPI matters more than anything

 

[11thEagleFan]

I don’t get how USM was a 2 seed a week ago and is now projected to be the #9 overall seed. These projections seem a bit wacky.

 

[Go Budaw]

Arkansas is #33 in the RPI. They never had a chance….they are yet another case study about not scheduling awful nonconference teams, and their schedule was still better than ours. They put themselves in a position where they needed 21-22 SEC wins just to host.

 

[patdog]

Yep. Which is pretty stupid. Looks like Auburn is getting a lot of RPI credit for losing 2 of 3 from Tennessee, who Arkansas and LSU didn't play.

 

[NukeDogg]

With aTm currently projected as the #8 national seed, can't help but wonder how much them canceling that midweek game (Incarnate Word iirc) helped their RPI. Maybe someone smarter than me can see how much of an RPI hit they avoided with that - with them being on the fringe of a national seed it may turn out to be a huge move.

 

[MSUDC11]

I don’t get how USM was a 2 seed a week ago and is now projected to be the #9 overall seed. These projections seem a bit wacky.

You have a Top 15 RPI and won your league convincingly. You deserve to host.

Every week is a moving target with projections. What was true this time a week ago may not be true today.

All I know is if you told me three years ago that we’d soon have a season where Tennessee, Virginia Tech, and Maryland were all slam dunk Top 8 seeds I would’ve thought you were crazy.

 

[hogfan14]

Arkansas is #33 in the RPI. They never had a chance….they are yet another case study about not scheduling awful nonconference teams, and their schedule was still better than ours. They put themselves in a position where they needed 21-22 SEC wins just to host.

I just still can't get on board with making important decisions based on a formula like RPI that rewards you more for losing to good teams than beating bad teams. I mean, Arkansas has a better league record than both Auburn and LSU, head to head series wins over both, and the better divisional record against common opponents. Yet the RPI is worse? And Maryland ranks #3 in RPI with only 3 Q1 wins and a 103 SOS.

Doesn't make sense to me.

 

[Go Budaw]

I just still can't get on board with making important decisions based on a formula like RPI that rewards you more for losing to good teams than beating bad teams. I mean, Arkansas has a better league record than both Auburn and LSU, head to head series wins over both, and the better divisional record against common opponents. Yet the RPI is worse? And Maryland ranks #3 in RPI with only 3 Q1 wins and a 103 SOS.

Doesn't make sense to me.

Doesn’t have to make sense to you. It’s been the same damn system for 20+ years and everyone should know how it works by now. You will absolutely be punished for playing a joke of a nonconference schedule, no matter what sport. It’s been proven time and time and time and again. In Arkansas’s case, they played 24 nonconference games, and only 2 of those were against teams with a winning record. And both of those were neutral site preseason tourney games…not a single weekend series or midweek opponent against a nonconference team over .500. That’s putrid. You put that schedule together, you better absolutely wreck **** in SEC play or you aren’t going to be done any favors.

MSU fans know this well. We finished 18-12 in SEC play in 2014. We played a much better schedule than that, but still a very weak one. We didn’t host that year either. And this year, our nonconference schedule was somehow even worse than Arkansas. Even if we didn’t screw the pooch at the end of the year, there’s a very real possibility we would have been left out entirely even with 16 wins, and a 100% certainty that we were out with only 15 wins.

 

[patdog]

It's a ridiculous and very stupid way to rank teams for postseason seeding. But it's just as stupid not to schedule for it when you know that's the formula that's being used. Your non-conference is as big of an embarrassment as ours is. And both are equally stupid. If you (and us) don't want to pay the penalty for a poor RPI, do something about it.

 

[hogfan14]

It's a ridiculous and very stupid way to rank teams for postseason seeding. But it's just as stupid not to schedule for it when you know that's the formula that's being used. Your non-conference is as big of an embarrassment as ours is. And both are equally stupid. If you (and us) don't want to pay the penalty for a poor RPI, do something about it.

It's just the fact that you can move up for losing to the #1 team by 40 runs yet move down for beating a SWAC team by 40 runs. Or that a team like Georgia Southern can be higher in the RPI when their top 50 wins and conference schedule is far and away worse than an SEC team. Like, that's pretty common sense stuff on which team is better.

Reminds me of LSU staying so high in the RPI in basketball when they kept losing, based on a few games early in the season that had no bearing on how they performed most of the year. You can literally out-perform a team all conference season and sweep them 3-0 and still be behind them.

 

[ZombieKissinger]

I don't care about Arkansas, but give the Zags a regional!!!

 

[8dog]

Because 75% of it has nothing to do with whether you win or lose

 

[patdog]

Like I said, it's a ridiculous way to rank teams. But your AD knew it's being used and our AD knew it. And yet we both scheduled multiple games against SWAC teams and very few games against teams that could help us, win or lose. It's nothing short of negligence.

 

[MSUDC11]

OM going one and done in Hoover means they will definitely be sweating it out until Monday.

 

[Leeshouldveflanked]

We definitely need to do a much better job of out of conference scheduling. You cant play a 3 game home series against Northern KY and Princeton.

 

[Mr. Cook]

But will we make the field?*******