Our pitching staff finished dead last in '22, it's dead last in '23, and we just got run ruled again even in the series that we won this past weekend. When Foxhall does something to warrant something other than ridicule, I'll gladly dial it back
Lemonis has a big chance to win back the fanbase this weekend, I would think......
- Thread starter OG Goat Holder
- Start date
Ummm....RPI says we aren't.
Let's face it, if we clean up some dumb stuff on defense we are much better. Then the pitching is the next thing, that maybe does/maybe doesn't get fixed.
RPI is a metric for determining whether you make the tournament. Not whether you are good or not. I cant imagine anyone arguing we are not a bad team. And yes bad teams can make the tournament bc RPI is flawed. But thats not a long term solution. And right now being 3-9 on conf would keep us out of the tourney anyway.
I think 2 of 3 is our weekend ceiling going forward. We just don't have enough arms to win 3 games. We also don't have a single arm that can keep their pitch count down. We would have to have several great pitching performances and win another 15-13 game.
Low expectations. Goat, as usual, you'll look like an idiot when the season is over. I didn't take a shot at you in my original post. I just made a general observation. But since that seems to be your game. Oh well.
As far as RPI is concerned, all those run-rule losses may as well have been 1-run extra innings losses. Not to mention, it's more a measure of your strength of schedule than it is of how good your team is.
Sec will get 8-9 teams
lsu
Florida
Arkansas
Kentucky
South Carolina
Tennessee
Vandy
at this points are basically locks. Tennessee being the less likely of all, but still don’t see how they miss
we and the other teams in our boats are basically competing against each other for those last spots. We all play each other down the stretch so everyone will have an opportunity to earn those spots. A hot week or two by any of those teams will give them a leg up
lsu
Florida
Arkansas
Kentucky
South Carolina
Tennessee
Vandy
at this points are basically locks. Tennessee being the less likely of all, but still don’t see how they miss
we and the other teams in our boats are basically competing against each other for those last spots. We all play each other down the stretch so everyone will have an opportunity to earn those spots. A hot week or two by any of those teams will give them a leg up
Maybe. But you look like an idiot now, so, take the sure thing I suppose.
And yes, I took a shot at a bad post. I tend to do that.
We have to go 9-9 vs a schedule that includes 3 games each vs #1 LSU, #6 Arkansas and at #12 Tennessee (whatever problems they've had have been mostly on the road, 20-3 at home and 1-6 on the road) to even have a hint of a chance at an NCAA bid. I think it's pretty safe to say that ship has sailed.
Actually we need 10-8. Getting in at 12-18 is a dicey proposition.
But 10-8 is doable, albeit maybe not likely, if we fix or at least mitigate our biggest problems. 6-3 / 7-2 against OM, Auburn, and A&M is achievable. From there its just going 4-5 / 3-6 against Arkansas / LSU / UT….treading water pretty much.
It could certainly all go to hell in a handbasket this weekend. But there is still a path there as of right now.
Maybe, and it certainly felt good to win a series but the issues that put us in this deep dark hole are still there. We were able to hit our way around those issues against bama and perhaps we can against mississippi and auburn, but LSU, Arky and UT will likely sweep us if we continue to hand out 10+ free passes and and additional 5-10 bases a game between walks, HBP, errors, passed balls, wild pitches, and stolen bases.
I will be shocked if we sweep anybody because I don't think we have enough pitching to pull that off.
Im not saying we are all of a sudden the 27 yankees or something. Simply saying the teams we are about to play have the same issues we have.
Ole Miss lacks pitching, Auburn lacks pitching, etc. The upper tier teams have the overall talent, skills, players, etc to take advantage of that as shown. The teams we are about to play have flaws of their own. Big flaws. If we play well or any of those teams play well they could string together some wins.
Thats why I posted above. A team like Ole miss probably has the same mindset as we do. We just went thru the gaunlet. We are a better team than we are currently playing like. Lets get hot these last few weeks and we can put together some wins.
I'm not sure any team has made the tournament with 12 sec wins. So to me you have to get 13 and then have to get some wins in Hoover. To get to 13, you need 10 wins. This weekend will go a long way in determining how realistic 10 wins are.
Conference tournament wins/losses don't count in the conference record. If we finish 10 and 20 that will be our conference record. Even if you count tourney wins anyway and by some miracle we managed to win three, our record would still be 13 and 21 or 22. Mississippi came very close to missing the NCAAT last season with a 14-16 conference record.
I think our most realistic chance to make it to a regional is to win at least 13 regular season conference games and that would require us to win 2-3 in 4 series and at least 1 game in every series. Tough row to hoe no matter how you slice it but all we can do is get out there and give it a shot.
Yes I'm aware they dont. That said a few years ago the Tournament Director said they helped use the conference tournament as a tie-breaker of sorts, and those wins were SEC wins so they were used to help sway certain teams.
When I said 10, i was meaning 10 of the remaining games. Which puts us at 13 wins. Then we need to win 2-3 in the tournament to have a realistic chance.
10 isnt an easy number to get, and at the end of this weekend, we'll know a lot more about how realistic it is. If we sweep OM, the odds of getting there increase dramatically.
When I said 10, i was meaning 10 of the remaining games. Which puts us at 13 wins. Then we need to win 2-3 in the tournament to have a realistic chance.
10 isnt an easy number to get, and at the end of this weekend, we'll know a lot more about how realistic it is. If we sweep OM, the odds of getting there increase dramatically.
Tournament wins/losses are treated as a part of your conference record. It’s dumb but it’s the case.
Nah, they really don’t. What the NCAA says and what they do regarding conference tournament games are entirely different things. 2012 we won the SEC tournament, so we had 21 total SEC wins and also a Top 15-20 RPI, and didn’t even host. They absolutely do not apply anywhere close to the same weight to conference tournament games as they do regular season conference games….in any sport.
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Worrying about making a regional at this point is putting the cart before the horse. We gotta make the SEC tourney first, and to do that we need to pancake the Rebs this weekend and start rooting for Mizzou or Georgia to lose every game they play so they finish lower than us.
There are two simple facts to consider that I think everyone would agree with:
1) There are multiple mathematical paths to us reaching a regional that are in play without us having to go on some crazy winning streak.
2) There is no path to a regional at all that doesn’t involve us playing better baseball than we have been thus far. This is particularly true in reference to how we played from Game 2 of UK series through the Vandy series - that was an absolutely horrendous 5-game stretch. We have to play better and play up to our potential. Every scenario in play operates under that base assumption. A cannot happen without B also happening. Last 5 or 6 games, we have looked like at least an average SEC baseball team. Lets see if it continues.
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Believe it was actually said, if they are going to play the games, we are going to count them as conference games b/c thats what they are. Pretty clear cut.
If you believe they do or dont do that, i guess you can choose to believe what you want. Its probably too late to earn a host site by winning the tournament, but I think they are weighed very close if not exactly the same based on what ive seen over the years in baseball.
Sorry, I meant 2012. 2011 was the Ga Tech regional year and we were very much a bubble team that season.
I think we at least would have had to host in 2012 if they truly weighed them equally. But fact is, they don’t want to take a regional host away from a school at the 11th hour because one team gets hot one weekend. Sites are decided well before the last few round of conference tourney play. I think at minimum, that 2012 team should have been a 1-seed in someone else’s regional….that is something you will see the NCAA do from time to time.
Yes. We were 20. That was also 11 years ago and during a time where they were regularly taking the top 16 teams as hosts or very close to that. In fact in 2012 the 16 hosts came from the top 17.
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That still is the case now though, too. In general, you need a Top 20 RPI to feel good about hosting and Top 10 to feel good about a possible national seed. In the SEC, If you hit those marks and other thresholds for total number of wins and conference wins, you should be a lock.
Overall, we had 39 overall wins, 21 conference wins, and a Top 20 RPI. If there has been another SEC team since the current regional format began in 1999 that checked all three of those boxes, and still didn’t host or get a 1-seed at a road site….I’d love to know who they were.