Continued musings on D1, the SEC mirage, and National Seeds

May 29, 2016, 1:48 AM

Per D1 Baseball, 5/29/2016: “As it sits today, SEC champion Mississippi State, offensive juggernaut Texas A&M, and the team that sat atop the polls most of the season Florida, all appear to be slam-dunk national seeds.

Frankly, there does not appear to be a variety of candidates to chose from after those three, ACC champion Miami, top RPI team Louisville, and Big 12 champion Texas Tech.

The candidates for the final two slots appear to be SEC teams South Carolina, LSU, Ole Miss, and maybe Vanderbilt along with ACC members Virginia, Florida State, and Clemson. No one else is in position to be considered.”

Since the brain-trust at D1 Baseball can’t come up with a way to reasonably separate in their minds the “final two slots” for National Seeds, let me offer a couple of suggestions.

First, let’s look at “Series Wins against Top 50 Teams”.

Since baseball is rarely about winning a single game, but is often more about seasonal averages, 7-game series, and home-and-home opportunities (unlike football), I thought looking at series wins should be important. So here’s the number of “series wins” (as opposed to single game wins) against Top 50 RPI competition.

Clemson – 6 (includes OOC two game sweep against UGA and series against USuCk)
LSU – 2 (both happen to be Top 10 series wins, notably at Home)
Ole Miss – 3 (includes early season OOC series win against Louisville)
Vandy – 2
USuCk – 1
FSU – 2
Virginia - 5
UNCheat - 2
NCSU - 6 (includes OOC series win against #45 Wright State)

Miami - 6
Louisville - 5
Florida - 5 (includes OOC sweep against FSU and series win against Miami)
Texas A&M - 6

Texas Tech - 3 (includes OOC sweep against #41 Sam Houston State)

Secondly, how about “Top 100 RPI” wins versus “100+ RPI Wins”. That is, what is the quality of wins; not just who got to 40….

Clemson – 27 vs. 15, or +12
LSU – 21 vs. 21, or Even
Ole Miss – 24 vs. 19, or +5
Vandy – 19 vs. 24, or -5
USuCk – 16 vs. 26, or -10
FSU – 22 vs. 15, or +7
Virginia - 20 vs. 17, or +3
UNCheat - 21 vs. 13, or +8
NCSU - 25 vs. 10, or +15

Miami – 23 vs. 20, or +3
Louisville – 27 vs. 20, or +7
Florida – 26 vs 21, or +5
Texas A&M – 27 vs. 17, or +10

Texas Tech – 21 vs. 20, or +1

In either case, these stats SHOULD favor teams who won a lot of games – say 42 or more. Yet even in the case where single wins are being looked at (Top 100 vs. 100+), NCSU does significantly better than USuCk though having 7 LESS total wins…

You can draw your own conclusions, but I think it’s easy to see that:

1) only the cream of the SEC – Texas A&M and Florida – deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as ACC teams;

2) Clemson’s strength of series wins and wins against quality competition literally sets it apart from other more suspect schedules;

3) D1 has little shame in trying to pawn off USuCk, LSU, and possibly Vandy as potential National Seeds, and Ole Miss isn't significantly separated from Virginia or FSU. These schools may have more raw wins, but they don’t even have the quality schedule of say a NC State….

flag link

military_tech

thumb_down

thumb_up

but this is because they went 0-6 AT Miami and AT Louisville,

numbers 2 and 3 in the RPI.

Otherwise they were 16-8 in the ACC, and won 6 of 8 ACC series.

Further their image took very real hits Nationally when

they got absolutely pasted by Louisville, 15-2,

by Georgia Tech, 16-1, and

fell behind to NCSU 20-1 before somewhat rallying.

That looks bad - really bad - especially on ESecPN.

But 3 of the 6 losses to the U and the Cards were of the walk-off variety, with one being extra innings,

and the big losses were really about catching suspect pitching on a bad day,

which was then being further undermined by really bad defense.

Only lately has the pitching gotten "good enough" in a sense to overcome the bad defense.

All of this obscures the 6 series wins against Top 50 competition - the most in the country.

And note: that has nothing to do with how they're doing in the ACC Tourney.

Clemson should be the #5 or #6 National seed - not just slipping in at the last moment....

Continued musings on D1, the SEC mirage, and National Seeds

sorry, Mississippi State comparison...

Good stuff: Saved me from typing this morning!***

we'd rather hear from you anyway though....***

Re: Continued musings on D1, the SEC mirage, and National Seeds

Clemson's only real negative stat is 16-14 in the ACC....

Awesome post, thanks!***

TigerBoard POTD