2022 Season

bensaysitathome

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561
I will have to use RPI as an indicator because there are no other rankings I can find that include some of the opponents they have lost to. They have two losses to teams ranked below 100 along with losses to teams ranked #47 and #57. None of their weekend series wins (or any wins for that matter) have come against a team with an RPI above #47. That doesn't read like a team that should be ranked #8. And as far as their highly ranked weekend rotation goes, 3 out of those 5 losses have come on the weekend. They are 11th in the ACC in hitting with only one team in the league with fewer home runs. And there are 5 teams in the ACC whose pitching have given up fewer runs. All this against a very weak schedule if RPI means anything. Maybe their weekend starting pitching is as good as advertised but they seem to be unable to score enough to overcome the rest of their pitching.
RPI, by design, is meant to be more valuable as sample size increases. I see what you mean, but I'd warn that at this point in the season RPI is more relevant to note that they haven't exactly played a challenging schedule yet, not to separate #8 from #20 or whatever.

Your harder stats, like total earned runs and runs allowed, feel more damning to me than exactly where they fall in RPI. But it's baseball, and the beauty is it will sort itself out.
 

FredJacket

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I will have to use RPI as an indicator because there are no other rankings I can find that include some of the opponents they have lost to. They have two losses to teams ranked below 100 along with losses to teams ranked #47 and #57. None of their weekend series wins (or any wins for that matter) have come against a team with an RPI above #47. That doesn't read like a team that should be ranked #8. And as far as their highly ranked weekend rotation goes, 3 out of those 5 losses have come on the weekend. They are 11th in the ACC in hitting with only one team in the league with fewer home runs. And there are 5 teams in the ACC whose pitching have given up fewer runs. All this against a very weak schedule if RPI means anything. Maybe their weekend starting pitching is as good as advertised but they seem to be unable to score enough to overcome the rest of their pitching.
This is a compilation (an average) of many polls & rankings. You can also drill down to the individual polls too from here. Most don't fully disclose their algorithms (ie. does last season weigh in at all... if so how much).

Note RPI isn't even included (yet). Will likely be added in 2-3 weeks when sample size has reached a worthwhile point.

 

gtrower

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2,595
I will have to use RPI as an indicator because there are no other rankings I can find that include some of the opponents they have lost to. They have two losses to teams ranked below 100 along with losses to teams ranked #47 and #57. None of their weekend series wins (or any wins for that matter) have come against a team with an RPI above #47. That doesn't read like a team that should be ranked #8. And as far as their highly ranked weekend rotation goes, 3 out of those 5 losses have come on the weekend. They are 11th in the ACC in hitting with only one team in the league with fewer home runs. And there are 5 teams in the ACC whose pitching have given up fewer runs. All this against a very weak schedule if RPI means anything. Maybe their weekend starting pitching is as good as advertised but they seem to be unable to score enough to overcome the rest of their pitching.

As others have alluded to, while it’s nice we’re #1 in the RPI right now, this is exactly why they shouldn’t even release the data until later in the season. RPI is not intended for this type of analysis this early in the season. Right now RPI is essentially grouping SOS (based on practically nothing) into quadrants and sorting by record. I’d only really put weight on the conference-wide RPI as that’s a bigger sample size and gives a reasonable look as how the leagues as a whole are stacking up with each other.

Also, D1B ranks teams according to how they think they’d do in the postseason where a series win is a series win. If you have 2-3 solid starters then they’re gonna keep you ranked pretty high regardless if you drop a game here or there.

TLDR: it’s a bit early to be comparing teams that barely have any schedule overlap (if any).
 
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augustabuzz

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Did I say we had?
I must've misunderstood what you were communicating. Can you clarify this?

They’ve won all four weekend series and are supposed to have one of the better weekend rotations in the country.

D1B in particular does not tend to weight sweeps much more than 2-1 series wins. Which is basically the difference between our records right now.
 

gtrower

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2,595
I must've misunderstood what you were communicating. Can you clarify this?

The post to which I was responding was asking why FSU was ranked so high in the D1B poll. I suggested it was because they’re thought to have an elite weekend rotation and haven’t lost a weekend series yet. And the D1B poll seems to resist moving teams down unless they’re losing weekend series (whether they’re sweeping or not).
 

RonJohn

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It is still very early in the season and the RPI isn't a very good measurement yet, BUT I am shocked that GT played a .500 team with a 292 RPI and remained at #1.
 

gtrower

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2,595
It is still very early in the season and the RPI isn't a very good measurement yet, BUT I am shocked that GT played a .500 team with a 292 RPI and remained at #1.

I get your point, but our opponent’s RPI isn’t what’s important when calculating our RPI. It’s their record that’s important. JSU was 8-6 so that’s a decent midweek opponent right now with lots of Top teams playing minnows with sub .500 records.

VT didn’t/doesn’t have a great RPI, but they were 10-1 going into our series which is what vaulted us to #1.

IIRC the basic RPI formula used to be:

(1/4) Your Win %
(1/2) Your schedule’s cumulative Win %
(1/4) You schedules’s schedule’s cumulative Win %

I don’t know if that’s the formula the Warren Nolan site is using, but I assume it’s something close to that. And you can see the major component is opponent win %. So this early in the season it’s actually better to lose to a team with a good record than to pound a team with a bad record. Later in the season the last two components are more stagnant as the sample size is so much larger - that’s when your own Win/Losses affect the RPI more because your own Win % is a lot more volatile with the smaller sample size.
 

RonJohn

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I get your point, but our opponent’s RPI isn’t what’s important when calculating our RPI. It’s their record that’s important. JSU was 8-6 so that’s a decent midweek opponent right now with lots of Top teams playing minnows with sub .500 records.

VT didn’t/doesn’t have a great RPI, but they were 10-1 going into our series which is what vaulted us to #1.

IIRC the basic RPI formula used to be:

(1/4) Your Win %
(1/2) Your schedule’s cumulative Win %
(1/4) You schedules’s schedule’s cumulative Win %

I don’t know if that’s the formula the Warren Nolan site is using, but I assume it’s something close to that. And you can see the major component is opponent win %. So this early in the season it’s actually better to lose to a team with a good record than to pound a team with a bad record. Later in the season the last two components are more stagnant as the sample size is so much larger - that’s when your own Win/Losses affect the RPI more because your own Win % is a lot more volatile with the smaller sample size.
I do get that, it just seemed to me that playing a .500 team would have dropped us. Unfortunately, the mutts might overtake us tonight. Or if they don't, we will probably drop below them after the game tomorrow even if we win.
 

eokerholm

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kids these days....LOL!
Just giving you $hit :)
1647390032811.png
 

78pike

Ramblin' Wreck
Messages
692
As others have alluded to, while it’s nice we’re #1 in the RPI right now, this is exactly why they shouldn’t even release the data until later in the season. RPI is not intended for this type of analysis this early in the season. Right now RPI is essentially grouping SOS (based on practically nothing) into quadrants and sorting by record. I’d only really put weight on the conference-wide RPI as that’s a bigger sample size and gives a reasonable look as how the leagues as a whole are stacking up with each other.

Also, D1B ranks teams according to how they think they’d do in the postseason where a series win is a series win. If you have 2-3 solid starters then they’re gonna keep you ranked pretty high regardless if you drop a game here or there.

TLDR: it’s a bit early to be comparing teams that barely have any schedule overlap (if any).
I get what you are saying but I was only using RPI as an indicator to how weak their schedule was and how I couldn't understand their ranking (given their losses) since I couldn't readily find a composite index like above that had the rankings of teams 100 and above. Their ranking in D1 Baseball was what confounded me - not their RPI rating.
 

gtrower

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2,595
I get what you are saying but I was only using RPI as an indicator to how weak their schedule was and how I couldn't understand their ranking (given their losses) since I couldn't readily find a composite index like above that had the rankings of teams 100 and above. Their ranking in D1 Baseball was what confounded me - not their RPI rating.

And I’m saying RPI is not yet a good indicator of how strong/weak somebody’s schedule is. But if you’re arguing that it is, that RPI site says FSUs SOS is #5 in the country right now.

I’m listening to the D1B podcast as we speak and they just unanimously agreed that in their eyes FSU has the best weekend rotation in the country. And they haven’t lost a weekend series. That’s why they have them so high.
 

MWBATL

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Interesting result which will help strengthen the ACC's argument for being the #1 conference last night as #1 ranked Ole Miss went on the road to Hammond, La., and LOST to a mediocre Southeastern Louisiana team 5-1. Go Lions! Happy to see another OOC loss for the mighty SEC. It just means more...
 

MWBATL

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6,119
Mercer meanwhile is quietly putting together a heckuva season, as they are now 15-1 after a weekend blitzing of St. Peter's by double digits in every game. They nudged us by one run and they also beat FSU mid-week in their only games vs P5 teams.
 

FredJacket

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5,993
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Fredericksburg, Virginia
Sorry. Not related to Ga Tech, but had to share. This is great. College baseball has great athletes & baseball players... yet, you can still catch "kids" losing their minds. In this case, it's several on a single play.

If anyone can find another angle that captures the 3rd baseman for more of the play, I'd love to see that. Spoiler... as he shows up (stage left)... he appears to be doing a jig juuuuuuuuust before he realizes he IS COOKED! LOLOL.

 
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