Finley on offense only is fine with me. He could be well enough to play 1st.
I’ve never been a baseball expert, and I haven’t followed the game closely in years, but in my opinion the best starting pitcher the Braves ever had rarely threw the ball over 83 mph. But his control was phenomenal. Back before him the Braves had a relief pitcher who threw balls that cracked people’s bats and was said to throw a “heavy ball.” His top speed was 88 mph at best but was only attained 4 or 5 times a game.
If there's an expectation our RPI (#60 today) can improve by season's end... it can't. Mathematically... it cannot... at least not much.
What is killing our RPI is the fact that we played Miami (Oh), Tennessee Tech, and Long Island, all at home. All three of those teams have proven to be pretty bad, and 7 games against sub 200 RPI teams is a pretty big amount. Still, our SoS continues improving, we are up to 51 in that regard. Only 5 schools (Kentucky, South Carolina, Wake Forest, Vanderbilt, and Florida) have more RPI top-50 wins than our total of 9. Winning one of those close games on the road against Louisville or BC would have helped a bunch. That said, there is still room for improvement since the other teams ahead of us are also still playing, so their RPI numbers will be fluctuating, hopefully downward. Win 2 of 3 this weekend and we will move into the 50's. I know that will be tough, but it is in our reach at least. If we could somehow go 2-4 against Miami & Virginia that would move us up also. I wish we didn't have to play Pittsburgh...we really need a sweep in that series. The Duke series being on the road will help if we can play well there. At least Gardner-Webb isn't a dumpster fire, so that series will hurt some but not too much. We need to win at least 3 of 4 of the remaining mid-week games.If there's an expectation our RPI (#60 today) can improve by season's end... it can't. Mathematically... it cannot... at least not much.
Our own record only accounts for 25% of RPI. The winning % of our opponents & opponents of opponents account for the other 75%. That means we must play (not necessarily beat ... smh) teams with good winning %. There are 22 games left on the schedule... 19 of those are v teams with 12-17 losses. Only one team (UVA) has a "helpful" winning %. That could change slightly if VT & Miami & Duke get hot... the problem there is if we beat them it hurts their winning % & mitigates helping Ga Tech's RPI.
[Both ND & Clemson have better RPI than GT. Their records are worse & we beat both head to head]
I think/hope our post-season prospects hang on the ACC. Seems reasonable to expect the committee to award the conference with 8-9 bids. Get to (stay at) 8th and we'll be in.
ETA... I'm officially on the RPI haters club.
I think they were actually SEC announcers. I've heard the play by play guy on several SEC broadcasts before. Early in the game they mentioned they were originally slated to call the UK vs. Louisville game that got cancelled due to the shooting in Louisville yesterday. I noticed they were both calling our game remotely so I guess for some reason ESPN decided to have them call our game. If I had to guess I would say the announcers probably get paid more to do TV broadcasts than they do streaming broadcasts so maybe this was ESPN's way to meet their contractual obligations - and by dropping whoever was scheduled to do our game when it was on ACC Network Extra they saved themselves some money.
Well, I did some lunchtime homework and found out I am probably a little too optimistic as to what will be needed to make the tournament. Last season the lowest RPI to get an at large was Grand Canyon at 50 and UCLA at 48. The lowest "east coast" school was Arkansas, who got in with a 41 RPI and Ole Miss with a 39 RPI. Of course both of those made it to Omaha, with Ole Miss taking the championship.
We actually have a pretty strong record this year when ahead after both the 7th and 8th innings. We haven't blown too many save opportunities with Busse as our closer. Our problem is we aren't very good at coming back to win when being behind after 7 or 8 innings. Tonight we were able to screw up the former and improve the latter.
NC State got a pretty bad deal last year.
