Yes... the nerve has been struck...
RPI is useless for purposes of comparing college baseball teams this year. It was "debatable" in past seasons as to its usefulness... but it is not even a question this year. It really gets under my skin that D1 Baseball's staff even refers to it. Credit to Aaron Fitt for pointing it out... but bad on him (and the rest of the D1 Baseball guys) for continuing to speak to it as a metric in other parts of the podcast & other content. There are several conferences that have chosen to play conference ONLY this year. That is fine. They can do that. They also should not be penalized for that decision when it comes to bids for the post-season.
However.... RPI can't be used to sort it out.... full STOP. The entire RPI calculation/model assumes enough inter-mingling (technical term) of opponents and opponents of opponents over the course of a season that you can 'calculate' a rating number for some apples to apples comparison of teams. This season... that assumption is blown up. IF RPI is used in any form to sort out the field of 64, it will be Exhibit A on jamming "bad [objective] criteria" into problem solving because you cannot come up with a better alternative.
I am not sure what the best solution is.. but step 1 is for the powers that be to state emphatically/publicly that RPI will not be part if the discussion. From there... what I'd do is try to rank/rate the strength of each conference and then assign X number of bids per conference or for some flexibility a range. Ex... ACC will get 7-9 teams, SEC 8-10... whatever... then comparing within a conference becomes pretty easy to fill out those numbers. It is not perfect; but to even hint that the RPI number means anything useful for breaking out teams in the margins is a significant problem.
The #2 RPI team (today... late Apr) is Fairfield University.... a Connecticut baseball powerhouse..... an undefeated MAAC team playing in a conference with no out of conference games on its schedule. The same dudes at D1 Baseball referring to the RPI (sporadically... and selectively) do not have Fairfield ranked in their own top 25 and have them slotted as a #3 seed in the Vandy regional. So... the #2 RPI team ... according to D1 is in the bottom "half" of the field of 64 right now. They need to decide is RPI a "thing" or not. It is not... not this year. May as well line up the 64 alphabetically.
You could have started off with "Troll accepted"
. Remind me not to bring it up over beers.
As long as we get in, I'm fine. And playing away doesn't scare me either.
As to rpi, I agree it's of more limited use this year. There is no good metric. D1 is sort of saying so many per conference in their guess ........ Which doesn't count.
Fairfield is the UCF of the baseball world. But in baseball, Fairfield will get into the mix for being able to win the CWS and I'll root for them. UCF never got the chance.
Who makes up the group which decides the NCAA tourney field? I forgot its been so long.
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