Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> Strength of Schedule for 2003

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My projected strength of schedule numbers are out this week. As always, these are only a rough guide to how strong a schedule a team will face, since they're of necessity based on last year's rankings; regional shifts in quality can bump a team by a ways. For example, last year, Georgia intended to play the #30 schedule, with the #60 non-conference schedule. Instead they ended up playing the third-toughest schedule in the nation, with the #17 non-conference schedule. That's an accurate reflection, I suspect, of what they intended compared to what they got, so I think the intended numbers are worth a look.

It's also interesting how far off perception can be just looking at one schedule without context. Just looking at their schedule by itself back in December, I could have sworn that Long Beach State was playing one for the ages, and I think there's actually a quote from me to that effect in their media guide. With the actual numbers in front of me, it's not quite that extreme; it's actually only the fifth-toughest schedule overall and the eighth-toughest non-conference schedule. I suspect that it's actually tougher than that, since part of what threw me was the presence of traditional powers who had off-years last year, relatively speaking, like LSU and Wichita State, and a return to prominence by those schools would boost LBSU's SoS a good bit. Still, it's a good reminder for me to be careful about weighing in without all the facts.

Since I don't have them sorted that way, here are the ten toughest non-conference schedules:

      All            Non-conf
Rank SoS   SD    Rank SoS   SD    Team

 12 111.2  7.8     1 116.0  6.5   Houston
 41 108.4  7.9     2 115.6  5.6   San Diego
 25 109.5  9.3     3 114.1 10.4   Southwest Texas State
 19 110.1  8.7     4 113.6  8.4   Rice
  1 113.8  7.7     5 113.6  8.4   Baylor
 42 108.4  6.6     6 113.5  5.0   Pepperdine
 55 107.3  7.6     7 113.3  5.4   Loyola Marymount
  5 112.5  5.9     8 113.2  5.8   Long Beach State
  3 113.1  7.2     9 112.9  9.5   Stanford
  2 113.3  6.3    10 112.6  5.6   Southern California

It's interesting to me how many of these are in the Southwest, and how few of them are in the Southeast. To be honest, most of the SEC and ACC non-conference schedules are bordering on embarassing this year. Just for giggles, here they are:

      All            Non-conf
Rank SoS   SD    Rank SoS   SD    Team

  6 112.2  8.1    32 108.6  9.5   Louisiana State
 11 111.3  8.8    29 108.8 10.2   Auburn
 15 111.0  9.4    49 106.8 10.1   Georgia
 38 108.7  8.6    99 102.0  5.5   Vanderbilt
 40 108.5  9.5    95 102.4  7.9   Arkansas
 43 108.3 10.6   122 100.2  8.0   Tennessee
 45 108.2 10.4   111 100.8  8.9   Mississippi
 48 108.0 10.2   116 100.5  8.6   Kentucky
 50 107.8 11.2   110 100.9 11.7   South Carolina
 56 107.2 13.6   143  98.8 15.2   Florida
 63 106.8 12.8   155  98.1 12.9   Alabama
 64 106.6 12.2   176  96.8  8.9   Mississippi State

      All            Non-conf
Rank SoS   SD    Rank SoS   SD    Team

 28 109.3  9.7    72 104.3  6.8   Virginia
 29 109.3  9.7    57 106.1  9.1   Clemson
 37 108.7  9.3    70 104.5  6.8   Georgia Tech
 59 107.1 13.3    96 102.3 13.9   Florida State
 62 106.9 11.2   104 101.3  8.7   North Carolina
 65 106.4 13.0   134  99.3 10.8   North Carolina State
 67 106.3 10.9   114 100.7  8.3   Wake Forest
 69 106.2 12.7   152  98.3  9.3   Duke
 97 103.6 14.0   201  95.1  9.8   Maryland

Now, "embarassing" is probably the wrong word, because there's no moral imperative to play a tough schedule; your only responsibility is to do what you think best strengthens your team, and, as long as you remember to adjust your mental perceptions of your winning percentage downward, there's no harm done. As a fan, though, it's kind of disappointing, simply because I'd like to see some of these guys square off with some of the other top teams, and most of them aren't.

Rather than keep returning to the subject of pitch counts and pitcher usage in general too often for my main theme, I'm just going to run a standard feature down here where I point out potential problems; feel free to stop reading above this if the subject doesn't interest you. This will just be a quick listing of questionable starts that have caught my eye -- the general threshold for listing is 120 actual pitches or 130 estimated, although short rest will also get a pitcher listed if I catch it. Don't blame me; I'm just the messenger.

(*) Pitch count is estimated.

A complete game loss on February 9? With 9 runs given up?

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Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> Strength of Schedule for 2003

About the author, Boyd Nation