Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> Ah, Fresh ISR's

About the author, Boyd Nation

The first ISR's of the season came out on Tuesday (so did the first RPI's, but I'm ignoring them as long as possible), and I want to take a look at what they mean. If you've somehow managed to get here without being familiar with the ISR's, the best places to learn about them are the Ratings FAQ and last year's first release column.

Obviously, you can go look at the ratings for yourself, but here are the top 10 for easy review:

           Division I   Overall
Rank Rating   W   L      W   L    SoS  Team      

  1   128.5   13   4     13   4     2  Texas A&M
  2   128.2   12   3     12   3     6  Rice
  3   128.0    9   4      9   4     1  Houston
  4   123.2   15   3     16   3    34  San Diego
  5   122.6    9   2      9   2    33  South Carolina
  6   122.3    9   2      9   2    36  Southern Mississippi
  7   121.5   12   4     12   4    21  Stanford
  8   121.5    9   5      9   5     4  Baylor
  9   121.2    9   1      9   1    71  Georgia Tech
 10   120.5   10   1     11   1    78  Alabama

So, what is it actually worth to be ranked high at this point? Well, the first factor is that I don't list teams that have played fewer than ten games. There are some teams -- Clemson, Wichita State, and Mississippi State, for example -- that have looked pretty good so far and will move into the top ten as soon as they cross that threshold, so the above teams should probably be considered as part of the top twenty instead of the top ten. Given that, though, what does it mean to be ranked this high at this point in the season? Obviously, it's better to be 10-2 than 6-6, but should Aggie fans go ahead and book Omaha hotel rooms? Let's take a look at a little recent history and see if we can find a clue.

This is the fifth year that I've done the ISR's (and, more relevantly, the fifth year for which I'll have the full score data I need to do them). Here are the top 10's as of the first Tuesday in March for each year, along with their final record, rank, and postseason finish. Records are Division I only.

1998:

137.9  16   1  Stanford (40-14, #2, 3rd in regional)
127.7  19   2  Arizona (32-22, #20, not in tournament!)
127.0  17   5  Hawaii (33-22, #40, not in tournament)
126.8  12   4  Southern California (46-15, #1, CWS champ)
123.5  12   1  Clemson (43-16, #18, 2nd in regional)
122.3  10   6  Cal State Fullerton (45-17, #8, 2nd in regional)
122.2  13   5  Arizona State (41-22, #7, 2nd in CWS)
121.8  10   4  Florida (46-18, #9, 7th in CWS)
121.7  10   4  Miami, Florida (47-12, #3, 5th in CWS)
121.1  11   4  San Francisco (30-23, #79, not in tournament)

1999:

138.1  10   0  North Carolina (40-18, #33, 3rd in regional)
130.8  13   1  Pepperdine (46-16, #10, 2nd in regional)
124.9  16   3  Rice (57-15, #7, 5th in CWS)
124.8  12   2  Texas A&M (51-18, #8, 7th in CWS)
123.8  13   2  Florida State (57-14, #3, 2nd in CWS)
121.8  11   3  Miami, Florida (49-13, #6, CWS champ)
121.3  11   3  Baylor (46-15, #1, lost super-regional)
121.0   8   4  Houston (40-24, #15, 2nd in regional)
120.7   8   2  East Carolina (46-16, #27, 2nd in regional)
120.1  10   5  Cal State Fullerton (50-14, #2, 5th in CWS)

2000:

132.7  13   1  Louisiana-Lafayette (47-20, #15, 3rd in CWS)
128.6  11   3  Southern California (44-20, #4, 5th in CWS)
128.4  18   2  Florida State (53-19, #5, 3rd in CWS)
127.0  16   0  North Carolina (46-17, #10, 3rd in regional)
126.8  12   6  Houston (48-18, #11, lost super-regional)
126.1  15   4  Texas (45-21, #12, 7th in CWS)
125.8  14   5  Stanford (50-16, #2, 2nd in CWS)
125.7  11   4  Long Beach State (31-25, #34, not in tournament)
124.5   7   3  Oklahoma (38-21, #20, 2nd in regional)
124.3  14   3  Baylor (42-16, #9, 4th in regional)

2001:

125.0  15   3  Miami, Florida (47-12, #4, CWS champ)
124.4  12   3  Pepperdine (42-18, #8, 2nd in regional)
124.3  14   1  Auburn (37-21, #18, 2nd in regional)
123.2  12   2  Georgia Tech (41-20, #36, 2nd in regional)
122.1  15   3  Rice (47-20, #6, lost super-regional)
122.0  12   4  Southern California (44-18, #3, 5th in CWS)
122.0  11   4  UCLA (29-25, #20, not in tournament!)
121.3  11   3  North Carolina (31-26, #65, not in tournament)
120.0  12   2  Louisiana State (44-22, #12, lost super-regional)
119.9  12   3  Mississippi (39-23, #24, 3rd in regional)

So, what does it mean to be in the top ten now? It doesn't guarantee anything, but it doesn't hurt. Twenty-two of the forty teams finished the year in the top 10. Sixteen of them went to Omaha. On the other hand, a couple per year fell all the way out of the tournament, whether fairly or not. There seems to be a trend toward more in-season shuffling the last couple of years, but there's not enough data to know if that's significant.

Looking more closely at the teams involved, common sense divides some, but not all, of them. Teams that you would have expected to be there -- the Miamis and Southern Californias of the world -- almost always stick around once they're there. On the other hand, the results are mixed for early surprise teams. North Carolina has made a habit of fast starts and collapses, but Louisiana-Lafayette 2000 and Baylor 1999 show that you can't just ignore teams because their success is unexpected. Not all of Texas A&M, San Diego, and Southern Mississippi will make it to Omaha, of course, but it wouldn't shock me to see one or two of them make a good run this year.

One place that the early rankings do seem significant is in the question of measuring the usual shifts in regional quality from year to year. In retrospect, 1998 was a really strong year for the West, 1999 was a balanced year with a slight Southwestern lead, 2000 was balanced with a slight edge to the Southeast, and 2001 was a Western year. Those facts seem to show up fairly strongly in the early-season ISR's, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is a big year for the Texas teams.

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 or, on the other hand, starts where pitchers were pulled according to plan early despite pitching extremely well in close games.

(*) Pitch count is estimated.

If you're interested in reprinting this or any other Boyd's World material for your publication or Web site, please read the reprint policy and contact me

Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> Ah, Fresh ISR's

About the author, Boyd Nation