Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> One Last Projection About the author, Boyd Nation

One Last Projection

Publication Date: May 22, 2007

I almost didn't do a projection this week; I may hold to that and not do any next year. When I started doing them however many years ago, there was actually some use to it, as the workings of the committee were more mysterious and I was basically the only one around other than a year-end Baseball America projection. These days, there are several of the fan sites that do them, and the committee is slightly less opaque than it used to be, so this becomes an exercise on getting as close as you can without having benefit of the final week of games.

What's more interesting, I think, is figuring out what the questions are that the committee is looking at and trying to guess what their answers will be. How much weight should the RPI be given? When should it be distrusted? Should any other rating systems be considered? How much weight should conference placement be given? How important are the last ten games? How important are the conference tournaments? Should credit be given for teams with difficult scheduling problems, like TCU or St. John's? Do you let some teams with sufficient budgets, like Fullerton or Arizona, travel east in the name of regional fairness?

While we're thinking about those, I'll throw out what I think the committee would do if they were choosing today, and try to recognize the hot points for games and teams to watch. I'm going to assume this year that all of the #1 seeds will host, so we can dispense with talking about that and get to the seeds.

The national #1 seeds:

#1 Rice (#1 RPI, #1 ISR)
#2 Vanderbilt (#3, #4)
#3 Texas (#2, #3)
#4 Arizona State (#5, #2)
#5 Florida State (#6, #7)
#6 North Carolina (#4, #9)
#7 Coastal Carolina (#7, #17)
#8 Long Beach State (#8, #5)

All of these will be jumbled by this week's results, so don't get too hung up on the current ordering. The top five are probably secure, the other three could easily drop off with a bad week. One interesting aspect to things is that if South Carolina and Coastal both win their conference tournaments or get close with the same number of losses, South Carolina will most likely pass Coastal in the RPI.

The rest of the #1 seeds:

Virginia (#12, #24)
Miami, Florida (#16, #34)
Texas A&M (#10, #10)
Missouri (#15, #12)
South Carolina (#9, #13)
Arkansas (#18, #19)
Louisiana-Lafayette (#13, #16)
San Diego (#11, #6)

There's a good bit of potential volatility here -- Arkansas has to right the ship a bit, having lost three straight weekend series; Miami and Missouri need to go 2-1 in pool play to hang on, I think; South Carolina, San Diego, or Virginia could move up with a sufficiently good week. If there's an exception to the idea of all the #1's hosting, it may be Missouri, depending on whether the committee focuses on accomplishment or facilities. It helps their case that most of the obvious alternatives, like Wichita State or Minnesota, have struggled lately. Although I'm trying to stay away from excessive snarkiness, it probably wouldn't be a bad thing for a team to get sent to Miami or whichever fourth-place ACC team gets to host.

The #2 seeds:

North Carolina State (#17, #35)
Clemson (#19, #30)
Wake Forest (#24, #51)
Georgia Tech (#28, #54)
Oklahoma (#25, #32)
Oklahoma State (#47, #27)
Nebraska (#26, #41)
Stetson (#31, #44)
UC Irvine (#29, #8)
Cal State Fullerton (#30, #18)
Southern Mississippi (#20, #26)
East Carolina (#27, #36)
Wichita State (#21, #23)
Arizona (#23, #11)
Mississippi State (#22, #25)
Mississippi (#14, #21)

You remember those questions we talked about earlier? Some of those are really important to those last two ACC teams, who could land anywhere between a #2 seed somewhere cushy like Myrtle Beach or could be at home next week. I don't necessarily see a fourth Western host site, which is actually a good thing under the current setup because it means that it's harder to slot all of the West into Western regionals. Oregon State's problems don't help, but having three Big West teams at this level or above may let one of them escape.

The #3's:

Baylor (#32, #40)
Kansas State (#37, #39)
Louisville (#41, #57)
Michigan (#40, #33)
Creighton (#44, #29)
Oral Roberts (#43, #42)
Texas Christian (#38, #22)
Oregon State (#34, #15)
Southern California (#42, #31)
UCLA (#45, #28)
College of Charleston (#33, #53)
Western Carolina (#36, #43)
Pepperdine (#35, #20)
North Carolina-Charlotte (#48, #47)
UC Riverside (#51, #14)
Cal Poly (#68, #37)

Now, completing this list is generally a waste of time, because two or three of these are going to be wiped out by surprise conference tournament winners from leagues that are going to get an at large, so you might as well go ahead and consider a couple of these as actually out and trying to get in. That's probably one of the Big East teams and maybe UCLA or USC West (who still has to clear .500 to keep it from being moot), as well as Minnesota below.

Finally:

St. John's (#49, #59)
Rutgers (#50, #68)
Minnesota (#54, #38)
America East winner
CAA winner
Horizon winner
Brown (#149, #159)
MAAC winner
MAC winner
MEAC winner
NEC winner
OVC winner
Lafayette (#133, #154)
Prairie View A&M (#202, #203)
Southland winner
WAC winner

Pitch Count Watch

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.

Date   Team   Pitcher   Opponent   IP   H   R   ER   BB   SO   AB   BF   Pitches
5/17 Alabama Tommy Hunter Mississippi State 9.0 5 3 3 1 6 32 34 144
5/17 Arkansas-Little Rock Ashur Tolliver Arkansas State 9.0 4 1 1 5 6 27 36 132(*)
5/17 Northern Iowa Aaron Jenkins Bradley 9.0 5 2 2 2 15 31 34 136(*)
5/17 Dallas Baptist Randall Taylor New Mexico State 9.0 9 3 3 0 12 35 35 124
5/17 Alabama-Birmingham Mitch Kloskowski East Carolina 9.0 5 2 2 4 6 31 35 128
5/17 Rider Mike Petrowski Fairfield 8.0 9 3 3 1 12 32 36 133(*)
5/17 Vanderbilt David Price Louisiana State 8.2 4 1 1 3 15 28 33 131
5/17 Louisiana-Lafayette Danny Farquhar New Orleans 9.0 7 4 2 1 13 33 34 125
5/17 Marshall Andrew Blain Central Florida 6.1 7 6 6 5 8 24 30 121
5/17 Lamar Allen Harrington McNeese State 9.0 4 2 2 3 6 28 33 131
5/17 Southern Mississippi Ryan Belanger Houston 9.0 4 0 0 1 8 29 30 122
5/17 Tennessee James Adkins Florida 6.2 7 4 4 5 9 28 33 121
5/17 Northeastern Kris Dabrowiecki Virginia Commonwealth 9.0 8 2 2 2 4 33 38 128
5/17 North Carolina A&T Chris Eggers Delaware State 9.0 8 1 1 1 15 35 37 142(*)
5/18 Arizona State Mike Leake Oregon State 8.2 5 3 2 5 7 30 35 131(*)
5/18 Central Arkansas Jeremy Cloud Northwestern State 9.0 9 6 5 2 8 37 41 124
5/18 College of Charleston Brian Schlitter Davidson 9.0 4 2 2 2 9 30 32 122
5/18 Georgia State Will Palmer Towson 9.0 7 1 1 4 4 33 39 135
5/18 Liberty David Stokes Virginia Military 7.0 4 0 0 3 7 24 29 122
5/18 Marshall Jeremy Slone Central Florida 8.0 6 5 4 1 4 29 34 128
5/18 Southeastern Louisiana Josh Black Nicholls State 8.0 6 2 2 2 11 30 34 124
5/18 Old Dominion Anthony Shawler William and Mary 9.0 4 1 0 3 6 31 36 123
5/18 Tennessee Tech Matt Smith Southeast Missouri State 11.0 11 5 5 3 6 44 47 158(*)
5/18 Washington State Wayne Daman, Jr. UCLA 9.0 6 1 1 1 2 33 35 129
5/18 Virginia Tech Andrew Wells Wake Forest 7.0 7 2 2 1 3 27 30 122
5/18 Arizona Preston Guilmet Washington 9.0 3 0 0 2 7 29 32 122
5/18 Butler Brian Deter Wisconsin-Milwaukee 7.1 12 7 7 2 5 32 34 121
5/18 Youngstown State Lucas Engle Cleveland State 8.2 6 3 1 2 8 28 31 125
5/18 Maryland-Eastern Shore Dustin Longchamps Florida A&M 8.0 6 2 0 3 7 28 33 131
5/18 Florida A&M Austin Dill Maryland-Eastern Shore 6.0 5 7 5 6 2 24 31 129
5/18 Maryland-Eastern Shore Michael Roberts Delaware State 8.0 9 8 5 9 7 27 40 148
5/18 Cleveland State Brandon Hewitt Youngstown State 7.0 9 3 2 5 6 30 36 142
5/19 Alabama Will Stroup Mississippi State 8.0 11 7 7 0 5 32 34 126
5/19 William and Mary Sean Grieve Old Dominion 8.1 10 8 8 5 6 35 42 133
5/19 California Tyson Ross Southern California 6.1 10 3 3 6 9 25 33 132(*)
5/19 Southern Mississippi David Clark Houston 9.0 8 2 2 1 4 34 35 125
5/19 Southern Utah Dustin Wittwer Valparaiso 9.1 9 3 3 2 8 38 40 139(*)
5/19 Washington State Jay Miller UCLA 8.1 9 5 4 1 5 32 35 129
5/19 New York Tech Joe Esposito Brown 8.0 6 2 2 3 8 28 32 121
5/20 Pepperdine B. Enright Portland 9.0 7 2 1 1 8 34 36 125
5/20 Northwestern Dan Schwartz Purdue 7.0 8 2 2 4 7 28 33 126

(*) Pitch count is estimated. As always, I welcome actual pitch count corrections.

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Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> One Last Projection About the author, Boyd Nation