Quote:
Originally Posted by Tigercat
I often used RPI as a general term for ALL computer rankings. They don't work in college baseball for the same reason the RPI itself doesn't work:
ALL WINS ARE NOT EQUAL IN COLLEGE BASEBALL. YOU CANNOT LEAN ON COMPUTER RANKINGS AND SOS THAT EMPHASIZE WEEKDAY AND WEEKEND WINS AS EQUAL IN COLLEGE BASEBALL.
Sorry for the caps, just want to emphasize that this is the point I have been making all along. Midweek major conference teams are way, way, way different their weekend counterpart. Hell, oftentimes unless they save a specific pitcher, so are small conference teams. Baylor and OSU's true team/pitchers did not pitch during midweek games (and in some cases not in OOC weekend games) they played during the conference weekend slate. And they failed to be consistently good.
I point to Baseball America and Collegiate baseball sharing my opinion because they know more about the sport than you and I. I would have easily put in Dallas Baptist, Tulane, and RI in over OSU and Baylor. All had the consistent resume that deserves a birth and that it takes to threaten a run in the tournament.
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Let's define "mid-week" games as all games taking place Tuesday through Thursday. Not perfect, but close enough for government work. I will not throw out those games starting on 5/19 because of conference tournaments. We are basically taking your argument to the extreme, saying that mid-week games have nothing to do with pitching depth and are completely worthless for figuring out who the better team is. Not your argument, but for illustration purposes and all. So, using only weekend games through 5/18 but all games from 5/19-5/24, here are some numbers:
Oklahoma State tumbles all the way to 41/42 in the ratings (looks an awful lot like a 3-seed in a 64-team tournament to me)
Baylor is 44/44 (ditto)
Rhode Island is 93/110
Tulane is 52/56
Dallas Baptist is 68/68
I think we can assume that assigning a mid-range importance to mid-week games will only cause the ratings to be somewhere between these numbers and the baseline numbers. There is pretty much no objective measure that says your three teams are better than Baylor and Oklahoma State. The bottom line remains that you want to reward teams for playing in weaker conferences.