D1Baseball's experts answer your burning questions post Week Nine • D1Baseball
Have burning questions about the latest rankings and much more in college baseball? We've got you covered yet again.
Any Big Ten or nationally relevant questions I will post here:
Erik: Is ........is the Big Ten a one-bid league?
Kendall Rogers: It's probably Nebraska and that's it unless someone gets hot or someone wins the Big Ten Tournament. Man.....on a side note, just took a gander, and Iowa is now seventh in the league with an RPI of 127. That's just mind-blowing and frankly mystifying.
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Andrew H: Does the weekend series loss to Rutgers take Nebraska out of the hosting conversation? Still think they are a tournament team, but not host material anymore.
Kendall Rogers: I do not. Nebraska put together a solid non-conference resume and is still 16 in the RPI. That's right in the thick of the hosting mix, it just means there's a lot less margin for error moving forward, especially with how iffy the rest of the Big Ten is right now.
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MK: Is RPI in college baseball what NET is in college basketball? Should it be relied on or not is what I am curious to understand?
Joe Healy: It's a more primitive version of the NET. College basketball actually did away with RPI in favor of the NET. The gripe about the RPI (which I agree with, by the way) is that it's overly simplistic and takes too few factors into account. It's also fairly easily manipulated. At this point, there are certain programs that have more or less unlocked the perfect RPI scheduling formula. Kudos to them for that because it's the metric that the sport uses, but I've never liked the idea that scheduling correctly has an outsized level of importance.
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Pete: How important is that RPI number as opposed to season records especially with the RPI issues out west? Would a team that wins 32-35 games with a RPI around 45 be more likely to get an at-large bid than a team that wins 40 games but has an RPI around 75?
Joe Healy: Yes, with that wide a delta in RPI, the edge would go to the team with 32-35 wins and a 45 RPI. If the RPI delta closes to 45 vs. 50 or 55, maaaaaaybe it's a different conversation. That said, for better or worse, you're never going to go broke betting on RPI being the determining factor in most Field of 64 discussions.
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MK: Interesting your take on RPI, but wouldn't scheduling correctly be critical for a program like Indiana State otherwise they would (and are already) being criticized for not having a quality schedule (FYI 5-1 against Big Ten teams)?
Joe Healy: Yes, good point. I do like that the RPI kind of allows a roadmap for teams like Indiana State to find their way to at-large bids that might not otherwise be available, but generally speaking, I would like to see college baseball move on to something more sophisticated than the RPI.
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Aaron: Lots of talk in other sports about expanding thir respective postseason tournaments. What are your thoughts on possibly adding a team to each regional and the host getting a bye? Or something along those lines?
Kendall Rogers: I like the idea of adding 4-6 teams to the baseball postseason, but I would not go beyond that. I feel like baseball typically has about 3-4 teams that you look at it and go man, they should've been in the tournament. That list is never 6-7 deep. I don't want our tournament being diluted by teams who have no business being there.
