This season more than ever, I found myself trying to pay more attention to the baseball rankings, but I just don't get it. I have never been a big baseball follower as they play entirely to many games for me to keep up with my current schedule of work and school. Anyway, with football, it was fairly easy to predict how the rankings would change each week, but that does not seem to be the case with NCAA baseball. Are teams just favored at this point in the season?
i actually had a few problems with baseball america's rankings earlier in the season, but the past couple of weeks, i have pretty much agreed with rankings across the board. it is not"favorites" but one has to look more closely at series wins, wins/losses on the road, etc. a series win on the road against a ranked opponent is gonna get more love than a sweep against a cupcake.
too many games? no indeed, son. they keep cutting the season even shorter. the beauty of baseball is you can miss 75% of the games and not miss too much. ( i don't miss a game though.) football is too condensed, too much rides on just one game, etc. if your team had a bad week in practice, you're screwed. baseball, it doesn't matter. but about the rankings, i have NO IDEA how these guys have been doing it the last couple of years. like okie said, you have to take into consideration series wins/losses rather than a single game. conference games are more important than midweek games, etc. a lot of it used to be based on tradition or what the team did in the past, but that was when college baseball was young and not nearly as competitive as it is now. you also see more division I programs than ever before, and the playing field has been narrowed down so much that i think the pollsters are taking it upon themselves to include lots of smaller (or midmajors) in their rankings. i guess a lot of it still has to do with what a team has coming back, recruits that were drafted and opted to go to college instead of the majors/minors, how much depth you have on your pitching staff, how many pure hitters you have coming back. stuff like that. it's a double-edged sword though, because if you have the reputation that LSU does, you get grilled for losing a midweek game or series while other programs/schools can get away with it. also, with so many polls, there is a lot of bias, IMO.
i think that was the problem i had with the baseball america poll when we dropped 5 spots after losing the series to kansas. seemed that comparable losses for other schools were resulting in a drop of three spots. thats why i didnt have a problem with the drop we had in bba of 3 spots with the series loss to auburn. that is right in line with how they have treated that kind of loss.
