2023 Baseball

[AuroranHusker]

3 hours ago, hskr4life said:

My weather app says 70% chance of rain in Manhattan on Thursday.  Friday temp of 41.

 

80% rain Thursday and 34 temp on Friday.  So maybe a few degrees warmer but relatively the same weather.

 

I saw a graphic earlier from NWS Omaha's twitter, which I'm sure is updated better or more frequently elsewhere as the poor weather 'odds' seem to change often... still seems weird to play a "home series" in the Little Apple. Guess desperate times call for desperate measures to get in this 3-game series. I'd imagine it's difficult for teams like Nebraska to attract very many southern squads to Lincoln in mid-March on a regular basis.

[throwback]

Now with about 1/3 of the schedule behind us, we can start to get an idea of strength of schedule. Unfortunately, ours might be even more brutal that it looked before the season. Boyd's World's RPI (heading into the weekend) says:

 

Nebraska - #119

• Illinois - #13 - 3 home
• Iowa - #14 - 3 away
• Vandy - #20 - W
• Ole Miss - #26 - L
• bluebirds - #27 - 1 home, 2 away
• Michigan - #94 - 3 away
• Maryland  - #95 - 3 away
• San Diego - #96 - LLLT
• Kansas St - #103 - 1 away
• Abilene Christian - #128 - 1 away
• Illinois St - #130 - WW
• Hawaii - #157 - W
• Omaha - #163 - L - 1 home, 1 away
• South Alabama - #196 - WWW
• Nicholls - #207 - WW - 1 neutral
• Penn St - #211 - 3 home
• TAM-Corpus Christi - #222 - 1 neutral
• Purdue - #230 - 3 away
• South Dakota St - #236 - 1 home
• North Dakota St - #254 - 2 home
• Minnesota - #255 - 3 home
• Northern Colorado - #264 - WW
• Northwestern - #290 - 3 home

Other B1G teams:

• Ohio State - #35
• Rutgers - #36
• Indiana - #72
• Michigan State - #86

------

• 1-1 vs Top 50 RPI with 9 games left, although I can't imagine Iowa, Illinois, or the bluebirds are going to remain in the Top 50 once they start playing conference games. Maybe one of them stays Top 50 or maybe Maryland climbs up there, so can assume we might only get 5 Top 50 RPI games. Brutal.
• 1-4-1 vs Top 100 RPI with 15 games left, probably 16, as KSU likely gets pulled into Top 100 when they start playing conference games. (Michigan or San Diego could fall out of Top 100, too.) Need to make a lot of hay in this segment. Good news is most of these games are road games, so they're worth more if we win.
• 8-1 vs below 150 with 19 - ugh - games left. Reasonable chance more than 1/2 of our games end up against teams below 150 RPIs. In 2022, for example, we played 19 games vs below 150 RPI but went just 11-8.  

Certainly RPI rankings will change quite a bit from here, but this schedule is rough. We didn't schedule this poorly on purpose, but just had a lot of things work against us this season. 

 

The solution? Keep winning at a high rate. 40+ wins in the regular season and at least 17 in the B1G are probably a must to be on the bubble.

 

Probably the closest example from last year was UConn - played 33 games vs below 150 RPI, but went 42-13 in the regular season and won Big East regular season and tourney titles.

 

All that was worth a #3 seed in the Maryland regional. UConn won that and lost in 3 games at the Stanford super regional. Would UConn have made the NCAAs without the Big East auto bid? Probably, but it was tight.

 

You also have Rutgers from 2022, went 41-14 in regular season, tied for 2nd in B1G regular season at 17-7, and finished as B1G tournament runner-up. They had 26 games versus below 150 RPI. Got left out of the NCAAs. 

 

With a poor schedule like this, you're living on the knife's edge.

 

Edited March 18, 2023 by throwback

[HuskerFever]

 

[HuskerFever]

I'll just put this here. Cool to see some Nebraska representation in the World Baseball Classic championship game:

 

 

[throwback]

Updated Boyd's World's RPI after the weekend

 

Nebraska - #117

• Vandy - #8 - W
• Illinois - #38 - WWL
• Iowa - #51 - 3 away
• bluebirds - #58 - L 1 home, 1 away
• Ole Miss - #64 - L
• Michigan - #77 - 3 away
• San Diego - #90 - LLLT
• Maryland  - #99 - 3 away
• Abilene Christian - #100 - 1 away
• Kansas St - #109 - 1 away
• Hawaii - #116 - W
• Nicholls - #172 - WWL
• Penn St - #180 - 3 home
• Illinois St - #199 - WW
• South Alabama - #205 - WWW
• Omaha - #213 - L - 1 home, 1 away
• North Dakota St - #219 - 2 home
• TAM-Corpus Christi - #239 - 1 neutral
• Purdue - #245 - 3 away
• Minnesota - #248 - 3 home
• South Dakota St - #261 - 1 home
• Northern Colorado - #268 - WW
• Northwestern - #286 - 3 home

Other B1G teams:

• Indiana - #21
• Rutgers - #22
• Ohio State - #62
• Michigan State - #72

------

• 3-1 vs Top 50 RPI is great, but Illinois isn't staying there
• 3-6-1 vs Top 100
• 29 games scheduled vs sub-150 RPI (9-2 so far)

A few big swings from some of our opponents, which is expected for a few more weeks yet until we have enough data to settle things down, but the overall outlook hasn't really changed. That win over Vandy looks great, but it's also kind of on an island. The overall schedule is very poor. San Diego and South Alabama are a combined 18-27-1. Brutal and well below where they normally are.

 

Our B1G schedule looks far weaker than it did a couple weeks ago, as Indiana and Rutgers made big jumps upward, but we don't play them. This is a schedule that gives us a chance to win the regular season crown, but have to find a way to be more consistent on the mound on Sundays.

 

At least we're not Maryland. Ouch. Doesn't look like they are going to run away with the regular season title or challenge to host a regional again like it looked in the preseason.

 

And the bottom of the B1G .... woof. Michigan hasn't been able to score at all this season & they got 28 runs in 3 games vs PSU. Northwestern finally won a game at least. Minnesota managed to split with the bluebirds in Omaha; they are starting to pitch a bit better, but they can't score either. Purdue's offense is pretty poor as well. If we have to outscore those bottom feeders on Sundays, I think we have a shot to do so - and we need to. Almost have to sweep those 4 bottom feeders at this point.

 

Indiana was very impressive sweeping Ohio St. Hoosiers are definitely a contender.

 

[hskr4life]

Was really hoping they could announce an extra game either Friday or Sunday this weekend.  The longer we go though, the less likely it looks.

[hskr4life]

Illinois State beat Iowa yesterday.  Yikes.

[AuroranHusker]

 

Opening Day in MLB -- Houston vs ChiSox on ESPN 3/30 at 6 pm CT

 

 

[hskr4life]

Iowa Friday guy just hit 105 MPh against Maryland

[Bugeaters1]

Iowa Friday guy just hit 105 MPh against Maryland

Radar has to be off.

Sent from my SM-A515U using Tapatalk

[hskr4life]

6 minutes ago, Bugeaters1 said:

Radar has to be off.

Sent from my SM-A515U using Tapatalk
 

Heres one of him hitting 104

 

 

Edited March 31, 2023 by hskr4life

[Huskerpapa]

If it is straight, it is hittable.  A good hitter can get the timing down

[throwback]

Updated Boyd's World's RPI after the weekend

 

Nebraska - #104

• Vandy - #8 - W
• Illinois - #47 - WWL
• Ole Miss - #49 - L
• Michigan - #59 - 3 away
• Maryland  - #61 - 3 away
• Abilene Christian - #69 - L
• Iowa - #73 - 3 away
• bluebirds - #84 - L 1 home, 1 away
• Hawaii - #94 - W
• San Diego - #111 - LLLT
• Kansas St - #119 - 1 away
• Nicholls - #139 - WWL
• South Alabama - #153 - WWW
• Penn St - #157 - 3 home
• Illinois St - #184 - WW
• North Dakota St - #227 - W, - 1 home
• Omaha - #234 - L - 1 home, 1 away
• TAM-Corpus Christi - #217 - W
• Minnesota - #230 - 3 home
• Purdue - #261 - 3 away
• Northwestern - #277 - 3 home
• Northern Colorado - #290 - WW
• South Dakota St - #291 - 1 home

Other B1G teams:

• Indiana - #22
• Rutgers - #35
• Michigan State - #62
• Ohio State - #114

------

• 3-2 vs Top 50 RPI
• 4-4 vs Top 100
• 26 games scheduled vs sub-150 RPI (9-1 so far)

Our RPI bumped about 10 spots thanks to some jumps from opponents - South Alabama, Hawaii, and Nicholls all jumped quite a bit. Would be a big help if USA can keep it going in the right direction.

 

Iowa & the bluebirds took huge nose dives, though. Illinois is going in the wrong direction, too.

 

With Michigan's jump the past few weeks, this weekend becomes even bigger for us. Don't have a lot of chances for RPI helping wins the rest of the year, so this weekend is a big one. Plus it's on the road, so we get an RPI bonus if we can win the series. Couple this weekend with road series at Maryland & Iowa and these are some big chances for us to push that RPI upward. Gotta win.

 

Not sure I've seen a team plummet in the rankings over a 2+ week span midway thru the season quite like Ohio State. Dropped nearly 80 spots in that time.

 

 

By the way, Vandy is #8 in RPI ... but that's only the 5th best RPI in the SEC. Yikes. 9 SEC teams in the Top 25 RPI. The last 2 national champs are 12th and 13th in the SEC in RPI right now ... and they're still Top 52 overall. 

 

We need to schedule at least one SEC series at neutral sites or on the road each year and get some of that RPI boost. 

 

Edited April 4, 2023 by throwback

[brfrad]

Some of scheduling is luck.

 

Last year's RPI's of our opponents

 

San Diego 50 4 games

South Alabama 73 3 games

Vandy 9 1 game

Hawaii 114 1 game

Ole Miss 7 1 game

Northern Colorado 297 2 games

Illinois State 186 3 games

Omaha 213 3 games

Nicholls 178 3 games

Creighton 88 3 games

Illinois 76 3 games

North Dakota State 129 2 games

Texas A&M Corpus Christi 185 1 game

Abilene Christian 152 1 game

Michigan 57 3 games

Northwestern 162 3 games

Iowa 61 3 games

South Dakota State 217 1 game

Minnesota 246 3 games

Maryland 13 3 games

Penn State 148 3 games

Purdue 135 3 games

 

Last year RPI

1 - 50   9 games

51 - 100 15 games

101 - 150 9 games

151 - 200 11 games

201 + 9 games

 

This year RPI

1 - 50   5 games

51 - 100 13 games

101 - 150  8 games

151 - 200  8 games

201 +  15 games

[Bugeaters1]

 

[Bugeaters1]

https://www.warrennolan.com/baseball/2023/rpi-live

[throwback]

57 minutes ago, brfrad said:

Some of scheduling is luck.

....

Absolutely agree - we didn't set out to schedule poorly, but USD and USA are not playing as well as expected. And our midweek games are what they are because of where we're located - not much we can do with those unless we can convince Arkansas or Missouri to play a home and home on Tuesdays. It'd be nice to replace 2 with NDSU or Northern Colorado with Mizzou, for example. Get a bit more of that SEC scheduling bump for RPI purposes. 

 

Making the problem far worse is that the bottom of the B1G has horrible RPIs - and we play all of them. Just bad luck. Hopefully, it'll play in our favor in chasing a B1G regular season title at least.

 

I don't think Bolt wants to schedule as tough as Erstad typically did -- which is a good strategy, I think, as the B1G has improved enough since we joined that you don't have to kill yourself in the non-con. (Still some work to do to get the league back to where it was before the terrible 2021 decision to play conference-only.) However, when you don't schedule extra tough, you do run the risk of having a bad luck scheduling year on occasion like this one.

 

[hskr4life]

On 4/3/2023 at 8:15 PM, throwback said:

Updated Boyd's World's RPI after the weekend

 

Nebraska - #104

• Vandy - #8 - W
• Illinois - #47 - WWL
• Ole Miss - #49 - L
• Michigan - #59 - 3 away
• Maryland  - #61 - 3 away
• Abilene Christian - #69 - L
• Iowa - #73 - 3 away
• bluebirds - #84 - L 1 home, 1 away
• Hawaii - #94 - W
• San Diego - #111 - LLLT
• Kansas St - #119 - 1 away
• Nicholls - #139 - WWL
• South Alabama - #153 - WWW
• Penn St - #157 - 3 home
• Illinois St - #184 - WW
• North Dakota St - #227 - W, - 1 home
• Omaha - #234 - L - 1 home, 1 away
• TAM-Corpus Christi - #217 - W
• Minnesota - #230 - 3 home
• Purdue - #261 - 3 away
• Northwestern - #277 - 3 home
• Northern Colorado - #290 - WW
• South Dakota St - #291 - 1 home

Other B1G teams:

• Indiana - #22
• Rutgers - #35
• Michigan State - #62
• Ohio State - #114

------

• 3-2 vs Top 50 RPI
• 4-4 vs Top 100
• 26 games scheduled vs sub-150 RPI (9-1 so far)

Our RPI bumped about 10 spots thanks to some jumps from opponents - South Alabama, Hawaii, and Nicholls all jumped quite a bit. Would be a big help if USA can keep it going in the right direction.

 

Iowa & the bluebirds took huge nose dives, though. Illinois is going in the wrong direction, too.

 

With Michigan's jump the past few weeks, this weekend becomes even bigger for us. Don't have a lot of chances for RPI helping wins the rest of the year, so this weekend is a big one. Plus it's on the road, so we get an RPI bonus if we can win the series. Couple this weekend with road series at Maryland & Iowa and these are some big chances for us to push that RPI upward. Gotta win.

 

Not sure I've seen a team plummet in the rankings over a 2+ week span midway thru the season quite like Ohio State. Dropped nearly 80 spots in that time.

 

 

By the way, Vandy is #8 in RPI ... but that's only the 5th best RPI in the SEC. Yikes. 9 SEC teams in the Top 25 RPI. The last 2 national champs are 12th and 13th in the SEC in RPI right now ... and they're still Top 52 overall. 

 

We need to schedule at least one SEC series at neutral sites or on the road each year and get some of that RPI boost. 

 

Up 21 spots to #83 RPI since this post!  Been a good week so far.  
 

NDSU beat Texas Tech last night.  Shock!

 

KSU rolled last night and is doing fairly well in Big 12 play. (Edit: they gave up 5 to Texas in the 8th and lost 6-5 SMH)

 

Keep winning those mid-weeks!

Edited April 8, 2023 by hskr4life

[throwback]

B1G standings are really strange through 3 weeks - Ohio St and Illinois are in real trouble for making the B1G tourney at this point.

 

If the B1G tourney started today, Iowa and Rutgers would be out / Minny and NW would be in. NW is 2-18 in non-con and 3-3 in conference. Minny is 5-19 in non-con and also 3-3 in conference. Unfortunately, that kind of stuff hurts the B1G's RPI and reputation in the eyes of the NCAA committee.

 

Very odd start to the conference schedule. Because it goes fast, getting off to a slow start is tough to overcome. After next weekend, several teams will be halfway through the conference slate already.

 

1. Indiana 7-2

2. Nebraska 4-2

     Maryland 4-2

     Michigan St 6-3

     Michigan 6-3

6. Purdue 5-4

7. Minnesota 3-3

    N'western 3-3

9. Iowa 2-4

    Rutgers 2-4

11. Illinois 3-6

12. Ohio St 2-7

13. Penn St 1-5

 

[hskr4life]

A 4-0 week is tough, but almost expected this next week.  NW… surprising at 3-3… still isn’t that good.  It’s almost pathetic that they have 3 wins.

 

Bad thing is, this is only a week where we can move 1 direction.  That direction isn’t really up.  We can greatly drop though.  
 

RPI wise, we’re up to 82.  Michigan is still ahead of us at 80.  Unfortunately, this week we play Omaha (244) and Northwestern (268).

[throwback]

Updated Boyd's World's RPI after the weekend

 

Nebraska - #78

• Vandy - #5 - W
• Ole Miss - #40 - L
• Iowa - #58 - 3 away
• Abilene Christian - #61 - L
• Maryland  - #72 - 3 away
• Michigan - #79 - WLW
• San Diego - #80 - LLLT
• Illinois - #93 - WWL
• Kansas St - #97 - W
• bluebirds - #133 - L 1 home, 1 away
• Hawaii - #138 - W
• South Alabama - #140 - WWW
• Nicholls - #142 - WWL
• Illinois St - #165 - WW
• Penn St - #177 - 3 home
• TAM-Corpus Christi - #199 - W
• North Dakota St - #200 - W, - 1 home
• Omaha - #240 - L - 1 home, 1 away
• Minnesota - #247 - 3 home
• Purdue - #259 - 3 away
• Northwestern - #269 - 3 home
• South Dakota St - #291 - 1 home
• Northern Colorado - #299 - WW

Other B1G teams:

• Indiana - #17
• Rutgers - #47
• Michigan State - #63
• Ohio State - #108

------

• 1-1 vs Top 50 RPI
• 6-7-1 vs Top 100
• 23 games scheduled vs sub-150 RPI (6-1 so far)

 

We climb nearly 25 spots by winning 3 of 4 on the road - great week! And we're getting more opponents into that Top 100, which is helpful. South Alabama moved out of the bottom 150 as well. 

 

Illinois falls from #47 to #93 after dropping 2 of 3 to NW and losing to Illinois St. The lesson? N'western is an RPI killer. We can't lose to this team at home, or we'll give back a lot of our gains from last week. We'll probably give back some of them anyway, playing #240 and #269 all at home this week. 

 

Just need wins this week before a huge week for RPI purposes at Iowa the following week.

 

[hskr4life]

6 games left against RPI under 100.  All six of them are on the road.  Any wins we pick up here are good wins and a series win in either of the two series would be great!

 

5 games left against RPI 100-199.  With having 4 at home and the other against the blue turds, it wouldn't be the biggest reach in the world to ask for a 4-1 record here.  5-0 really nice.  3-2 would be meh, but acceptable probably.  2 or less wins would be bad.

 

13 games left against RPI 200+   Realistically would like to go 11-2 against those 13.  Under 10 wins would be bad.  12-13 wins would be a really nice positive.  

 

Let's say we go 2-4, 4-1, and 11-2 in the remaining RPI ranges.  That would put us at 35-17 heading into the B1G tournament.  I wouldn't exactly feel comfortable in that situation, but we'd have an outside shot.  Flip those 2 away series in the Top 100 and be sitting at 37-15 and I'd be feeling a lot better.

 

So basically, the story is... as it always was.  Beat the RPI 200+ teams heavily.  Win most of your 100-199 games, and win as many as you can within the top 100.  Especially since quite a few were on the road.

[throwback]

Having only 2 Top 50 games is killing us. The committee gets the impression we didn't try to schedule tough. The only way to counteract that is to win and win some more. Get our winning pct as high as possible.

 

Just for comparison, Kentucky is on pace for 40 Top 50 games. It's tough to compete when the SEC gets 3 Top 50 games every week and when we had some bad luck on our schedule. 

 

I don't think the selection committee would take 14 SEC teams, but it might take 11 or 12. That's going to eat up 1/3 of the at-large bids. Ole Miss is the  next-to-last SEC team in the RPI at #40. Unbelievable.

 

Edited April 11, 2023 by throwback

[hskr4life]

18-8 against teams outside of Nebraska and 0-3 against teams from Nebraska.  That's just.... wow.

[throwback]

Maybe we can get the NCAA committee to ignore our in-state results and focus on our results against teams from Tennessee? 

 

Last night was the epitome of "that's baseball." Omaha gets 3 sac flies / we go 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position. How many 0-2 pitches did an Omaha hitter get a favorable result on? Four? Five? One is too many. We get a runner caught stealing and another picked off base / Omaha takes advantage of 2 defensive miscues for us. Omaha gets a wind-blown 2-run HR. 

 

I mean we slept through the first few innings, and that's on us. Omaha takes this game very seriously, and it's up to us to match their intensity. And I have no idea why coaches didn't send Burnham to try to score from second on that last play in the 9th when it became clear Omaha was trying to turn the double play. If he rounds the 3rd base bag hard, the play is in his vision, and he can take off for home when the first basement dives for the return throw. If he's going hard the entire way, he probably scores standing up with his speed and wins the game while the Omaha first baseman is arguing the call.

 

But last night shows exactly why even the best teams lose 8-12 games every year. Sometimes, it just isn't your night.

 

Hopefully we got it out of our system. Need to go 3-0 this weekend, no question.

 

Edited April 12, 2023 by throwback