DJ Stewart Photo by Jeff Romance courtesy Seminoles.com
In the quest for the NCAA Regionals, especially in the College Baseball Regional Hosts and College Baseball National Seeds races, you can’t squander opportunities or suffer bad losses in your park. If home really is where the heart is then it can be noted that home is the last place you want to lose a ball game, much less to a rival, even less still to a squad that came into the game with a College Baseball RPI ranked at 219!
While everyone is still focused on the top series in the land between College Baseball Top 25 No. 1 ranked Texas A&M and No. 4 LSU, even though it’s over, a lot of vital games are occurring elsewhere across the college baseball landscape. A couple of games may have shaken up the next round of NCAA Regionals Projections that will be released this week.
ACC Baseball: No. 11 Florida State Stomps No. 13 Miami, 15-5, Takes Series
Now, this series hasn’t had the big RPI movement that I usually like to discuss in this column as a total swing of two ranking spots has occurred with the Florida State Seminoles advancing a spot and the Miami Hurricanes dropping a spot. However, the significance of this series for me is two-fold for both the surprise of it and the College Baseball National Seeds implications that stem from it for my projections this week.
Coming into the weekend I had the winner of this match-up set to take the No. 8 spot in my National Seeds Projections and it looks like the Seminoles understood the importance of the match-up, raised the “people’s eyebrow” and took to laying the smack down, Rock-style, on his alma-mater Hurricanes’ pitching staff on Saturday with 15 runs on 17 hits in a 15-5 stomping of their rival.
“Florida State has been dominant since getting swept at Notre Dame as they’ve reeled of seven in a row while going 3-0 against Top 25 teams in the state of Florida.” - Minimalist Mark, College Baseball RPI Analyst
Slugger DJ Stewart led the charge with a 3-for-3 day at the dish and three runs scored while Miami hurler Andrew Suarez took it on the chin, surrendering 12 runs (10 earned) on 11 hits and two walks over 3.1 innings of work in his first loss on the year.
Florida State established dominance over the Canes in an 8-7, 17-inning win in game one and then absolutely obliterated them to take game two and propel themselves into a National Seed in this week’s projections.
Ryan Kellogg courtesy Sun Devil Athletics
Pac 12 Baseball: No. 10 Arizona State Drops Costly Home Loss To Tennessee Tech
One thing that emphatically cannot be done if you have any hope of sniffing out a National Seed is to drop a home game to a team with an RPI ranked below 200. The No. 15 Arizona State Sun Devils did just that as they dropped a 7-4 decision to the smoldering Tennessee Tech Golden Eagles on Saturday at Phoenix Municipal Stadium.
“The RPI is your absolute worst enemy if you lose at home to a team that is ranked low in RPI, especially if that LOW is beLOW 200!” - Literal Larry, College Baseball RPI Analyst
Tennessee Tech has won 10-of-13 and took it to one of the nation’s premiere closers in the Sun Devils’ Ryan Burr as catcher Jordan Hawkins hit a two-run triple to cap off the Golden Eagles four-run, ninth-inning, game-winning rally that took down Arizona State.
The loss shook Arizona State down 10 spots in RPI (from 14 to 24) overnight and made my decision on the aforementioned No. 8 team in the National Seed discussion that much easier.
Ryan Kellogg put together another solid outing with three earned over 6.2 innings but Burr’s short night, only two-thirds of an inning, aided by a wild pitch and an error by Colby Woodmansee led to the costly home loss.
RPI Rule No. 4 “Don’t ever, EVER, lose at home…EVER!”
