Tough weekend for ranked teams

[BrunswickDawg]

Generally, winning more close games than you lose. That can hide issues (if you have a talented team with a focus issue, they're probably going to win a lot of games that shouldn't have been close to begin with), but it's a good enough metric over time. I was really referring more to last year's team folding than this years, but we definitely caught some bad losses early on. How much of that was "just baseball" versus us just not having things figured out yet versus not being clutch (I assume more of the former two than the latter one; but it's possible players may have still been expecting the other shoe to drop in close games early on because of last year's team and it got in their head).

Gotcha. Makes sense. I think close games definitely got in the head of the '22 an '23 teams. The '22 team blew something like 15 leads after the 7th inning - and I think that carried over some last year.
Like all stats and general analysis in baseball, you really have to look at the total package and put it in some context. As you note, the "just baseball" factor looms large and it is a long season. How many years from 2011-2018 did we start off kind of scuffling, get to the half way point in the SEC schedule and then catch fire in the back half and clinch post season - cause it seemed like almost every year.

I think this year the early losses in close games has been more about finding the right lineup and roles out of the pen. We seem to be productive in close games - and very good at making games competitive after getting down early.

[Commercecomet24]

Gotcha. Makes sense. I think close games definitely got in the head of the '22 an '23 teams. The '22 team blew something like 15 leads after the 7th inning - and I think that carried over some last year.
Like all stats and general analysis in baseball, you really have to look at the total package and put it in some context. As you note, the "just baseball" factor looms large and it is a long season. How many years from 2011-2018 did we start off kind of scuffling, get to the half way point in the SEC schedule and then catch fire in the back half and clinch post season - cause it seemed like almost every year.

I think this year the early losses in close games has been more about finding the right lineup and roles out of the pen. We seem to be productive in close games - and very good at making games competitive after getting down early.

I heard Bobby Cox say one time, You will win a third of your games, you will lose a third of your games, it's what you do with the other third that makes you a winner or a loser and if you study the game that pretty much holds true.