RPI Watch- The Second Half of the SEC Season Starts Now
It is time for RPI watch post of the week and the bad news is MSU has struggled as we all know and now our RPI is 23 after playing Samford and getting a win. The good news is with half the season left everything is still on the table. But it's going to take a lot of work to get there. These next two weeks are critical as far as hosting goes and while I wouldn't go so far as to say that they're must wins we probably need to go at least 4-2 and not have any bad losses- really we only two opportunities left for that with Memphis and Nicholls. Winning the Governor's Cup of course would help and they will be a big game for both MSU and Ole Miss. I have seen some predictive web sites and one of them- the PEAR rankings- has us finishing with 15 SEC wins. If that plays out, I do not believe that would be good enough to host. But as I said before, there is a lot of baseball left to be played and while I don't think 15 would be enough to host, I do think that 16 would be good enough to get us on the bubble and 17 I believe would make us a lock. The thing that a LOT of MSU fans are missing is with the SEC you basically have 3 teams that have 9-11 wins- the Texas schools and Georgia and then you three teams with 6 SEC wins or less- LSU, South Carolina, and Mizzou. That means that there are 10 SEC schools with records of 8-7 or 7-8 making the league a log jam with the top 3 teams not exactly running away with it and two of the bottom three teams not that far out of the middle group.
So, TLDR- there is LOT of parity in the SEC this year. What I think that might mean for the postseason is you're going to see teams hosting with maybe lower than normal conference win totals. I also think that winning midweek games could become a big deciding factor because when you have a bunch of teams in say the 16-14 range how do you separate them out? Well, logically you have to really look at the entire resume'. And MSU not having any bad losses so far I think could end up being beneficial as far as hosting goes AS LONG AS they win enough SEC games to start with. So, to get to 16 wins MSU needs to 9-6 the second half of the SEC season so these next two weeks will be really big as far as that goes. And as far as National Seeds go, 10-5 might be enough. 11-4 is probably going to make us a lock. So, the best way to get to a National Seed would be two sweep the next two weekends, win the rest of our three midweek games. Win at least 1 game against the Texas schools on the road and then win the Auburn series. If my math is correct that should get us to 17 SEC wins with no bad losses.
Now, getting Ryan McPherson back will help with this even if it's the last two series or so. You pair him with Tico then we have two aces all of a sudden again. Then we have to figure out what to do with Stone and Foster. Stone to me is the kind of guy that is going to give you 5 innings but he's going to give up some runs in the process. And then Foster is the guy that could look like he has turned the corner one weekend and then the next he might not get out of the second. Right now though two of his last three starts have been pretty good. And then you have Chris Billingsley who I think you have to keep at midweek for now. And he's going to be pretty important the next three Tuesdays. I would say that the bullpen has been OK. The biggest complaint I have is overextending Ben Davis all the time. But there are a lot of good options and watching Jack Bauer develop has been fascinating to say the least.
The elephant in the room has been the hitting. I know slumps happen in baseball but I do find it a little bizarre that this team just seemed to all of a sudden go away from what was working. The offense did look much better against Samford. There were guys taking pitches and getting walks and then there were guys using the whole field better and we executed some small ball pretty well including a nice hit and run with I think the hitter was Teel but I know the runner was Chance. And we scored some runs with two outs and we got a run rule on the road. So, I know it was Samford but at the same time I think there were a lot of promising things that happened. And maybe I'm naive but I really think those things will carry over in the weekend.
Now, I'm going to kind of vent here a little bit. I don't think the crowds put too much pressure on the players. Our guys actually swept Vanderbilt in front of even bigger crowds earlier in the season. And I sure as hell don't think Charlie Winfield's State 1878 web site cursed the team either. I know a lot of MSU fans think that it cute and funny to say that and then you have the "science" bullshit that's equally as stupid. None of that has anything to do with anything. What it comes down to is our guys aren't playing well enough and they're not executing. Once we go back to what we were doing the first seven weeks of the season we will be fine.
