2023 college baseball/softball thread

UT 9
ut 0

bottom of the 7th

 

I suspect that being on the baseball committee is one of the harder NCAA selection gigs. How much weight do you place on conference tournaments, which are different in form than any other sport’s tournament? The dynamics of pitcher workload are unique. (In the SEC football championship game, Saban isn’t gonna say, ‘Let’s let the third-string QB play today and save the starter for the playoff.’) If I’m coaching LSU or Wake Forest, I’m not gonna use my real pitchers to excess in an exhibition event.

 

You put very little weight on conference tournaments, because the top schools put little weight on the results

 

That would be my thinking.

 

Had a few spare moments, so to update things on the Left Coast (since there's more to life than the SEC, right?)

WCC: Santa Clara defeats Portland 6-0 to win tourney title.

Pac-12: Arizona mercied Stanford 14-4 last night, plays Oregon tonight at 7 PT.

Mountain West: San Jose State moves on to the championship round after beating host Fresno State 11-8 this afternoon. Plays Air Force again at 6 tonight. If game tomorrow.

 

I noticed the Stanford score. Top-5 national team that should be comfortable in getting to host both of the first two weeks. If they threw in the towel and decided to save themselves for what matters, I applaud them.

 

Stanford had a 6-4 lead v Oregon in the 9th on Thursday night in pool play. Both teams were 1-0 in pool play. Instead of using their closer, they used some guy with an 11.00 ERA. Of course Oregon tied the score, then won in the 10th to win the pool and advance to the semis.

Stanford was in regardless, but since Oregon won the pool, USC got knocked out. Had Stanford won the pool, USC would have advanced as the wild card as the highest-seeded 1-1 team (not that I feel bad for SC, but ...).

What happened in your 56-game regular season should always be 100x more important than a conference tournament.

 

Can't think of the last time Stanford didn't host a regional.

Quick question: Mountain West is using video review in the tournament. Is this universal?

 

God forbid we have college baseball games for the fun of it.

Also, the filler guys in the bullpen are not only getting used this week but during regionals as well, and also Omaha if they are lucky. (Weirdly, the middle portion of the tournament is less reliant on the back-end arms.)

 

Now I'm kind of hoping Southern Miss gets sent to Nashville for a regional.

 

Wow. That is a really interesting factoid re: Stanford on Thursday.

 

They didn't make the tournament in 2015 or '16, and in 2014 they went to Indiana. They've hosted every season since 2017.