How Important are College Baseball Rankings During the Season?
College baseball is interesting from an evaluation standpoint, as it is one of the few college sports with large enough sample sizes to get an idea as to how good teams really are. But as good as those comparatively large sample sizes are for ranking teams across the sport, it is worth considering just how worthy of a fan’s attention those rankings are throughout the year.
Effectiveness of Rankings
The weekly college baseball rankings are, like in all college sports, an inexact science. With so many teams playing Division I sports, there is no way to accurately rank all of them from best to worst. So they are to be taken with a grain of salt as it is. While official rankings and power rankings like ours aren’t without their flaws, though, they do highlight teams that are playing at the highest levels in the sport.
That, of course, is where variance comes into play. Take the Florida Gators, for example. They have been at or near the top of the rankings throughout the 2018 season, but also lost to Jacksonville earlier in the season. The team has won nearly 80% of its games, but losses like that never look good. While a longer season than college basketball, for example, allows teams to win enough games to overcome a loss like that, one bad day can disproportionately impact your place in the rankings hierarchy.
Furthermore, results in the postseason don’t always line up with rankings in a sport like baseball. This is true in both the professional and college forms of the game. While in the pros, this usually means wildcard teams making a run through the playoffs, it means top seeds failing to get the job done in college baseball a decent percentage of the time.
For example, the College World Series has seen two one seeds win the tournament in the last four seasons for a success rate of 50%. Those one seeds were Vanderbilt in 2014 and Florida in 2017. But in 2015 and 2016, teams that sat below the one seed line managed to earn their way to the title. In 2015, Virginia got the job done as a three seed, while second-seeded Coastal Carolina captured the magic in 2016, proving that seeding is of course not everything in Omaha.
At any level of baseball, the team that gets the hottest with their pitching at the end of the season is going to be in the best position to win the championship. Sometimes, that team is at the top of the rankings heading into the postseason, and sometimes it isn’t. In that regard, rankings are overrated when in terms of importance throughout the season. Although these mid-season updates can be useful, there are some better ways to determine which teams are the cream of the crop.
Better Ways to Rate Teams
Roster Evaluations
Evaluating the talent of a roster is often an instructive way to figure out which teams are the best in college baseball. Having dominant players can change a team’s fortunes instantly in many cases, and spotting those players ahead of time can put a spotlight on which teams truly have the best chance to win a championship. Tools like the CBD Top 100 Countdown are perfect for fans to see who some of the best players in the country are, which a rankings poll won’t do.
Betting Odds
Another way to figure out which teams deserve top billing in college baseball is through betting odds. Odds from Betway , for example, have the Houston Astros as favorites to win the World Series as of April 26, illustrating the favoritism that pitching gets when it comes to baseball betting odds. And while the rankings may say one team should be regarded more highly than another, the odds could say something completely different through the analysis of matchups, trends, and other key information.
Pre-Season Predictions
Believe it or not, sometimes first instincts are the best instincts when it comes to ranking college baseball teams. While mid-season standings reflect recent performances, pre-season predictions can offer insight into which teams are the most talented. Injuries or bad games can hurt teams at the top of these predictions during the season, but when the postseason starts all of that goes out the window and talent is more important than the seed number next to a team’s name.
All in all, there is some value to mid-season college baseball rankings as they reward a team for their body of work in the short term. But when it comes to predicting a champion in college baseball, there are plenty of better indicators out there.
