From the very beginning of this series, we’ve been saying the same thing, week in, week out, every Monday (or Tuesday or, that one time, Wednesday): Auburn is one of the best teams in the SEC. Maybe not the best. But as close to it as anyone who is not South Carolina can claim to be. And eventually, thanks to better luck and an easier schedule, the standings would reflect that.
And despite Auburn’s Friday night loss to the visiting Vols, after the 18-0 beatdown Saturday and 9-2 cruise-job Sunday, they finally do. Arkansas finally got around to facing the most consistent team in the league in the Gamecocks and even at home, managed to drop all three games; Ole Miss has finally started to see the other statistical shoe drop and lost two of three in Tuscaloosa. Result: not only a clinched trip to Hoover, but a perch all alone atop the SEC West standings, 17-11 and a game ahead of both the Hogs and Rebels.
But can they stay there through the SEC’s final weekend? How else might the final league standings shake out? It’s time to turn one more time to the SEC baseball Pythagorean win-loss rankings. Last week’s edition is here; for information on the formula used and what the point is, click here or here.
RESULTS
@Florida d. Georgia: 4-3, 4-3, 9-3
@Auburn d. Tennessee: 3-9, 18-0, 9-2
South Carolina d. @Arkansas: 3-2, 5-0, 5-3
@Kentucky d. LSU: 11-9, 9-4, 6-4
@Alabama d. Ole Miss: 4-5, 4-1, 6-3
Vanderbilt d. @Miss. St.: 13-8, 13-7, 14-4
RANKINGS
Teams are ranked by their collected Pythagorean wins (or “expected” wins), followed by their actual wins, difference off the Pythag (i.e. how lucky or unlucky they’ve been), and runs scored/runs allowed.
1. South Carolina, 18.692. (Actual W’s: 20, +1.308 difference, RS/RA = 180/120)
2. Auburn, 18.428 (W’s: 17, -1.428, 239/163)
3. Vanderbilt, 16.457 (W’s: 15, -1.457, 161/116)
Note here that Vandy has fewer Pythagorean wins than Florida or Arkansas, but that’s because they’ve played two fewer games after the Nashville flooding. They rank higher because their Pythagorean win percentage is better and if they’d played 27 games instead of 25, they’d be at around 17.7+ wins.
4. Florida, 17.597 (W’s: 20, +2.403, 171/125)
5. Arkansas, 17.391 (W’s: 16, -1.391, 187/139)
6. LSU, 13.155 (W’s: 12, -1.155, 193/198)
7. Kentucky, 12.775 (W’s: 12, -.775, 181/191)
8. Ole Miss, 12.641 (W’s: 16, +3.359, 152/162)
9. Tennessee, 12.188 (W’s: 12, -.188, 166/183)
10. Alabama, 12.083 (W’s: 12, -.083, 171/190)
11. Miss. St., 8.613 (W’s: 5, -3.613, 180/263)
12. Georgia, 4.764 (W’s: 3, -1.764, 115/237)
OBSERVATIONS
— Gah, what a disastrous weekend that was for Arkansas. They go from 1st to 5th according to the Pythag and of course, more importantly, from controlling their own destiny in the West to needing a series win at a potentially-superior Vanderbilt team just to stay in the hunt.
— For Auburn, it looks like winning this weekend’s series would do the trick in terms of clinching the West. Even if the Hogs swept Vandy (unlikely), both teams would finish on 19 wins and Auburn would take the division thanks to the head-to-head tiebreaker.
Even in the event Auburn lost the series, as long as they picked up one victory they could still have a claim if Arkansas took two of three in Nashville; that would leave the Tigers, Rebels, and Hogs all sitting on 18 wins and no way to break the tie head-to-head. (All three would have gone 1-1 against the other two, if that makes sense.) I don’t know what the next tiebreaker is or where to look it up; if someone wants to help out in the comments, that’d be cool. UPDATE: Ole Miss would end up winning out after Arkansas was eliminated from the tiebreak due to the sweep against Carolina. See below.
Though winning two in Oxford won’t be easy, honestly, Auburn can’t have asked for a whole lot more, I don’t think. They get one series against a level of competition not all that different from the Kentucky and Tennessee teams they’ve already taken 2 of 3 from, and markedly worse than the Arkansas team they managed the same against. And if they get those two, they win the division. Simple. There’s a reason I said last week that if Pythag was going to pick a winner in the West heading into last weekend, it would have picked the Tigers.
— Of course, it would have been nice if the Rebels had dropped just one close game somewhere along the line to make things all but academic. Ole Miss is a fairly ridiculous 11-0 in games decided by two runs or less, a just-as-ridiculous 8-0 in one-run contests.
Admittedly, that may not be entirely luck. A Rebel fan going by the handle rebel84 had this to say in response to last week’s rankings:
I’ve figured out why we are such an outlier in these rankings. It’s 3 reasons.
1) We don’t hit well at all, near the bottom of the SEC in every important hitting category.
2) We have a really good closer.
3) The rest of our bullpen is really bad.
So, in short, what this leads to is a lot of low scoring, close games for us, in general, especially because our starters have been pretty good. The difference comes in the times that we have the 3-2 lead the time we have the 3-2 deficit.
When we’re down, or tied, in a game, we go to other relievers, who generally suck and get knocked around, turning close games into games decided by 3 runs or more.
When we’re up by 1 or 2 runs, we bring in our closer, who is generally lights out. Our bats don’t extend the lead, because they suck, and we end up winning 1 or 2 run games.
I’m enough of a geek to think “luck” still plays its part–11-0?–but I’m sure there’s a lot of truth in this. Which makes Auburn’s game plan brutally simple: jump on the starters, get in to the weak side of Ole Miss’s bullpen, and cruise. Don’t let Brett Huber–the closer in question here, who has 10 saves on the season and held Alabama hitless over two innings to ice Ole Miss’s lone win over the weekend–come in with a lead.
— Pythag is usually pretty sharp, I think, but even it can’t foresee things like “LSU completely collapses and Kentucky winds up taking 5 of 6 from Carolina and the Bayou Bengals.” The ‘Cats have to be the substantial favorite now to snag the last trip to Hoover, what with their final series coming against Georgia as Tennessee and Alabama only eliminate each other.
— Then again, the way they’re playing, can we count on LSU to get it done against Miss. St.? The Bulldogs are bad, but they’re not that bad, and they’re long since due to pull out a close game somewhere along the line.
Another point about LSU: a few weeks ago I opined that the league had divided itself into two perfect six-team groups of haves and have-nots. Now? It’s 5 on one side, 7 on the other. The gap between the No. 5 Hogs and No. 6 Tigers is twice as wide as the gap between LSU and No. 10 Tide.
— Florida vs. Carolina, straight-up, for the overall SEC title. Both teams have been on the fortunate side, but one’s been way more fortunate than the other. So I’d back the ‘Cocks.
— We’ll see how things play out next week–if Ole Miss and the Gators each win their divisions on the strength of two one-run victories I’ll eat my words–but it looks like luck won’t play much of a role in deciding the final standings. Only three teams are more than a game-and-half ahead or behind of their Pythag, and one of those is Miss. St.
— Lastly, a shout-out to these Auburn Tigers. The streak is over, the drought is snapped, the past really is the past. War Eagle, gentlemen.
Photo by Leffie Dailey.
I took my whole family (wife + 5 year-old+3 yo+1yo) for down to the Plains for the Saturday game. I actually felto a little sorry for those poor UT pitchers. One reliever threw 6 pitches: 4 straight balls and 2 straight home runs. I imagine he had a hard time sleeping that night.
By the 5th inning I actually started to hopeing UT’s pitching would improve so I could quit hearing complaints about the heat and whining for trips to the concession stand and we could finally mosey on up Donahue for some Mama’s Love.
Wifey has a short post on her blog about the trip…
http://5powellsinatlanta.blogspot.com/2010/05/take-me-out-to-ball-game.html
my gosh i need typing classes.
In the event of a 3 way tie like you describe, the next tiebreaker is record against the highest SEC tourney seed (must be common opponent). Since you didn’t play Florida, the highest common seed will be South Carolina. Ole Miss and Auburn both went 1-2 against SC. Arkansas went 0-3, so they would be eliminated, and the tiebreaker head to head between Ole Miss and AU would go to Ole Miss.
All 3 teams would be West champs at 18-12, but Ole Miss would get the 2 seed in the SEC tourney.
I posted on a previous entry like this that I finally figured out why we defy the stats, and it’s easy to explain based on what we do well, and it’s really 4 things that explain it, not 3 that I posted on the other column.
1) We usually get good starting pitching, which means we usually have the opposition to a fairly low run total late in games.
2) Our bats are awful, near the bottom of the league, which usually means we have a low run total late.
3) Our closer has been lights out in SEC play, so if we’re on the plus side of the 3-2 or 4-2 type lead, we tend to hold on for a close win.
4) The rest of our pen has been pretty bad, so if we’re tied or on the down side of a close game late and we bring in another reliever, the game usually gets out of hand.
I’ve seen this formula play out each of the last two weekends. We’re 11-0 in games decided by 1 or 2 runs in SEC play. That’s because when we have a lead, our offense is incapable of extending it most times, and when we don’t have a lead, we turn tie games or 1 run deficits pretty quickly into 3+ run defeats. You’ll get to see it first hand this weekend.
Your goal this weekend should be to get through our starting pitching each day either with a lead or with the game tied. If our starters get into the late innings with a close lead, we can and will probably beat you. If you can do enough to force us to go to the rest of our pen, you’ll open it up on us, and we won’t be able to come back.
Thanks for the info on the tiebreak, rebel84 (and on the Rebel’s situation in general).
Alex, your wife’s old-school Auburn baseball hat is awesome. I had one kinda like that, ages ago, but a new puppy got hold of it. Sigh.
Excellent breakdown on the status of the season going into the final series.
I don’t think Ole Miss will hold up on using the closer if losing by 1-3 runs. This is time to pull out all the stops. How much of this weekend’s games will be on TV?
I don’t like our chances this weekend if you want an Ole Miss fan’s opinion. Reason why is that our bats don’t hit against most pitchers, save one weekend against MSU (they’re awful) and one weekend against LSU when the winds were blowing out at 30 mph.
Auburn hits the ball. Even though our first two starters are really good, I think you’ll be able to scratch something on them. I’m holding out hope we can win a couple 1 run games and steal the West, but in reality, that’s tough to do.
We’ve been outscored on the year in SEC play 162-152. It’s rare you can overcome that. It does happen sometimes though, even in the majors. I believe it was the 2008 Diamondbacks that were outscored on the season over a 162 game schedule but still managed to go 90-72 and make the playoffs. They outplayed their Pythagorean win total by something like 14 wins over the entire season, but that’s rare.
It’s more likely to see that happen in a smaller sample, like the 30 game schedule of the SEC, but not over 162.
I know a lot of folks around here don’t like Tate, but go to his site and check out the offensive baseball stats. Auburn’s numbers look ridiculous. HR number is off the charts.
Went to the Saturday game, hadn’t been to Plainsmen park since 08′
WHEN DID THEY PUT UP THE EFFIN SCREEN DOWN THE FRIGGIN SIDELINES???
That used to be 1/2 the fun of goin to the game, watching inattentive saps get nailed by foul balls, I mean, catching a foul ball. Plus, it makes you feel like your watching a game from behind bars.
Closest thing I saw saturday was a 5 yr old that almost got nailed in the side of the head by one of the Auburn pitchers errant long toss throws, you see, theres this little stretch near the monster thats not screened.
Seriously, that pitch was a good 85mph, missed the little brats head by maybe 6 inches, and rebounded back onto the field before his mom realized how close she was to losin a tax deduction…
TAKE DOWN THE SCREEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
See you in Omaha,
Frank Drackman, MD
I LOL’d.