The Division I baseball committee did plenty right with the 2023 field of 64, but RPI reform remains essential, and the time to act is now.
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Some takeaways:
• Out of the 16 teams we projected as regional hosts Sunday morning, 15 of them were named hosts by the committee. We were surprised
South Carolina earned one of those host spots, and we believe the Gamecocks were less deserving than Campbell, Southern Miss and Boston College, so it was surprising to see the committee opt for a record eighth host out of the SEC when it had several other very worthy hosts to choose from — and committee chairman
John Cohen (Auburn’s athletics director) made a point to comment on how strong the hosting cases were for Campbell, USM and BC. But when push came to shove, the committee opted for an eighth SEC team that finished 4-11 down the stretch — and seeded the Gamecocks higher than Alabama.
• That was another eyebrow-raiser: Alabama drew the No. 16 seed despite a No. 11 RPI, an 18-16 aggregate SEC record, and a 17-14 mark against the top 50. It’s hard to defend Alabama (our projected No. 11 seed) ranking behind the Gamecocks and Auburn, which finished with a No. 19 RPI, an 18-15 aggregate SEC record, a 15-16 top 50 record, and notably just a 1-3 record against the Crimson Tide.
Auburn’s No. 13 seed is particularly strange considering how hard the committee leaned on RPI in its bubble selections and on some of its host selections (giving top-10 RPI teams Indiana State and South Carolina host spots thanks to top-10 RPIs, despite other significant flaws in their resumés). But when it came to Auburn, the committee put RPI aside and took the No. 19 team in those rankings, and seeded it above an Alabama team that had better or equal metrics across the board. We don’t object to Auburn being a host — winning 18 SEC games is almost always host-worthy. But the pecking order was strange, and the optics of it are not great considering Cohen’s day job.
• The committee included two bubble teams that were not part of our final projected field last night: Arizona and Louisiana. Both both of those teams were among our “first four out,” so neither inclusion feels crazy, and indeed we all argued last night that we thought the Cajuns
should be in the field, but two of our three projectors didn’t think the committee
wouldinclude them. So it was good to see a 40-win Louisiana team that went an aggregate 22-14 in the No. 5 RPI conference get rewarded with an at-large bid
• When Cohen became chairman last summer, he said he wanted to try to reform the process, to come up with some better way of evaluating teams than the RPI, whose flaws he has repeatedly acknowledged. It has become commonplace for teams to cancel bad RPI games late in the season to improve their postseason chances, and that’s because the RPI can punish teams even if they win games against low-ranked opponents. That’s a problem that Cohen wants to fix, and he said there has been plenty of talk about how to fix it. But there has been no action, and Cohen’s time as chairman will end in August with the same old system still in place, unless the committee gets serious about enacting reform, and not just talking about it.
“There’s two things I have a real concern about right now, one of them is cancelling ballgames. And I understand why coaches are doing it, I’m not calling anybody out. I just think we need to create a system that disincentives cancelling games,” Cohen said.