My thoughts about this week:
The Red Raiders looked good in a five-games-in-five-days scenario. You’d certainly loved to have had the sweep but 4-1 in that situation isn’t bad at all. Michigan isn’t the best series win of all time, but they’re a ranked Power 5 team and that’s nothing to complain about. Coach Tadlock mentioned that he thinks the Wolverines will be in the hunt for the Big 10 title, some of that is probably a little coach speak, they have a TON of work to do in tightening up their defense and cleaning up errors, but they do have strong pitching and their bats aren’t worthless.
I was very pleased with both Micah Dallas and Caleb Kilian this weekend, they were both very sharp. From the relief standpoint, Taylor Floyd came in and absolutely fanned batters, that was fun to see and a nice step forward for him. It was just announced that Dallas will get the Friday night start against Kansas State, Kilian will be on Saturday, and either Lanning or Montgomery will go on Sunday.
Each week I’ll bring you a roundup of all of the rankings I can find out there on the interwebs. I’ll effort to post these on Wednesday when most have updated for the week. Early in the season, I’ll hide those that haven’t come out of their winter naps yet and just bring you the active stuff.
A few things about the rankings:
Do they all matter?
No, absolutely not, most of them are worthless and only exist because a baseball/statistics nerd decided to make them. Some are an attempt by various outlets to keep RPI live rather than updated weekly by the NCAA. Many are wholly subjective in the case of those from various news outlets or composites of many rankings affected by outliers. Some also update at odd times, like on Friday.
Does that mean I won’t include them?
Also, absolutely not. I’m going to include every ranking, RPI, composite, and strength of schedule I can find. It doesn’t matter how “legit” they are, I’m going to put them on the list. I like seeing them change and move fluidly over time. It’s also nice to see that even some of the top recognized lists are subject to knee-jerk reactions.
Why include it if it doesn’t matter?
Because we count everything in baseball.