Finally, Oregon State has cracked the top 25, coming in at #23 in the Baseball America Poll. Now the hard part: staying there when the competition heats up April 1st. Winning the next five games versus Seattle and Santa Barbara won't do much for the Beaver's ranking, but it will buoy their confidence for Pac-10 play.
As of right now, the Pitchers are undetermined.
| Date | Opponent | Pitchers | Time (PT) |
| 03/22 | Seattle | TBD | 5:35 p.m. |
| 03/23 | Seattle | TBD | 3:05 p.m. |
It will be interesting to see where Pat Casey goes with this. The permutations are practically endless, but considering Santa Barbara is the better squad he might try to get away with Cam Booser today and James Nygren tomorrow, then go with his standard rotation over the weekend. Seattle has a couple starters with good numbers (Seafth Howe, 3-0 2.12 ERA, Brandon Kizer 3-1, 3.13 ERA) and you'd figure they'd throw both these guys at Oregon State, but Seattle played a make up doubleheader on the 20th in which both these guys pitched. Looking at the rest of the staff, there's not much there. They have a guy named Max Wieldon who has a good ERA (2.89) but an 0-2 record and only 9 strikeouts in 28 innings. The Beavers handle finesse pitchers well.
On offense, Seattle has a .250 team batting average and .355 slugging percentage. Their long masher is Doug Kincaid (.333, 2HR, 9RBI, .615SLG). Stay away from him, and the Beaver's staff should find success.
Expectations should be for a two game sweep.
I’d like to see some of the frosh get a chance in an off-week. Maybe Duke or Zarosinski have something for us to see.
Who are the othes? Schultz and Child?
Not a bad point, but if they slip up and lose it will hurt come the end of the season. Losing to teams with +100 RPIs is a killer for teams on the bubble come selection time. For that reason, these games have more meaning than fans realize. In terms of RPI or ranking, there’s little to gain by winning, but a loss can be devastating.
Duke is an unknown, but based on his pedigree he is probably better than Nygren, so I don’t have any issue with that. I hear Booser is healthy–I’d pitch him game 1.
Booser is probably a go. But I’m not talking about giving the youngsters a full leash. I would figure any one of them might be good for at least three innings.
Maybe they get some middle relief time once a lead has been established?
Yeah, it would be cool for fans if Casey handled it like an MLB All-Star game and gave everyone an inning and short leash. I’d like to see some young guys.
And I’m not sure what methodology is used for the RPI. I looked at the Pac 10 schedules to date, and Stanford has understandably played the toughest schedule so far. But OSU has played tougher teams than all the other Pac 10 teams have save Hartford. It must be the Hartford numbers bringing us down.
Anyway, I think the RPI, CBN and USA/Coaches are a little off in their analysis. I think NPI is a more accurate snapshot of the here and now.
ASU early and at home is a good thing.
This is a great source for RPI, et al.
http://www.boydsworld.com/baseball/faq.html
“What’s wrong with the RPI’s?
Although things are improving, there’s still a very limited amount of inter-regional play in college baseball. This means that in sections of the country with fewer Division I baseball schools, such as the West, the pool of available opponents tends to be smaller, which tends to pull winning percentages towards .500. As a result of the RPI only considering two levels of interconnectedness, teams from these regions tend to be underranked by the RPI’s. “
So Boyd completes my rant against RPI and provides a solution.
What fun is that?
I usually follow Warren Nolan’s site for baseball rankings. I also like his NPI for what I think is a fair ranking.
http://warrennolan.com/baseball/2011/npi
If you’re looking at Marist on top and scratching your head, I wouldn’t worry about it. I think it’s fair because it doesn’t weight anyone according to pre-season or RPI or regional rankings. It just runs an up and down SOS algorithm with weighted options for road versus home games. Take a look at Marist’s margin of victory for the last 11 games, and take a look at how many home games they’ve played. It will probably all wash out in the end, but I like it.
I’ve never seen that site. Good stuff.
I like this quip from Boyd: “baseball is the most random of major sports. In professional sports, the best football teams generally win 90% of their games, the best basketball teams routinely win 80% of their games, and the best baseball teams struggle to win 66%.”
So true. Follows that it would be this way since success in baseball is succeeding 30% of the time (as a hitter).
It’s truly a game of failure. It’s why I don’t take teams like Seattle or Hartford lightly. The difference between winning and losing against a team like that is literally one inch, one bounce, on player with bad biorhythms, etc.
Nygren seems borderline dominant today. Granted, Seattle is not A. State, Arizona, Cal, UCLA etc…but we’ve got some excellent pitching. And the offense is a pleasant surprise for me this year.
How is the fishing? Anyone got any tips for what streams are hot?
You can’t give up 5 hits, and commit 4 errors and still expect to win a game where you only score 4 runs.
The randomness of Baseball aside…man, it’s tough to get pumped for OS sports.
Hey, when you get a chance, check out the forum in football category…We were forced to get new seats at Reser stadium…check out where and why in the forum….
Ouch.
Yup.
2-2 in the 5th after a rain delay (if anyone cares, which sadly nobody seems to).
3-2, Beavs.
4-2, 7th inning.
Thanks Angry…I’ve been checking in to get updates and there were none.
Eff the Ducks, btw.
No prob.
Same score, 8th inning. Boyd is in there, looking good–got his first two men.
Susac had his 4th pass ball of the year last inning. That seems like an inordinate amount.
4-2, top of the 9th.
Curious to see who closes this one.
Update: Boyd
4-2 final. Boyd strikes out 4 of 5 to earn the save. Diving play by Smith to end it.
glad the weather broke to get this game in – it’s good to get a W quickly after dropping a bad one.