BingGrad

One of the great things about track is that you can compare times and see how teams compare...

Just because I'm a total loser with nothing better to do, I put Albany and Stony Brook into the ACC to see how they would have fared. (The other major conferences have their championships next weekend). In the women's ACC, Stony Brook would have outscored Albany 21 to 16.5. Both teams would have finished behind Miami and ahead of Boston College taking 12th and 13th place in our new 14-team ACC. SBU's 21 points come from 3 athletes (including 1st and 2nd place in the 1500), while Albany's come from 7 different athletes.

On the men's side, Albany would outscore SBU 27 to 6 -- with Albany's 27 points coming from 12 different athletes in 11 events, while SBU's 6 come from 2 athletes. Albany's 27 points would have been good for 11th place, behind Georgia Tech with 32 and ahead of BC (26) and Wake Forest (14). SBU would have picked up the rear.

What does this tell us (besides the fact that I've got way too much time on my hands...)? Albany's mens team doesn't have trouble scoring in a high major conference, but SBU's women are deeper than I gave them credit for.

If I happen to find some free time (highly doubtful, of course), I'll do the same exercise after next week's Big Ten championship. The ACC tends to be more sprint dominated which holds down Albany's result, while the Big Ten is more distance oriented (it will be interesting to see how the SBU women would fare in the 1500 there).

If this thread goes Triple OT, I think we should discuss the how the AE women's volleyball teams would fare if they were forced to compete in men's golf.

UAalum72

No, ecasado brought up non-baseball stuff first

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oceandogs

That's interesting but I'm not sure it's a great comparison. It's a lot of harder to make the finals in the ACC. If you look at the preliminary races on the men's side, it's very unlikely any Albany sprinter would have made the finals as the last qualifying times were faster than Albany guys' PRs. Championship races in distance events tend to get tactical, run slow and then everyone finishes fast.

I think a better method is just looking at performance list. http://www.directathletics.com/performance_lists.html

bob87

So basically conference affiliation should not mean anything in baseball, but it should mean something in track.

Oceandogs above on track
"It's a lot of harder to make the finals in the ACC."

Oceandogs above on baseball
"Personally, I hate the RPI formula. Conference affiliation is crazy important with regards to RPI because of how it measures SOS, and the AE only has one other team that is above .500 on the year and Stony Brook hasn't played them yet."

Can we get back to baseball here please where it is a lot easier to make the AE final than the ACC final as well, but AE baseball is the topic here. Albany has a big series against Bingo this upcoming weekend. It should give a glimpse into how the teams matchup in the important game(s) in a couple of weeks.

Just like earlier season matchups against whichever ACC teams AE baseball played earlier in the year won't determine who makes the NCAA baseball tourney(head to head will do that) I am not concerned with theoretical matchup's in track, just the results of what actually happened with SBU way back.

oceandogs

Both of those statements are true. The last qualifier for the ACC 100 meter final ran 10.48. The fastest time by any america east runner all year was 10.52. Nobody from the AE would qualified or scored points in 100 at ACC championships.

http://www.theacc.com/championships/...s.html#content http://www.lancertiming.com/results/spring12/aem.htm

ecasadoSBU

Bob makes the silliest comparisons...

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bob87

"Personally, I hate the RPI formula. Conference affiliation is crazy important with regards to RPI because of how it measures SOS, and the AE only has one other team that is above .500 on the year and Stony Brook hasn't played them yet."


Nope your second statement was an opinion based on wrong assumptions. Like in track where ACC has faster times against better runners than the AE, they have better RPI's than AE' teams because the beat better teams more frequently. Doubt SB would be good enough to finish in the top 8 (qualify for acc tourney) in baseball as well in the ACC.

No one (I think) would be dumb enough to say it is crazy important to be in the ACC to get a good track time. They are just better, but you and Ecasado are trying to convince yourselves that is not true in baseball (because numbers don't count) . My answer to that is go out and beat ACC teams(either early season series or post season)

BingGrad

I can appreciate what you're saying about getting out of the prelims, but in Albany's men's case that isn't a big issue with the analysis -- only about 7 or 8 of the points I listed came from events with trials and finals. Most of their points came from field events and a few distance points. That's why I'm curious to see where they stack up against the weaker sprinting Big Ten.

Even performance lists can be deceptive -- the southern schools get great weather on a weekly basis while the northern schools are more varied.

I appreciate your thoughts and am glad that there is someone else on a basketball board who can talk knowledgeably about track.

oceandogs

I don't know where Stony Brook baseball really ranks, but I don't think they're a top 30 team. It's awesome they were ranked, and I think that's a big accomplishment, but I agree that they are probably overrated. At the same time, if you look at the RPI formula, I think it's obvious conference affiliation this year will hurt Stony Brook's rank. I think AE is fourth to last in conference rpi, and that's with Stony Brook who has one of best win percentages in the country. Because 50% of rpi is your opponents winning percentage and 25% is your opponents opponents winning percentage, and half of your oppononents are conference mates and a quarter of your opponents opponents are conference mates, total conference winning percentage gets weighed super heavily in rpi. Something around 31.25% of Stony Brook's rpi is their America East foes winnig percentage, and the America East really didn't win many games this year. Only 25% of rpi is based off your teams winning percentage. Essentially how the rest of your conference plays bears more importance than how your own team plays according rpi.

bob87

I know how the RPI works and while true on the percent on your teams winning perecetage, a top 30 caliber team would win just about every game vs the calibre of team SB has played. If you had a computer moodel similar to a Pomeroy or sagarin in baseball like in basketball and football, SBU would most likely be ranked lower than there are in the RPI.
Like any body else, SBU has an opportunity to schedule good teams and beat them . They were swept by the only top 100 on their schedule (although not a bad showing ) East Carolina. They also lost both games to Holy Cross #141.
SBU 36-11 record against its schedule does not match up with a top 30 teams avg record of 33-13 vs their schedule.

BTW, This is the current top 30, conference and record.

1 Florida Southeastern 35-13-0
2 Florida State Atlantic Coast 39-7-0
3 UCLA Pac-12 31-13-0
4 Baylor Big 12 38-8-0
5 LSU Southeastern 38-11-0
6 Oregon Pac-12 34-14-0
7 Purdue Big Ten 35-9-0
8 North Carolina Atlantic Coast 34-13-0
9 South Carolina Southeastern 36-12-0
10 Kentucky Southeastern 37-11-0
11 Arkansas Southeastern 34-15-0
12 Virginia Atlantic Coast 31-14-1
13 North Carolina State Atlantic Coast 33-12-0
14 Cal State Fullerton Big West 30-14-0
15 Stanford Pac-12 29-14-0
16 Miami (Fla.) Atlantic Coast 30-17-0
17 Texas A&M Big 12 34-14-0
18 Rice Conference USA 33-13-0
19 Ole Miss Southeastern 31-18-0
20 UCF Conference USA 38-11-0
21 Arizona Pac-12 30-15-0
22 Dallas Baptist Independent 34-14-0
23 East Carolina Conference USA 31-16-1
24 Clemson Atlantic Coast 28-19-0
25 San Diego West Coast 36-11-0
26 Coastal Carolina Big South 32-14-0
27 New Mexico State Western Athletic 30-17-0
28 Oregon State Pac-12 30-15-0
29 Appalachian State Southern 34-11-0
30 Arizona State Pac-12 29-17-0

oceandogs

You totally pulled that out of your ass. Stony Brook has the lowest WHIP in the country, the 7th best slugging percentage, 11th best on base percentage, and 2nd best fielding percentage. No way would any sophisticated computer model not have Stony Brook in their top 100.

ecasadoSBU

SBU softball beats Albany 6-4 and play Boston tomorrow. Albany and Maine play elimination games tomorrow

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bob87

They aren't doing it against the top teams. If the goal was to convert individual players stats to an even level, they would be heavily discounted. Think how Bill James and others use Major league equalivents to estimate MLB stats for AAA and AA players. They don't translate 1 to 1.

In any event, the football and basketball models are using team results(not individual stats) to rate teams. When you record is "poor" against "good" teams you are going to rank being those teams in the computer model who beat "good" teams more often.

I would love if Sagarin or someone else had actual computer model so we could see where teams rank in a better mathematical formula than the RPI. It would also mean that college baseball has grown to be relevant in places besides the south east and parts of California

UAalum72

Boyd Nation (that's his name, not his fan club) has what he calls an Iterative Strength Rating, the results of an algorithm designed to measure the quality of a team's season to date by combining their winning percentage with the difficulty of their schedule. The algorithm computes all teams simultaneously and attempts to take advantage of inter-regional games more accurately than other rating systems.

Current team ISR

Conference ISR - unfortunately, America East is ranked 27 whether using ISR or RPI.

He doesn't do it any more, but at one time Boyd calculated an external factors index, using monthly weather data, average tuition, enrollment, conference revenue, wins by the football and basketball teams (which contribute to baseball revenue fairly considerably, it turns out), and some academic factors like acceptance rates, average high school GPA, and SAT/ACT scores. Although they have nothing to do with playing baseball, they have a large influence on where teams are ranked.

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ecasadoSBU

Albany Softball about to knock out SBU in the championship. Albany leading 6-5 entering the last inning

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