Treating some of those mid week games like they were a JV scrimmage came back to bite us in the buttocks. D1 Baseball has us as the #66th team right now. I'm not sure how many bid stealers there are but ISU did us no favors. Nebraska finished PSU off and left the door ever so slightly cracked open but I don't think we will slip through. It will be interesting to see if we can hold on to players like Taylor, Wiggins, Oliver and Sinnard. We have the potential to bring back a lot of talent but could very well lose a lot as well.
By the way, fwiw, Baseball America still has us at #63 and a #3 seed in Lexington.
"So you're telling me there's a chance".
-Lloyd Christmas
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It will be extremely surprising, at least to me and probably a lot of others, if we make the field, and I just don't see it. I agree on your comment about the midweek games. We had midweek games where pitchers were being pulled that had a good inning in a non-stop rotation of the bullpen, but also for some reason, our hitting also disappeared in some of those games. Maybe if we were hitting the ball well, some of those midweek rotations would have made some sense.
Our RPI last season was 31 and we were 17-0 against Q4 teams and 8-2 against Q3 teams. This season we are at a RPI of 55 and as it was already pointed out that we were 8-4 against Q4 teams and 12-6-1 against Q3 teams. IMO, our record against Q3 and Q4 teams almost certainly cost us an at-large bid considering how it impacts the RPI.
From what I've seen, Sinnard will probably get drafted despite missing the season with Tommy John surgery, but at what round? If he goes late in the draft, he may want to return to improve his draft standing, and if he does that, hopefully it's at IU.
The portal and instant eligibility have made the off-season in college sports an almost free-for-all, and the B1G lost a few players to the SEC and ACC after last season. Whoever has the most NIL money available for baseball programs will also play a role in the movement, and it stands to reason that with the emphasis they place on baseball at the warm weather schools, that there is probably more NIL money available for those programs. While it wasn't to an ACC or SEC school and it was within the conference, Iowa lost a starter to Maryland in Sam Hojnar at the end of last season, and it was over who could offer the most money. I also posted an item under another thread over how PSU has decided to throw more NIL money into their program in order to compete at a high level. Here's a link to the Hojnar saga at Iowa over NIL bucks:
By Pat Harty IOWA CITY, Iowa – Iowa baseball coach Rick Heller had a meeting on Tuesday that left him feeling sad, frustrated and even a little angry. Because it was during this meeting that Heller bid farewell to Sam Hojnar as a player. They met for about 45 minutes and that’s when Hojnar told […]
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