By Hunt Palmer
LSU swept Missouri in mid-March to open SEC play.
That’s a good thing, right? Well, probably.
SEC wins have often been the best indicator of postseason positioning. For years, benchmarks like 14 wins get you in, 17 wins lock up a host and 20 wins guarantee a Top 8 have been used to prognosticate Memorial Day seeding.
It doesn’t always work like that. Mississippi State won 17 league games last year, beat Ole Miss in a midweek game and won two games in Hoover. Those 20 wins earned them a trip to Charlottesville for a regional.
In 2023, Arkansas won 20 SEC games and didn’t even host a regional because of a poor RPI.
But, more often than not the benchmarks hold.
What if three league wins actually hurt LSU’s case? Here’s what I mean.
Every year the SEC produces bad baseball teams. This year South Carolina is bad. Missouri is not bad. Missouri is historically inept.
The Tigers from the Midwest are 0-21 in SEC play. They’ve been run-ruled in 10 of 21 league games, damn near half. They’ve been outscored 240-81, an average of 11.4 to 3.9 per game. Their RPI is 153, 98 spots worse than the SEC’s 15th place team in South Carolina.
Do you know how hard it is to have an RPI of 153 with the No. 10 strength of schedule? You’d be better off trying to get a sunburn wearing a parka.
The 10 SEC teams that drew Missouri this season have a distinct advantage over the five that didn’t. Among those five are Vanderbilt, Auburn and Tennessee.
Here’s a look at some of LSU’s resume’ compared to those three.
- LSU 36-9, 14-17, SOS 36, RPI 9
- Vanderbilt: 31-13, 12-9, SOS 3, RPI 3
- Auburn: 30-14, 11-10, SOS 1, RPI 4
- Tennessee: 35-9, 13-8, SOS 34, RPI 10
With a head-to-head victory, LSU is a notch ahead of Tennessee who has had a mediocre month. But Auburn swept LSU, and LSU and Vanderbilt don’t play this year. LSU’s feather in its cap over those two is league record which, you guessed it, includes three wins over a team that might go 0-30.
If you think that doesn’t matter, here’s a historical data point for you. It’s historical because it was my first assignment as a professional. That tells you how long ago it was, but it’s burned into my brain.
In 2011, LSU won 2-of-3 the final weekend in Starkville to get to 13-17 in the SEC with an RPI in the high 20s. We’ll call it 27 (not certain). LSU watched from home conference tournament week. They did not qualify for Hoover.
When the Field of 64 was released on Memorial Day, the Tigers, two years removed from a national title, were left home in favor of St. John’s. The committee chair told the ESPN desk that LSU did win 13 SEC games, but six of them were against 8-22 Kentucky and 7-23 Tennessee, the worst two teams in the league.
Missouri is not just the worst team in the league, they’re so bad it’s likely they’ll have the be a data point when evaluating which SEC teams played them and which ones didn’t.
With super-sized conferences, conference strength of schedule must be evaluated as closely as non-conference strength of schedule. Not every league schedule is the same.
To be clear, I’m supremely confident that an LSU team that gets to 20 SEC wins will get a top eight seed and play at home.
However, if that number dips to 18 or 19 (Georgia got a top eight with 17 wins last year) and Auburn and or Vanderbilt is right there, look out.
