Bad weather throughout the Southeast, combined with a holiday weekend, made for a messy week of college baseball. But there was still plenty of fun to go around from coast-to-coast.
Here are 14 takeaways from the weekend that was in college baseball.
1. I try not to get too deep into our rankings in Off The Bat, primarily because the rankings are a collaborative process and I don’t want to speak for the group (if you’ve seen any of the weekly college football rankings shows on ESPN during the playoff era, you know how fraught that can be). But after a weekend when the weather played a huge factor and we had more debate about the top of the rankings than we’ve had all season combined, I’ll wade into the Top 25 waters here.
This was an extremely tight decision. Anything that would have made it easy didn’t happen—the third game of LSU and South Carolina got rained out, as did the third game of Wake Forest and North Carolina State; meanwhile, Florida and Vanderbilt both missed the opportunity for road sweeps—so we were left with an imperfect set of circumstances.
I think any of Florida, LSU, Vanderbilt and Wake have cases to be No. 1. Florida is 8-0 in weekend series and owns series wins against Miami and Tennessee, two Top 25 teams. LSU has the best RPI (4) and strength of schedule (9) and has series wins against Arkansas and Tennessee, two Top 25 teams. Vanderbilt is in first place in the SEC at 11-1 and is 7-3 in non-conference play against likely NCAA Tournament teams. Wake leads the ACC at 12-2 and is 8-0 in weekend series. There are small knocks to be had on all four—Florida is third in the SEC East at 9-3, LSU’s 7-4 SEC record ranks sixth in the conference, Vanderbilt’s electric SEC start has come against teams likely to miss the NCAA Tournament and Wake’s strength of schedule is the weakest (46).
Ultimately, you’re splitting hairs on this decision. I personally believe the No. 1 spot in the Top 25 should be as fluid as any other. I don’t believe the No. 1 team has to remain No. 1 just because it didn’t lose a weekend series. So, for me, LSU didn’t stay at No. 1 because it was the incumbent. The Tigers are still No. 1 because they have the best series win of any of the four teams (against Arkansas) and have the best metrics to this point.
But with the teams as tight as those four teams are, we’ll certainly revisit this again next week and may find a different result, as LSU hosts Kentucky, Florida has four rivalry games this…
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