Investigating the Interaction Between Scoring Environment and NCAA Regional Upsets

Let’s pull again the curtain just a little. I’ve been masking baseball full-time for about 10 years now, and in that point I’ve principally written 5 sorts of article time and again. Every sportswriter cranks out recreation tales and interview-based options, and at the very least two or thrice every week, each FanGraphs author pens a targeted topical evaluation punctuated by charts and jokes. I’m no totally different. Category no. 4 entails Political/social/financial commentary, since our sport is ruled by the society it exists inside, and must be analyzed accordingly.

Which brings up class no. 5: I develop into fixated on one thing bizarre or trivial that no one else on the planet cares about. And quite than throw out a joke tweet and overlook about it like a standard individual, I spend days and days discovering, compiling, and analyzing knowledge in a useless try to find the reality. If a fact as such even exists. Then, detached as to if the readers of FanGraphs Dot Com — i.e. all of you high-quality people — give a tinker’s rattling in regards to the topic, I publish the outcomes on this little nook of the web.

Be warned, this can be a class no. 5 publish.

It all began final weekend, through the first weekend of the Division I NCAA baseball event. For these unfamiliar, faculty baseball doesn’t use a straight knockout bracket like basketball and hockey do. Instead, the 64 contestants are sorted into four-team regionals, a double-elimination bracket hosted (normally) by the highest-seeded workforce. It takes both three or 4 wins to come back out of a regional, which contains both six or seven video games. This, by the way, permits us to protect the thought of a decisive Game 7, which is a cheerful accident.

Regionals are the perfect weekend of baseball on TV all yr, akin to the Olympics or group stage of the World Cup when it comes to sports viewing. Can’t advocate it sufficient.

The winner of every regional strikes on to a brilliant regional, a best-of-three collection, the next weekend. The remaining eight groups transfer on to the College World Series in Omaha, which is itself a pair of four-team double-elimination tournaments adopted by a best-of-three collection to crown the nationwide champion.

To summarize: Four-team double-elimination, best-of-three; four-team double-elimination, best-of-three.

The choice committee seeds the perfect 16 groups, and to be able to guarantee relative parity, the remaining 48 are additionally cut up into tiers of 16, leaving every regional with its personal groups seeded one by 4. Think of a regional 4 seed because the equal of between a 13 and 16 seed in March Madness.

If there’s one factor it’s best to learn about faculty baseball in 2023, it’s that offense is approach up. (I’ll have a chart for instance that time shortly.) Home runs are at an all-time excessive, and scoring generally is at its highest degree in 13 years. And the regionals themselves have been fairly chaotic; there have been quite a few upsets and comebacks, and solely 9 of the 16 hosts survived. The fallen included three of the highest six nationwide seeds and half of the highest 10. Auburn, the no. 13 total seed, received bounced with out successful a recreation.

Here, we arrive on the motivating query: Did extra offense result in extra upsets? It’s potential that the proliferation of dwelling runs makes it simpler for a trailing workforce to mount a comeback. Alternatively, the good differentiator in postseason faculty baseball is pitching depth.

The high applications in main conferences run pitching staffs as deep as main league groups’. A mid-major workforce, by comparability, won’t solely have fewer high arms to throw, however the compressed schedule of a regional privileges deeper staffs. College groups, which could play 4 occasions every week within the common season, are obliged to play as many as 5 video games in 4 days in a regional — and in opposition to higher-level competitors with extra on the road than ever. For would-be Cinderellas, the query in a regional is whether or not they can hold on in opposition to higher-seeded groups earlier than they run out of pitchers.

But if each workforce’s pitchers have been getting lit up, maybe that may degree the taking part in area, or so I believed.

Because it’s potential that this whole concept of mine is bunk. Higher scoring environments are likely to make upsets much less doubtless, no more. The extra scoring occasions, the extra alternatives for the vagaries of likelihood to even out. This is why the NBA playoffs (this yr however) are typically pretty variety to favorites, whereas the NHL playoffs are a charnel home of random variance.

It’s additionally potential that this postseason will not be, in actual fact, that upset-happy in any case. Of the three four-over-one upsets on the primary day of the event, two of the successful no. 4 seeds — Penn and Rider — play lower than an hour from my dwelling and generated substantial native curiosity. So possibly there weren’t that many upsets, and I’m simply blinded by regional chauvinism. It wouldn’t be the primary time.

After all that preamble, it’s time to get to the info. Which is a problematic concern for faculty baseball. See, record-keeping on the faculty degree is… nicely, it’s terrible, there’s no different method to put it. Despite the efforts of assorted impartial web sites, to say nothing of the underpaid, overworked sports data administrators upon whose shoulders the faculty sports media panorama rests, there is no such thing as a worthwhile centralized, searchable database for faculty baseball stats. For somebody spoiled by Stathead, and Baseball Savant, and, nicely, FanGraphs, this presents an unlimited downside when it comes to knowledge assortment.

Back once I was masking faculty baseball commonly within the mid-2010s, it was a 50/50 proposition whether or not a workforce’s field rating would come with pitch depend. If I needed a pitcher’s strikeout price or opponent batting line, I needed to do the mathematics myself. The state-of-the-art has improved considerably within the years since, however not by that a lot:

For this desk of division-wide offensive traits over the previous 14 seasons, I needed to go to 2 totally different sections of the NCAA web site, neither of which had OBP knowledge additional again than 2015 or slugging share for any yr. The 2020 season was canceled earlier than any significant intra-conference play occurred, making it ineffective for comparability with different seasons. But the tab for conference- and division-level knowledge for 2022 simply doesn’t exist on the NCAA web site. So I needed to go to Baseball Reference, which has conference-level numbers, type out the DI conferences, and add up the mandatory numbers myself.

This is all a roundabout approach of claiming that I compiled the game-level knowledge from the entire regionals since 2010 myself by getting into the outcomes of 13 years’ value of brackets right into a spreadsheet by hand. Now, after some tinkering, mentioned spreadsheet has develop into unfathomably highly effective. You might use this spreadsheet to place a person on the Moon. Or at the very least put a person in Omaha. Was it definitely worth the effort? No, if I’m being trustworthy. But we press on.

One factor you’ll discover from that desk about total scoring is how wildly the run setting has swung in faculty baseball prior to now 15 years. Over right here in MLB, persons are complaining in regards to the rocket ball or minute modifications to gear and rule enforcement. Grow up. Over in faculty baseball, it’s whole anarchy. Home runs have been practically thrice as widespread this yr as they have been in 2014, which isn’t that way back! Four of these 2014 Division I dwelling runs got here from Pete Alonso, who will not be that previous! Though maybe it’s instructive that Pete Alonso, who can raise a battleship, might solely hit 4 dwelling runs in 60 video games in that setting.

I went all the best way again to 2010 as a result of that yr kicked off a decade of radical gear modifications in faculty baseball. Back within the Nineties, groups have been utilizing supercharged aluminum bats to attain seven runs a recreation. Scores within the 20s weren’t unusual. In 2011, the NCAA modified gear requirements to make use of deadened BBCOR bats, and offense went by the ground. At the identical time, the College World Series venue was moved from tiny Rosenblatt Stadium to a brand new, bigger park in downtown Omaha that faces into a robust headwind. At the one College World Series I lined in individual, 2014, it was uncommon to see a fly ball get inside 20 ft of the fence.

The new bat guidelines despatched the sport too far within the different route. But the place MLB (at the very least till final yr) would wring its arms and do nothing for many years, the NCAA acted. In 2015, it modified the baseball, shifting to a brand new ball with lower-profile seams, akin to the one used within the minors. Offense rebounded with the much less draggy baseball, although because the pandemic, it’s exploded once more for causes that aren’t completely clear:

As you’ll be able to see — and as you would possibly anticipate — scoring within the postseason has tracked with scoring within the common season. But my speculation is already falling aside. This was the highest-scoring season of the BBCOR period total, however scoring in regional play is down barely from final yr.

It’s vital to keep in mind that a complete regional spherical is made up of solely about 100 video games and someplace between 1,000 and 1,500 runs. Part of the general spike in offense in final yr’s regional was one Oklahoma State-Missouri State recreation that ended 29-15 and accounted for 3% of whole offense throughout all regionals.

The higher-seeded groups additionally dined out this season, as regular, although this quantity generally is a little deceptive, as no. 2 and no. 3 seeds carry out very equally throughout historical past:

At the margins, the distinction in high quality from one tier to a different will be fairly small. So let’s have a look at successful share over time, sorted out by seed:

Yes, this was a great yr for no. 4 seeds, who had their finest successful share and run differential since 2017. Top-seeded groups additionally took a success, with their worst successful share since 2018. This was one in all simply two situations prior to now 13 tournaments during which no. 1 seeds didn’t win at the very least 70% of their regional video games. No. 3 seeds had their worst collective efficiency since 2010, going 17-31. For the primary time within the pattern, they’d a successful share nearer to no. 4 seeds than no. 2 seeds. Run differential knowledge has related contours, and as you would possibly anticipate, the stratification between seeds is extra outlined:

Upset wins are typically lower-scoring than chalk. The run differential of top-seeded groups additionally follows the sample of total scoring just a little extra carefully than file does.

So if something, extra scoring results in fewer upsets generally, as the recent weekend loved by a handful of no. 4 seeds was balanced out by the disastrous efficiency of no. 3 seeds. And as a lot consideration as Penn and Rider received, the true supply of bottom-seed overperformance is Oral Roberts.

ORU is one in all a number of evangelical establishments — together with Liberty and mid-major baseball powerhouse Dallas Baptist — that’s sought publicity by athletic excellence and due to this fact punches above its weight on the diamond. Oral Roberts performs within the Summit League, which historically solely will get one bid into the NCAA Tournament. And because of their weak common season schedule, the Mouthbobs normally arrive at Selection Monday with a résumé worthy of a no. 4 seed. This yr, ORU went 46-11 within the common season however ended up with an RPI of 76. (As an apart, RPI has its points, however that’s a publish for one more day.) Two thirds of their common season wins got here in opposition to groups ranked 2 hundredth or decrease within the RPI. They performed solely 5 video games in opposition to groups that made the event, and misplaced 4.

But as soon as Oral Roberts will get to the event, it tends to do nicely. Since 2010, ORU has made the event 9 occasions, and has been a no. 4 seed eight occasions. In these eight event appearances, ORU has gained at the very least one recreation 5 occasions and gone 9-14 total, for a .391 successful share that’s nearly double what 4 seeds have achieved usually since 2010.

And this yr, ORU ran the desk within the Stillwater Regional, successful all three of its video games with a plus-six run differential. The different 15 four-seeds, together with Rider and Penn, went a mixed 6-30 (.167) with a run differential of minus-192.

Is it the offensive setting, or is it Oral Roberts?

So in any case that effort, the info is at finest detached to my speculation, and what I believed was a pattern is definitely the results of one small spiritual faculty from Oklahoma punching approach above its weight. Was this an vital query to pursue? Not actually. And did we be taught something from the train? Also no. But now I’ve gotten this fixation out of my system in time for tremendous regionals, and that’s a very powerful factor.