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AnnArborDore: Let’s completely set aside discussion of post-season. Let’s also set aside their ranking in NET/KenPom. What does your gut tell you is a range where VU MBB should be ranked if trying to rank teams best to worst?
Let''s start here by isolating types of games: games against good teams and games that are more or less irrelevant.
Against "good" teams, Vanderbilt has played 16 games against teams that should be in the NCAA tournament or the NIT, not including auto-bid teams that would be seeded 14 or lower in the NCAAs. Those games are Memphis, Southern Miss, St. Mary's, VCU, Pitt, NC State, Missouri, Tennessee (twice), Arkansas, Kentucky (twice), Texas A&M, Alabama (twice) and Auburn. Seven of those came at home. The Commodores are 6-11 in those games, with a total scoring margin of minus-124. (And yes, that includes the 57-point debacle in Tuscaloosa, which certainly skewed that.)
Against "irrelevant" teams. Vanderbilt went 11-2 against those teams, with a total margin of victory of plus-109. Obviously, that included losses to Grambling and LSU. Vanderbilt out-scored teams by a total of 131 points there.
For argument's sake, throw out the Tuscaloosa disaster. Vanderbilt was 6-10 against that first group and on average, lost by 4.2 points.
Against the second group, the Commodores mostly took care of business. But they certainly weren't impressive in that, winning those by 10.1 points.
What I see is a team that was mostly good enough to hang with good teams, but more often than not, not good enough to win them. And the same team was good enough to take care of business it should have handled far more than not, but not great enough to really step on most teams' necks there.
Ah, yes, but there's recency. The Commodores are certainly a better team than they were a month or two ago. Seven wins in eight games counts for something, but at the same time, only three of those wins came against the first category, and they came by a total of five points.
How do you put a number on the whole body of work? I don't know... certainly no lower than the current NET ranking of 84, but top 50 also seems a stretch because I don't think you can just arbitrarily throw out 2 1/2 months of work because you don't like what it says.
So, maybe split the difference between the predictive computers, where Vanderbilt is in the high-70s, and the results-based metrics, which have VU around 50? If you agree, that would put Vanderbilt somewhere in the 60s, and that seems fair, though of course the Commodores are now without Liam Robbins and that probably matters, too.
VUMatt23: Thoughts on overall pitcher usage so far? Any changes you would make in terms of who pitches when?
Well, it seems Sam Hliboki and Patrick Reilly are going to have to earn trust at this point, and maybe Thomas Schultz, too, after he allowed his second home run in four total innings. For now, I think you have to let those guys pitch their way through things in lower-stakes situations. I could well be overreacting to Schultz; I never thought he had put-away stuff but he did make it work in end-game situations most of last year.
As for the rest of the staff, that group mostly looks terrific. Long leashes have been common complaints in the Corbin era, and I do see some of that at times. I do think they have enough arms where I'd be tempted to pull a struggling starter earlier than they do, and I think that's especially true with a dominant end-game guy in Nick Maldonado and in-betweeners like Bryce Cuningham, Ryan Ginther and Grayson Moore.
DFWMark: Other than UT, what SEC baseball teams were suspected of gaming the bat inspection system last year that led to the changes the SEC is implementing for conference games this year?
I won't name names, but as an insider put it to me, I think a lot may have been going on behind coaches' backs. Even on their own teams, I suspect sometimes coaches knew what was happening and I suspect some didn't. If that's true, it could have been anyone; there are teams I'd suspect more than others but I'd be best to keep that to myself.
