BBCOR and the New RPI

May 29, 2014

It's not going to surprise any fan that scoring remained ~10 runs per game this year, with an average score almost exactly 7-3. That's about 3 runs per game less than the last year before BBCOR. The final regular season numbers provide some insight into the scheduling effect of the new RPI in its second year.

Regular Season Scoring - 2014

All Reg Season
Cat Gms WR LR      MOV TOT SOV      Vis Wins: WR LR      MOV TOT SOV Home Wins: WR LR      MOV TOT SOV      Home W%
D1 8054 7.07 2.99   4.08 10.07 0.408     3334 7.16 4.15   3.00 11.31 0.300 4720 7.03 2.18   4.85 9.21 0.485   58.6
Conference 4256 6.84 3.00   3.84 9.83 0.384     1936 7.08 3.04   4.04 10.13 0.404 2320 6.64 2.96   3.68 9.60 0.368   54.5
InterConference 3798 7.34 2.99   4.35 10.33 0.435     1398 7.26 5.69   1.57 12.95 0.157 2400 7.41 1.43   5.98 8.84 0.598   63.2
Non-Neut
D1 7153 7.10 3.00   4.10 10.10 0.410     2884 7.17 4.33   2.84 11.51 0.284 4269 7.07 2.11   4.96 9.18 0.496   59.7
Conference 3859 6.86 3.00   3.86 9.87 0.386     1739 7.13 3.06   4.07 10.19 0.407 2120 6.65 2.97   3.69 9.62 0.369   54.9
InterConference 3294 7.38 3.00   4.39 10.38 0.439     1145 7.24 6.27   0.97 13.51 0.097 2149 7.48 1.26   6.22 8.74 0.622   65.2
Neutral Site
D1 901 6.85 2.93   3.92 9.78 0.392     450 7.04 3.00   4.04 10.04 0.404 451 6.68 2.87   3.81 9.55 0.381   50.1
Conference 397 6.59 2.91   3.68 9.50 0.368     197 6.65 2.93   3.73 9.58 0.373 200 6.52 2.89   3.63 9.42 0.363   50.4
InterConference 504 7.06 2.94   4.12 10.00 0.412     253 7.35 3.05   4.29 10.40 0.429 251 6.81 2.85   3.96 9.65 0.396   49.8
Quick and easy bullet-points:

Requisite RPI Bashing Section

Actually, I don't bash the RPI in general. Every time someone who knows how it works says something like "couldn't the NCAA get the Stanford math department to come up with something?" they get an email from the NCAA that says "we did." So I don't say things like that.

I do think that the "new" RPI is not using the right adjustment factor for road wins/home losses. They based the factor on the home winning percentage for all non-conference games over a long time period. That's about the same as 2014's 65.2%. The problem with that is that it doesn't take into account the percentage of those games where the "home" team would've won against the opponent even if the game were played on Mars. Interconference games not played at neutral sites are loaded with visitors "not good enough to get teams to come to our place so we'll get paid to get beat by you."

The empirical data (in conference games the home team wins 54.9% of the time) keeps confirming Boyd's observation that the HFA should be 1.1. Over many years approximately equal teams' games result in the home team winning 55% of the time. The 65% or so used to come up with the 1.3 weight only results in a really, really bad measure of teams' body of work.

Anyway, looks like we had a lot of fun this year. The college baseball critics who said "it isn't like MLB" can't say that now that it is.


  Runs per 9 innings.

In memory of
SEBaseball.com

Paul Kislanko