144: Charting the ACC baseball regular season standings
A look back at the ACC baseball regular season in four charts.
Over the past four weeks, I’ve tried to put together a chart to surface ACC baseball standings. The regular season ended this past Saturday, so let’s revisit each of those charts.
Home/away splits and run differentials
Georgia Tech won the regular season with 19 wins in 30 games, good for a 0.633 win percentage
Clemson finished fifth in the league standings despite a negative run differential overall
Louisville won 10 of its 15 league games at home and lost 10 of its 15 league games on the road
Last 10 games and games back
Only two games separate the top seven teams, and four of those seven teams did not play the full 30-game schedule
Virginia and Notre Dame both posted the best records over the last 10 games of the conference season with 8-2 records
Virginia Tech ended the regular season winning only two of its last 10 games
Record matrix by opponent
Georgia Tech won the league without playing any games against the three teams that finished directly behind them in the standings (Florida State, North Carolina, and NC State)
All 16 teams either were swept in a series or swept an opponent in a three-game series
Clemson played three of the top four teams in the league standings posting a 3-3 record overall
Standings over time
NC State was 15-6 entering the final three weekends of ACC play and in the driver’s seat to win the league, but the Wolfpack managed to finish the season with a 2-5 mark over the final three league series.
Only six of the 16 teams in the league finished the regular season under .500 in ACC play
The entire three-game series between Florida State and Virginia was cancelled, those teams finished second and sixth respectively in the league standings
Regular season champs
As a bonus, here is a list of the teams with their ACC Tournament seed, RPI, and run differential per game in league play.
Three teams (North Carolina, Clemson, Florida State) are ranked higher in the RPI than top-seeded Georgia Tech
Duke’s +1.93 run differential in ACC play ranks third overall despite the Blue Devils being seeded 7th in the league tournament
In D1Baseball’s latest projections, both Virginia and Notre Dame are listed as the last four teams in the field
The full bracket is below with all 16 teams. While it’s likely a pipe dream, an all-Big Four matchup is possible on Saturday in Durham.
It would require the following:
Wake Forest to beat Miami/Cal and Georgia Tech
NC State to beat Clemson/Virginia Tech/Stanford
Duke to beat Louisville/Pitt and Florida State
North Carolina to beat Virginia/Boston College/Notre Dame
This is the first season with a new tournament format and the elimination of pool play. While it will be easy to criticize, trying to organize a tournament with all 16 teams in one league comes with challenges.
Of course, these challenges are self-inflicted. The ACC expanded with the goal of maintaining a certain size, but like many decisions in sports today, it had nothing to do with improving the experience for fans.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading this far. For a recommendation this week, and another example of things getting worse for fans, check out Joon Lee’s latest video on how knockoff jerseys are better than the official ones. Holy Fanatics, Batman.