145: It just means more...teams
Taking a look at the 2025 NCAA Baseball Tournament and UNC pitcher Jake Knapp's efficiency.
The last five college baseball national champions are all from the SEC. There is a good chance the next champion is also from the conference where it just means more.
While SEC commissioner Greg Sankey is campaigning for more automatic bids in the College Football Playoff, the conference has dominated two other revenue sports over the past few months. Fourteen of the league’s 16 teams earned bids to the 2025 Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament, and 13 of its members qualified for the NCAA Baseball Tournament.
Half of the NCAA baseball's regional hosts are SEC schools. Auburn finished sixth in the SEC, but still was awarded a top-four national seed. Kentucky went 13–17 in SEC play with a negative run differential and earned an at-large bid over a team like UConn1.
The SEC isn’t the only league making noise. The ACC also put nine of its 16 teams in the field. The league earned three regional hosts, which doesn’t include regular season ACC champion Georgia Tech.
Last season, the College World Series field was split between these two leagues, with four teams each from the SEC and ACC. Given how the field is organized, we could see these two conferences comprise the entire CWS again2. Only three regionals lack a team from either the SEC or ACC.
Below is a view of the bracket highlighting only SEC and ACC teams, which make up about 34% of the field.
Are we having fun yet?
Over the past decade or so, offseason news and off-field events have dominated the sports conversation. The lines between media and players and fans all became blurry.
We talk like league stakeholders or owners. We use terms like roster construction and unbalanced schedules. We discuss market size and TV ratings.
Sankey at one point in his nearly 45 minute press conference said, “it's clear that not losing becomes more important than beating the University of Georgia, which two of our teams that were left out did. Nobody else had that kind of quality win.”
We’ve completely lost the plot. It’s never been easier to conflate strength of record and strength of schedule.
Of course, not losing is more important. Sankey knows that too, but he is also determined to create shareholder value in any way possible.
This is why the next three to four weeks of college baseball should be fun. It’s about the games and it’s a sport that lends itself to chance more than almost any other. Northeastern, of all schools, has won 27 straight games and has a legit shot to win its regional.
Since 1999, when the college baseball tournament expanded to 64 teams, only two of the number one overall seeds won the National Championship (Miami in 1999 and Tennessee in 2024).
And speaking of the games, let’s take a look at one the most efficient pitchers in all of college baseball.
Knapp Time
North Carolina’s starting pitcher Jake Knapp is a perfect 12-0 this season. The 24-year-old right-hander is one of the most efficient pitchers in the country.
When you first hear of great pitching, you think of strikeouts or electric stuff as scouts might put it. Knapp is sort of a throw back. He throws strikes. Early and often.
Knapp owns a 0.83 WHIP in 87 innings this season giving up 59 hits and issuing only 13 base on balls. The veteran has faced 97 consecutive batters without issuing a walk.
Here is a look at Knapp’s pitching log over the season with a focus on innings pitched, batters faced, and total pitches thrown.
Batters can and will square up Knapp. In his last start, four Boston College batters all registered a exit velocity3 of at least 100 miles per hour on Knapp’s pitches. Contact is often Knapp’s friend on the mound.
A year removed from Tommy John surgery, he is the workhorse of the Carolina staff. Knapp has been on the mound for 18 percent of UNC’s total innings and has contributed to just seven percent of UNC’s total walks allowed.
And as we enter the stretch where the team that makes the fewest mistakes often wins, Knapp becomes crucial to Carolina’s success.
Thanks for reading this far, and following along. As we head into the summer, don’t be surprised if I publish less frequently over the next couple months. I’m going to try to work on some offseason projects ahead of football and basketball next year.
A random recommendation this week is Party Down, a hilarious sitcom that is now over 15 years old. The “are we having fun yet?” line in this post is a reference to the show. It’s a tremendous watch.
🤟 Enjoy the summer 🤟
If you include Kentucky’s one-game exit in the SEC Tournament, the Wildcats were 13-18 against SEC opponents with a -8 run differential. It’s alarming how we waved off this at-large decision because the team just plays in a tough league.
Four regional hosts have the most College World Series appearances without a title: Florida State (24), Clemson (12), North Carolina (12), and Arkansas (11).
Because the ACC Tournament was played in a minor league park last week in Durham, we got Statcast data for all the tournament games. Here is resource with all the Statcast links from last week courtesy of Robert Frey.
Clemson has once again severely underperformed in the postseason. 3rd hosted regional in as many years and 0 super regional games won