BB: Top Teams in West Region

[bzzboyz]

West Teams in the Rankings:

18) CTX
19) Trinity (TX)
20) Cal Lu
RV) Linfield
RV) Pacific Lutheran
RV) Puget Sound
RV) Pomona-Pitzer
RV) Southwestern (TX)

I stated this on the Top 25 poll board but the fact that Texas Lutheran is not even receiving a single vote but Trinity is ranked in the Top 25 does not make any sense. However, there still does not seem to be any team that really wants to take over the West Region and separate themselves. Should be a very interesting 2nd half of the year in the Region.

Especially after losing two straight conference series. Southwestern has beat some some strong teams but lost 2 of 3 to TLU in non conference games but still managed 6 votes. I think team mom's vote on this crap.

At this time of year you take these with a grain of salt. Keep winning and your team will get in. Keep winning year after year and build a reputation. You cannot compare teams in a Vacuum. You have to take the whole body of work.

Year after year should have nothing to do with it. Are the Aggies ranked number one because of past years.? It's because of this year. The problem.is it's the same people voting on the same teams without really taking a hard look at anything. Mailing it in so to speak.

[WestisBest]

Massey may be computer generated and miss a game or two, but that's better than human voters missing teams.  How do the voters miss a conference leader?  I mean, one or two voters, maybe. But no votes for Whitworth? I agree with the notion that some voters just mail it in and that's a disservice to the vote that individual holds.

[Westside]

Massey may be computer generated and miss a game or two, but that's better than human voters missing teams.  How do the voters miss a conference leader?  I mean, one or two voters, maybe. But no votes for Whitworth? I agree with the notion that some voters just mail it in and that's a disservice to the vote that individual holds.

I can't speak for everyone here, but my reasoning for not voting for Whitworth goes like this: twelve of their wins come against Schreiner (4-20), Whitman (5-18), and Lewis & Clark (5-25)... They are 12-1 against teams with a combined 14-63 record. They are 7-6 against teams with winning records.

If they sweep this weekend, I have no problem tossing them some votes. If they go 7-3 or better the rest of the season, yea they deserve it too. But for the time being, I still have PLU and Linfield ahead of them.

Just my two cents.

[WestisBest]

Westside, I can respect that.

And, if the other voters engaged is similar analyses, I withdraw my objection.

[Westside]

I assume they probably don't

In reality, the west region is so open right now and it will likely take until the final weekend to see who makes it. It is a shame that PLU lost Mahlum, because they could be running away with it at this point if he were pitching every weekend (though their offense is still susceptible of getting shut down by decent pitching).

[Ralph Turner]

Westside is right.

The West looks competitive.

It does not look Top 25 stellar!

IMHO, year in and year out, the West (the smallest of the regions with about 10% of the membership) has 4-5 of the Top 25 and 10 of the Top 75 teams. All 4 conferences are strong baseball conferences. 

This year, I think that the West is uniformly down, with very few Top 25 calibre teams.

[Whatagame]

Westside is right.

The West looks competitive.

It does not look Top 25 stellar!

IMHO, year in and year out, the West (the smallest of the regions with about 10% of the membership) has 4-5 of the Top 25 and 10 of the Top 75 teams. All 4 conferences are strong baseball conferences. 

This year, I think that the West is uniformly down, with very few Top 25 calibre teams.

I actually kind of think it is hard to say if the conference is down.  Generally speaking, the West Region teams have mainly played against themselves.  Maybe the region is up overall, with more talent dispersed among the mid to lower echelon teams, and less stacked in a few programs?  Look at how rare it is for anyone to get a weekend sweep against anybody, that has particularly been the case in the NWC this season.  And, when there is a sweep, the games have often been nail biters and/or extra inning affairs (look at Willamette's sweep of Whitman)  Lewis and Clark now has the talent to roll out a guy that chucks a one run CG victory versus Linfield. Having watched many, many games over the past several years, particularly in the NWC, the talent is there - for instance, I'd put PLU's 3 three weekend starters up against anyone right now, and that's with the guy who would have been most likely their ace out for year with injury.

[NWBaseballFan10]

Westside is right.

The West looks competitive.

It does not look Top 25 stellar!

All 4 conferences are strong baseball conferences. 

This year, I think that the West is uniformly down, with very few Top 25 calibre teams.

Maybe the region is up overall, with more talent dispersed among the mid to lower echelon teams, and less stacked in a few programs? 

The "middle of the road" and "bottom feeders" in conferences have gotten stronger, but the "top tier" programs (e.g. Linfield, Cal Lu, Trinity) haven't been quite as dominant as they have in the past. Linfield lost back to back conference series for the 1st time since 2006, Cal Lu lost back to back series to Redlands and Whittier, and Trinity already sits at 4-5 in conference play (they haven't lost more than 5 games in conference since 2009). These 3 traditional powers (and consistent Top 25 programs) are having the script flipped against them with the rise of other programs and some of the key departures they have endured to graduation. I think the parody across the West-region conferences has been magnified this season with their "decline" and the improvement of other programs. These "middle of the road" programs have always had respectable programs, but they were overshadowed by the dominance of the Big 3. Things appear to be different this season....But yet, the traditional 3 are still right in the thick of things.

[Whatagame]

I think we're on the same wave length NW, I don't believe an out of conference fly-in team will win the west regional, so we'll see how deep the west region team goes in the WS. There's just more talent, hell UPS, who is now receiving top 25 votes narrowly escaped a sweep from a bottom feeder because of two walk off HR, the gap is narrowing, and that's good

[108 Stitches]

Couple of comments that are Trinity/SCAC and regional issues.

The SCAC will continue to get much tougher over the coming years with TLU and South Western developing. If you go back a few years you had Millsaps, Hendrix and Trinity (and later Birmingham Southern) fighting it out for the SCAC and you will see the same thing in the new SCAC with SW, TLU and Centenary so it will not be a given for Trinity to win the conference every year.

I knew that SW would develop into a very competitive team once Thomas took over the program from Hendrix. SW has the potential to be another Trinity as it is a high quality regional school, it is in a great location and campus for recruiting right next to Austin. I love the way this team plays, when you look at their stats you wonder how they do it. The never give up, they fight for every out and they are very well coached. In the Trinity series they played their OF in and made Trinity hit the ball over their head and as a consequence caught more balls than they missed. That alone won two games for them as they caught flairs that fell in front of the Trinity OFers as they were deep. There was a lot more than this but they are a dangerous and well coached team. IMO they will become a consistent top 25 program in the future.

As far as Trinity goes they lost three Senior position players all up the middle, Bianchi-C, Hirschberg-CF, and Muscarello-SS and while they have talented players to replace them it is hard to replace that leadership. If you go back and listen to any of Scannell's preseason interviews he always talks about leadership and the impact on a team. You see this going on with Trinity as all of the starters are Jr's. and as the season moves along you will likely see leaders develop from within this group. The pitching side is loaded with Sr's, but pitchers can not be team leaders. They seem to be playing better and even though they lost 2/3 to SW, the offensive is starting to gel. IMO they will have to win the SCAC to get to the Regional, and maybe this is a good thing as it forces them to have to compete in every game. I did not get the sense they were doing this earlier in the season.

As far as the West in general, I agree there seems to not be 2-3 dominant teams early in the season, but this does not mean they will not develop as they play, and I expect to see a very competitive regional once things shake out in some of the conferences. I think in general the quality of play in the West is very high and it seems to be getting more balanced based on what we are seeing.

[108 Stitches]

BTW when in the heck are they going to announce the West Regional location ??

[SoCalSoxFan]

BTW when in the heck are they going to announce the West Regional location ??

I've been wondering the same thing.   

[108 Stitches]

Trinity crushed CTX Weds evening in commanding fashion 11-3, it was 11-1 until Trinity brought in a bunch of young arms to get some experience and could not seem to throw a strike and CTX picked up 2 runs on one hit. Game was 1-1 though 2, then 2-1 through 4, Trinity pulled away in the 5th 5-1 then broke it open in the 6th.

I would not read too much into it other than both teams threw their number 3 starters and Trinity pitching and hitting were much stronger against the back half of the rotations. Game is only one data point however, but might be a bit troublesome from a CTX perspective on the back half of their pitching rotation. Friday's game might be more indicative from CTX's pitching perspective as I suspect Cox will be on the mound. Not sure about Trinity. 

[BamColt]

Outside of Cox (All American) and Traxtler and Smith Concordia doesn't have much. Pope is not bad for a Southpaw. Hats off to Trinity.

I would expect a better game in Austin.

[Bishopleftiesdad]

Outside of Cox (All American) and Traxtler and Smith Concordia doesn't have much. Pope is not bad for a Southpaw . Hats off to Trinity.

I would expect a better game in Austin.

LOL, is there something inherently bad with Soutpaws?