ACC Elo Ratings, Week 1
Miami is the cream of the crop thus far in the ACC, but eight teams find themselves in the D1 Baseball Top-25 poll.
For both the NBA and MLB, FiveThirtyEight uses a modified version of Elo ratings during the season to rank teams and project the playoff picture. I’ve decided to do the same for the 2020 ACC baseball season—thanks to the numbers available at WarrenNolan.com—in an effort to keep track of where Boston College falls in the conference table.
Elo ratings originated in chess and have been transplanted to other sports as a “measure of team strength based on head-to-head results, margin of victory and quality of opponent,” per FiveThirtyEight. Basically, the ratings are centered around 1500 and teams go up and down with each matchup based on both the quality of opponent and how close the game.
This will become a weekly post—likely to come out earlier in the week—that will feature the conference table as well as a few notes on several teams that either impressed or struggled over the weekend. Later in the season, I’ll start to include postseason probabilities and other metrics.
*Note on the table below: Projected records are included and are based on WarrenNolan.com’s metrics. Take them with a grain of salt, as the math behind the predictions are more simplistic and use RPI/Elo ratings and don’t factor in day-to-day changes, injuries, etc.. Finally, the "latest change” column indicates the change in Elo rating rank over the last week.
All stats as of Wednesday, Feb. 19 at 3 p.m.
ACC Elo Ratings
Quick Hits
Miami swept Rutgers to open the season, and promptly jumped up to the top spot in the D1 Baseball Top 25. Adrian Del Castillo earned ACC Hitter of the Week honors, going 5-for-9 (.556) with two home runs, a double, and six RBIs. The Hurricanes have a game tonight against Kent State and then a huge three-game series with in-state rival and No. 2 Florida.
North Carolina is off to a perfect 4-0 start to the year, sweeping Middle Tennessee State before cruising past Elon on Tuesday. The Tar Heels have 29 runs in four games and Dylan Harris is off to a good start—he’s 6-of-13 with five runs, two home runs, and three RBIs.
Wake Forest’s Chris Lanzilli has launched three home runs while the Demon Deacons pitching staff has struck out 52 batters in 36 innings thus far. Wake Forest was on its way to its fourth win in five tries against UNC Greensboro, but it was suspended with the Demon Deacons winning 6-2.
The first game without Mike Martin wasn’t a success for Florida State, as the Seminoles dropped a surprising 3-1 decision to Niagara. FSU outscored the Purple Eagles, 35-5, over the next two games—but it was still an unfortunate blemish out of the gate on Mike Martin Jr.’s record.
North Carolina State and Clemson are the other two undefeated teams (joining Miami and UNC) in the conference. The Wolfpack have won each of its first four games by at least three runs, while the Tigers leaned on their pitching in a narrow sweep of Liberty.
Image courtesy of Miami Athletics