The 1927 New York Yankees, a remarkable team many experts consider the best in baseball history, won 110 games and lost but 44 for a winning percentage of 71.4%. Turns out, it really helps to have Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Bob Meusel batting back-to-back to back in the middle of your lineup.
Rick ClevelandNow, compare that with the current World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers, who last season won 93 games and lost 69, a winning percentage of 57.4%. That’s much more normal, or should we say, mortal.
Now then, compare all that to how Mississippi teams have begun their college seasons. Mississippi State has won 11 and lost one, a winning percentage of 91.7%. State’s only defeat, which came Sunday, was to No. 1 ranked UCLA in extra innings. Southern Miss has won 90.9% of its games and 10 straight after losing its opener to the best pitcher in college baseball, Jackson Flora of Cal-Santa Barbara.
State plays USM at Hattiesburg Tuesday night in the nation’s best mid-week matchup, a battle of Top 10 teams. Somebody has to lose. Indeed, a really good team will lose.
And yes, I know what many readers are thinking, which is: All this winning won’t last. And you are right. Baseball is more a game of failure than success. The best hitters make outs two-thirds of the time. Usually, the best teams lose at least 30% of their games. That’s because even the best hitters go through slumps and even the best pitchers have off days. And sometimes, the other guy just pitches better. Bob Gibson, the most dominant pitcher I ever saw, lost 174 times. That’s right: Gibson lost 41% of his decisions. And he was a first ballot Hall of Famer.
You should know Ole Miss isn’t too far behind its two in-state rivals. The Rebels have won 10 and lost 2, a win percentage of 83.3%. Of course, that rate of winning won’t last, either. It just won’t. The schedule will get lots, lots harder, especially for both the Rebels and the Bulldogs when they get to the SEC season, which happens soon.
That might not be true of Southern Miss, by the way. The computers that calculate college baseball power ratings have spat out numbers that say Southern Miss has played the most difficult schedule in college baseball to date. Indeed, Chris Ostrander’s Golden Eagles currently rank No. 1 in the country in RPI (ratings percentage index).
Neophyte fans might wonder: Just what is this RPI thing you hear announcers talk about and sports writers write about all the time? Simply put, which is not so simple, RPI is a ranking system used by the NCAA to evaluate team performance and strength of schedule, which heavily influences NCAA Tournament selection. It is calculated using three main components: a team’s winning percentage (25%), opponents’ winning percentage (50%) and opponents’ opponents’ winning percentage (25%). The formula factors in where games are played, heavily weighting victories won on the road over those won at home.
See, I told you it wasn’t simple.
A word here about Ostrander, who answers to Oz, as in the wizard of: When USM swept highly regarded Louisiana Tech on Sunday, it marked Ostrander’s 100th victory, just 11 games into only his third season as the Eagles’ head coach. It took Oz only 137 games to win 100. That’s a win percentage of 73%, and that’s outlandish. No USM coach has ever done it faster, which is saying something because the last four Eagles coaches have all been voted in to the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame.
Ostrander will match wits with new State coach Brian O’Connor, a 2024 inductee into the College Baseball Hall of Fame and easily one of the most respected coaches in college baseball. O’Connor won an amazing 917 games in 22 seasons at Virginia. And, in case you are wondering, it took him 145 games to win his first 100, which just goes to show how remarkable Ostrander has been at USM.
Tuesday night’s matchup is a mid-week game, so most of both teams’ best starting pitchers will get a night off. Expect both teams to use multiple arms and expect both coaches to get a look at some of their younger, lesser-used pitchers. That doesn’t mean they won’t be trying to win. A victory would be a nice achievement for either, but a defeat won’t hurt badly, at least RPI-wise, for either team.
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