Making Sense of the Mississippi State Baseball RPI

The Mississippi State Baseball team jumped from 13th to 8th in the RPI after beating Troy on Wednesday, and nobody knew why.

The enemy of most Mississippi State baseball fans this year has been the RPI. The polls have always valued the Bulldogs more than the RPI has, and because of that, there are many fans who feared the RPI was killing the team’s chances of getting a national seed.

Well, our feelings toward the RPI changed a little bit this past Wednesday. The Bulldogs played a midweek game against Troy, and they entered the game 13th in the RPI standings. After the win, the Bulldogs jumped all the way to 8th.

While there weren’t any Mississippi State baseball fans complaining about it, there were a lot who were confused. I’m not sure I can make complete sense of it, but I think I can at least make the waters a little less muddy.

Understanding the RPI formula

The RPI formula is actually really simple. Here are the working components.

Your record is 25% of your index score
The record of your opponents is 50% of your index score
The record of your opponents’ opponents is 25% of your score.

Wins and losses aren’t simply calculated by how many wins you get and how many losses you get. It was tweaked in 2014 to reward teams that went on the road.

Home wins are credited with 0.7 wins
Road wins are credited with 1.3 wins
Home losses are credited with 1.3 losses
Road losses are credited with 0.7 losses
Neutral road wins and losses are not adjusted.

So lets look at the first component of the Mississippi State baseball RPI. The Bulldogs currently have a record of 34-14-1. But it has to be adjusted according to the RPI formula. Here is how that would work.

Home Wins (21 x .7) = 14.7
Road Wins (10 x 1.3) = 13
Neutral Wins (3 x1) = 3
Total Wins = 30.7
Home Losses (9 x 1.3) = 11.7
Road Losses (5 x.7) = 3.5
Neutral Losses = 0
Total Losses =15.2
Total Games played = 49

The Mississippi State baseball adjusted record is 30.7-15.2-1. Their adjusted winning percentage is calculated by dividing their adjusted win total (30.7) by the total number of games played (49). That equals .6265. If you look at the RPI rankings on D1baseball.com, you’ll notice that the Bulldogs RPI value is .5962. That’s because MSU’s winning percentage is only 25% of the score.

To calculate this portion of the score, take the Mississippi State baseball adjusted winning percentage of .6265 and multiply it times .25. That comes out to .1566.

The Mississippi State Baseball opponents have an adjusted winning percentage of .5732, assuming I figured it correctly. Multiply this times .5 and you get .2866. This is good for 10th best in the country.

For example, FAU has an adjusted record of 30.9-13.4, but since the Mississippi State baseball team played them twice, they account for 61.8 of the Bulldogs’ opponents win total and 26.8 of MSU’s losses.

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Adding 25% of the Bulldogs winning percentage (.1566) and 50 % of their opponents winning percentage (.2866) and you get .4432. I’m going to assume that 25% of Mississippi State’s opponents’ opponents is .1530 because that is what is needed to make the Bulldogs total RPI value of .5962.

So why do people talk so much about wins against RPI Top 25 or wins against RPI Top 100? Conversely, why do people talk so much about losses against RPI 100+ or losses against RPI 200+? People assume these things are part of the calculation, but they aren’t.

Since half your RPI is determined by your opponents’ record, if you play a difficult enough schedule and only beat the bad teams and never the good teams, you’ll end up pretty high in the rankings.

Take a look at Bryant, which has a 36-9 record. They are 33rd in the RPI rankings. They have an adjusted win-loss record of 38.1-7.8. Because their winning percentage is so good, it is almost impossible to not have a good RPI. Plus, 19 of their wins have been on the road, so their adjusted win total is more than their actual win total.

But when you look at their opponents, Bryant has the 211th ranked strength of schedule in the country. This team has only played eight games in the Top 100, and are 3-5 against those teams. So despite having a strong RPI, Bryant has to win their Conference tournament to make it into the field thanks to such weak opponents on their schedule. No one believes this team will be able to compete with quality opponents once they are forced to do so.

So what happened on Wednesday night?

There were a few factors that led to the Mississippi State baseball team making a big jump in the RPI after Wednesday night. Lets take them one by one.

First, the Bulldogs were playing on the road. So when the RPI was recalculated after their win, they were credited in the RPI formula for 1.3 wins.

Second, Troy is a pretty decent team in a decent conference. Troy’s adjusted record is 25.2-22.7. So the Mississippi State baseball RPI was boosted by not only winning on the road, but also winning against a team with a winning record who has played decent competition.

Third, three teams had losses in front of them that hurt their RPI. Clemson had a loss to Charleston, but it wasn’t awful. Clemson was able to stay steady at number 9 but it did allow the Bulldogs to pass them. Florida State had a really bad loss to FGCU at home and made them drop from 7th to 14th. And North Carolina had a similar loss to UNC-Wilmington that didn’t hurt the Tar Heels RPI, but did allow the Bulldogs to pass them as well.

Fourth, Mississippi State was padding their RPI while Vanderbilt, the last team they jumped, was at home. They didn’t get hurt Wednesday, but they weren’t doing anything to help their cause.

Last, the difference in RPI Index scores for the 7th through 12th ranted teams is pretty small. Ole Miss, ranked 7th is only .0098 ahead of 12th place North Carolina. There is lots of room for the teams in that range to move around in the last two weekends of the series.

More bulldogs: Will a Mississippi State Baseball Player Bring Home the Ferriss Trophy?

I hope this helped you understand why the Mississippi State baseball RPI changed so drastically and why RPI isn’t just some imaginary number a person rattles off the top of their head. If it didn’t, well, the RPI is one of the most confusing topics there is, but at least I tried.

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