Happy Valley Hardball with a sabermetrics twist

PSU finishes the season at #155, just about the same place it has for the last two years.

Team W-L Pct RPI 1 Michigan 34 – 20 – 0 0.630 67 2 Michigan State 34 – 19 – 0 0.642 82 3 Indiana 25 – 25 – 0 0.500 91 4 Ohio State 28 – 21 – 0 0.571 92 5 Iowa 25 – 26 – 0 0.490 123 6 Minnesota 24 – [...]

The sweep by Minnesota drops Penn State 35 places in the RPI down to #169. PSU could have their worst finish in several years unless they come up with a couple of wins against Michigan this weekend.

As close as the conference is in the standings they are spread out a little more in the RPI rankings. However, no team is playing well enough to earn a bid on their own so the Big Ten will be a one bid league for sure this year. Team W-L Pct RPI 1 Michigan 29 [...]

PSU appears to be settling into just about the same RPI slot that they have for the last couple of years. Their weekend series loss to Iowa has dropped them to #135 to start the week off.

The three wins over Michigan State vaulted the Nits 30 places in the RPI rankings up to #124

PSU also made a big move upward in the conference RPI ranking moving up to the middle of the pack. Team W-L Pct RPI 1 Michigan 27 – 15 – 0 0.643 57 2 Ohio State 24 – 13 – 0 0.649 78 3 Michigan State 28 – 14 – 0 0.667 86 4 Indiana [...]

Team W-L Pct RPI 1 Michigan 25 – 14 – 0 0.641 63 2 Michigan State 26 – 11 – 0 0.703 71 3 Ohio State 22 – 11 – 0 0.667 86 4 Indiana 18 – 18 – 0 0.500 114 5 Illinois 17 – 18 – 0 0.486 141 6 Iowa 16 – [...]

Taking two out of three from a quality team in Ohio State got the RPI headed back in the right direction at #155

Hard to believe that PSU only dropped seven places after getting swept by Purdue over the weekend.

Northwestern may have taken two out of three from Penn State but that wasn’t enough to get them out of the Big Ten RPI cellar. Team W-L Pct RPI 1 Michigan State 22 – 6 – 0 0.786 66 2 Michigan 18 – 11 – 0 0.621 80 3 Ohio State 19 – 7 – [...]

A 2-2 week that included three games against a not very good Northwestern team dropped the team’s RPI once again. It now sits at 177.

Team W-L Pct RPI 1 Michigan State 19 – 5 – 0 0.792 52 2 Michigan 15 – 10 – 0 0.600 93 3 Ohio State 16 – 6 – 0 0.727 107 4 Iowa 10 – 15 – 0 0.400 131 5 Indiana 11 – 13 – 0 0.458 137 6 Penn State 11 [...]

Despite going just 2-3 for the week, Penn State’s RPI saw virtually no movement (to be exact, they dropped from #154 to #156).