By this time tomorrow, we’ll have our four College World Series semifinalists. We already have two of them. Oklahoma and Mississippi are each one win away from the championship series. Notre Dame, Texas A&M, Auburn, and Arkansas all play today to try to get to two wins away themselves.
The Men’s College World Series is either the third or fourth-biggest national championship in the country. The College Football Playoff national championship game is first, followed by the men’s basketball national championship game. Then, it’s either women’s basketball or the Men’s College World Series, right?
It’s a little hard to say with certainty, because college baseball is fairly regional—like ice hockey, or lacrosse—but regardless, the Men’s College World Series’ national championship is among the best non-football, non-men’s basketball national championships out there. It means something, but it doesn’t mean everything. It means something different to different schools.
Let’s, then, go through these six schools, ranking them in reverse order of how much this title means:
6. Notre Dame
I’m not sure how many Notre Dame students know they have a baseball team. It’s a program on the rise, but my impression from those I know there is that it’s not a mainstream sport at the school. I think hockey and lacrosse might both be bigger, which isn’t unusual in the “Big Ten country” part of the world.
5. Oklahoma
Oklahoma’s doing just fine in sports that matter to Oklahoma, which is to say they’re in good shape in football, routinely better than Texas and both presently good enough and a national champion recently enough that while they care about baseball, this isn’t going to change their overall feelings about themselves athletically.
4. Auburn
Auburn, like Oklahoma, is doing just fine in sports that matter to Auburn, but it does have the angle in the rivalry with Alabama where it could try to be the clearly dominant baseball school in the state. It also doesn’t have as comfortable a seat as Oklahoma. It’s not desperate for titles like these other three, but they aren’t going to misplace this trophy. Oklahoma or Notre Dame might.
3. Texas A&M
I’m putting Texas A&M behind Mississippi here because my impression is that Texas A&M is so close to breaking through in football, or at least feels itself to be so close to breaking through in football, that this doesn’t matter as much as it would have a few years ago. They’re too focused on the bigger prize.
2. Mississippi
Mississippi at least has a championship in football, even if the exact number is up for debate. This would be a massive deal down there, with the added benefit of being an immediate rebuttal to Mississippi State (which is important to Mississippi), but it is not the life-or-death thing it may well be for certain folks in Arkansas’s camp.
1. Arkansas
And, here we are. Arkansas is traditionally phenomenal in cross country and track & field, especially on the men’s side. Arkansas may be very proud of that. The rest of the country doesn’t really care. It’s just 1994 on the men’s basketball side for these guys, then. They’d really like to get that title a friend.
The Lightning Are Back In It
With a loud Game 3 win back at home, Tampa Bay has returned to the mix in the Stanley Cup Finals. They’re still only just 25% or 30% likely to win, but they also only trail by one game, and 25% or 30% isn’t a wild probability to overcome.
Gelo, of course, is doing the reverse of what it did after the Avalanche’s 7-0 win and is swinging back towards the Lightning, though not overwhelmingly. I haven’t checked the odds yet, but my guess is that the market will hold still or, if anything, also move towards Tampa Bay. For our purposes with the futures portfolio, the question tomorrow will be what happens if we continue our hedging approach, bet enough on the Avalanche to wipe out half that liability, and then lose. If the series odds are close to even after that, we’re in fine shape—we can just bet on the Avalanche to win the series and leave ourselves with something like a 5% profit no matter who wins. If the series odds aren’t close to even, we’ll have to decide whether and how to keep hedging. We may choose to take on this initial risk, but we also might wait. Need to look at where the value lies (I did check, and unless markets move, we cannot hedge our way to a guaranteed profit with an Avalanche series bet just yet).
You’re Kilian Me
Caleb Kilian had a rough start last night, walking five while recording just seven outs. A lot of pressure’s being put on Kilian. He’s one of the Cubs’ best prospects, and Cubs fans are desperate for a new wave of good prospects to get them back into contention. The problem is that Kilian is far from a can’t-miss prospect, and reactions track more with ERA than with actual performance, because ERA better reflects what shows up on the scoreboard (even if it more poorly predicts what will show up on future scoreboards). Kilian’s ERA is 10.32. His FIP, though, is 4.98, and his xERA is 4.15, which basically means that despite the walks, Kilian’s ability to avoid allowing home runs so far—and in a possible cause of that, his ability to avoid allowing hard contact so far—has been impressive. Especially impressive, really, when juxtaposing that xERA with the walk rate, which is over one an inning.
Hopefully Kilian settles in and finds the strike zone and remains hard to hit and becomes a long-term contributor to this Cubs’ rotation. Hopefully also, though, people realize how surprising an outcome that good would be. Even from a top-100 prospect.
In other Cubs bits:
- With Major League Baseball finally committing to the 13-pitchers-on-an-active-roster rule, Adrian Sampson was sent down to AAA yesterday. Nelson Velázquez was brought up. He isn’t as much of a prospect as Kilian, but to undermine myself a touch, neither was (is?) Christopher Morel.
- Sean Newcomb cleared waivers and will probably end up at AAA, if he isn’t there already. It’s looking unlikely the Cubs will lose him from the franchise.
- Eric Stout has been traded to the Pirates in return for cash.
Brewers Problems, Cardinals Problems, Rays Problems, and More
At the top of the NL Central, the Brewers got more bad news: Aaron Ashby is heading on the IL with shoulder inflammation. Josh Hader’s back, but part of the thing about having a great bullpenner is that he needs something to work with. Chi Chi González starts for the Crew tonight.
In St. Louis, Tyler O’Neill is going back on the IL, while Corey Dickerson looks to resume a rehab assignment and Jordan Hicks prepares to start one of his own. Hicks will be used in the bullpen rather than the rotation.
The Rays are putting Manuel Margot and Kevin Kiermaier on the IL. The Rays currently trail the Red Sox, Guardians, and Blue Jays for Wild Card spots, but sit just half a game back of those first two. Behind them, it’s a three-game drop before you get to the White Sox, which means: Making the playoffs is extremely doable for these guys, and would be valuable, but with the injuries and the quantity of teams surrounding them, it wouldn’t be a total shock if they wind up a seller in a month. They’re just one bad stretch away from that making a lot of sense.
Speaking of those White Sox, they got Tim Anderson back but they’ve sent Yoán Moncada to the IL. Now’s probably a good time to mention that 34-year-old Josh Harrison, though replacement-level over the year so far using fWAR, has a 163 wRC+ over his last two weeks or so, and while that’s only on 36 plate appearances, his xwOBA isn’t that far below average, suggesting he may continue to be a useful piece for a team severely in need of useful pieces right now.
Trayce Thompson is headed from Detroit to Los Angeles, and cash is headed from Los Angeles to Detroit. Thompson will be part of the temporary Mookie Betts replacement approach.
The Padres have called back up C.J. Abrams, one of the top prospects in the game. Between Abrams, Oneil Cruz (who was an electric factory last night against the Cubs), Riley Greene, Gabriel Moreno, Adley Rutschman, Bobby Witt Jr., Spencer Torkelson, Julio Rodriguez, and Shane Baz, nine of the top sixteen FanGraphs prospects are currently on major league rosters, and most of them are playing very well. Eight of these guys are in the top ten, too, meaning the top ten is about to get a reorganization. Going back to the Cubs for a second, I don’t think we’ll see anyone from that franchise reach that point on the list, but more and more folks should be entering the top 100 as some of the lottery tickets look more likely to pan out and others don’t.
On the field, nice win by the Yankees last night, with Gerrit Cole outdueling Shane McClanahan as New York continues to put the AL East away. Dramatic finish in Atlanta, with the home team taking down San Francisco after Will Smith wriggled out of a no-out, bases-loaded jam in the eighth, only allowing the tying run to score. The White Sox beat the Blue Jays, staying well within the race in their division while pushing the Blue Jays further back into the thick of the East, while Tyrone Taylor’s home run pushed the Brewers ahead of the Cardinals in Milwaukee in a tight, 2-0 game between Corbin Burnes and Miles Mikolas.
**
Viewing schedule, today/tonight, second screen rotation in italics:
- 2:00 PM EDT: Notre Dame vs. Texas A&M, College World Series (ESPN)
- 7:00 PM EDT: Auburn vs. Arkansas, College World Series (ESPN2)
- 7:05 PM EDT: Cubs @ Pirates, Swarmer vs. Contreras (MLB TV)
- 7:20 PM EDT: Giants @ Atlanta, DeSclafani vs. Strider (TBS)
- 8:05 PM EDT: Phillies @ Rangers, Gibson vs. Perez (MLB TV)
- 8:10 PM EDT: Blue Jays @ White Sox, Gausman vs. Cease (MLB TV)
- 9:40 PM EDT: Diamondbacks @ Padres, Gallen vs. Manaea (MLB TV)
