Breaking Down The Numbers That Point To College World Series Contenders

Image credit: Vanderbilt (Peter Aiken/Getty)

Predicting the winner of the College World Series can be a difficult task. You wouldn’t be wrong to target an SEC team—it’s won three of the last four—or grab a winner from the Pac-12, which has three of the last 10. Still, teams like Fresno State or Coastal Carolina can seemingly emerge from anywhere and get hot at the right time.

There’s one way to narrow down the field, though. In the frenzy of regional play and double elimination, it’s no secret that having a deep and capable pitching staff is incredibly important. This article will lay out just how significant that edge is.

To do so, we’re using the offense and defense ratings that are featured at Massey Ratings. Both measure how the respective units—the lineup and the pitching staff/defense—would be expected to do against an average opponent.

Let’s take a look at the previous 10 College World Series winners. All 10 of them ranked in the top 20 in pitching/defense, while that was true of just six of 10 on the offensive side. What’s particularly interesting is that some of these winners were very unbalanced—see 2017 Florida, 2015 Virginia, and 2013 UCLA—but they made up for it by being truly elite at run prevention.

This table also shows how impressive Coastal Carolina’s run to the 2016 title was. It’s the only champion in the last 10 years to not rank inside the Top 15 in either category.

YEAR	NAME	OFF	DEF
2021	Mississippi State	17th	9th
2019	Vanderbilt	3rd	3rd
2018	Oregon State	1st	1st
2017	Florida	57th	5th
2016	Coastal Carolina	22nd	20th
2015	Virginia	33rd	7th
2014	Vanderbilt	8th	15th
2013	UCLA	43rd	1st
2012	Arizona	1st	13th
2011	South Carolina	18th	3rd

The emphasis on high-end pitching becomes more apparent when you look at the sample of the 80 College World Series participants over the last 10 years. Here they are, grouped by whether they were eliminated in bracket play, reached the CWS Finals, or won it all.

STATUS	AVERAGE RANK
STATUS	OFF	DEF
Eliminated	25.1	13.6
Runner-Up	23.0	6.0
Won	20.3	7.7

You’ll note that the biggest difference between the final two teams that competed for the championship and the rest of the field is in the pitching column. It shouldn’t be a surprise that teams with deep, reliable pitching will have better success in a double-elimination format than others.

Of the 80 teams, 26 ranked in the top 10 in offense. Four of those teams won, ranking 1st, 3rd, 13th, and 15th in run prevention. Three finished as runners-up while the rest didn’t make it to the final weekend of the season.

A good example of this emphasis on having balance—and more importantly strong pitching—is apparent when you consider two Arizona teams in this sample. The first, 2012 Arizona, was the nation’s top offensive team and paired it with the 13th-best pitching en route to a title. Another edition, 2021 Arizona, mashed its way to a No. 1 offensive rating with a .325 team batting average and 70 homers. The pitching left a lot to be desired, though, ranking 43rd, and it was among the first teams sent home from Omaha. The Wildcats lost to eventual runners-up Vanderbilt, 7-6, then were blown out by Stanford in a 14-5 elimination game.

An imbalance can be hard to overcome. Of the 10 most unbalanced teams in the dataset, eight of 10 didn’t make it to the final series. One won—2017 Florida—thanks to the fifth-ranked pitching staff that took a lot of pressure off of the offense. The Gators lost a single game and won their games at the College World Series by the following margins: 3-0, 5-1, 3-0, 4-3, 6-1. They averaged under four runs per game and went 6-1. It’s a similar story with a sadder end for 2012 South Carolina, which found itself in the loser’s bracket with a top-two pitching staff and a sub-60th lineup and eked out 4-1, 2-0, and 3-2 wins before being held to two runs in two games to finish second.

While an arbitrary characteristic, offensive-focused teams don’t fare very well. Of the 20 “offensive-focused” teams in the dataset, identified by having a better rating in offense than defense, just two managed to win it—2012 Arizona and 2014 Vanderbilt, which ranked eighth and 15th, respectively. The other 18 averaged to finish fifth. This includes a notable powerhouse lineup like 2018’s Texas Tech, which finished outside the Top 30 in run prevention.

So with all this noted, we’ve established a loose criteria: To be a contender, you need to be balanced, or be better on the mound and have more depth there. Pitching triumphs over hitting: 56 of the 80 teams were better on that side of the ball, while four were even.

Of course, that was a sampling of College World Series teams. If that checklist for a contender is to hold true, we’d assume that historically, teams that are balanced or stronger on the mound fare better in the tournament than those that are not. To see if that stands up, let’s expand our number of teams to 640—each and every team from the last 10 tournaments.

First, a quick and dirty look—does the team rank higher on the mound or at the plate?

STYLE	REGIONALS	SUPER REGIONALS	CWS
Balanced	7	4	4
Defense	341	97	56
Offense	292	59	20
Total	640	160	80

That’s a pretty dramatic drop off from the first to the second round. Ignoring the seven teams that managed identical ranks, you go from roughly 53% of the teams in regionals being better on the mound to 61% in the super regionals. That jumps to 70% in the College World Series. This quick and simple look identifies teams that have a better chance of making deep runs.

Let’s go a level further. Here’s how teams with a top-20 offense fared based on the corresponding rank of their pitching staff.

PITCHING	REGIONALS	SUPER REGIONALS	COLLEGE WORLD SERIES	ADVANCED 1 ROUND
1-20	17	19	36	76%
21-40	15	9	6	50%
41-60	14	6	1	33%
61-80	8	1		11%
81-100	11	1		8%
101-120	5	1		17%
121-140	3			0%
141-160	1			0%
181-200	2			0%
221-240	1			0%
241-260	1			0%

If they had a top-20 pitching staff, to no surprise, they advanced at least one round 76% of the time. There’s a pretty steep drop-off after that, though, as just half of those that ranked within the next 20 moved on. The rest of the field? Despite having a high-end offense, just one of 56 teams ultimately made it to the College World Series. That one team was Arizona last year, which we covered earlier in this piece. The remaining 55 might’ve been able to put up big offensive numbers, but glaring weaknesses on the mound cost them a chance at moving on.

Now, flipping it around to Top 20 pitching staffs. The numbers are a lot more friendly—even with subpar offenses.

HITTING	REGIONALS	SUPER REGIONALS	COLLEGE WORLD SERIES	ADVANCED 1 ROUND
1-20	17	19	36	76%
21-40	12	9	19	70%
41-60	12	3	11	54%
61-80	16	1	3	20%
81-100	8	1	1	20%
101-120	1	1		50%
121-140	3			0%
161-180	1			0%

That stark drop-off that was apparent in the previous dataset has vanished. The first row remains the same, but a top-20 pitching staff paired with an offense at least within the top 40 advanced at a similar 70% clip. In fact, you could have an offense in the 40-to-60 range and still have a strong chance of advancing at least one round: 54%.

So what does this mean for the 2022 campaign? If history holds true, we’re looking for at least a top-20 pitching staff. The team can’t be too unbalanced, though, and needs an offense at least within the top 40 to 50. Here’s that current Top 20 (as of May 28) with a simple “Similarity” index that takes the difference between the median national championship winner.

TEAM	OFF	DEF	SIMILARITY
Tennessee	3rd	1st	19.5
Oregon State	12th	2nd	9.5
Texas	9th	6th	8.5
Stanford	10th	7th	6.5
Notre Dame	16th	12th	-4.5
LSU	8th	20th	-4.5
Virginia	11th	18th	-5.5
Florida	26th	10th	-12.5
Virginia Tech	20th	16th	-12.5
Ole Miss	21st	19th	-16.5
Miami	25th	17th	-18.5
Vanderbilt	45th	4th	-25.5
Arkansas	41st	8th	-25.5
Auburn	46th	15th	-37.5
North Carolina	53rd	13th	-42.5
Southern Miss	66th	3rd	-45.5
UCLA	70th	11th	-57.5
Gonzaga	73rd	9th	-58.5
Florida State	84th	5th	-65.5
Alabama	77th	14th	-67.5

Unsurprisingly, Tennessee is atop the list by a considerable margin. At this point, it’s Tennessee’s national title to lose. Oregon State, Texas, and Stanford are the next three that meet the criteria most closely. Notre Dame and LSU are close behind, as is Virginia. Other teams to keep an eye on are Florida and Virginia Tech.

Notably, there’s several teams that would have to take a huge step forward offensively. Teams like Southern Mississippi, Vanderbilt, and Florida State all rank in the top five on the mound but poor offensive numbers have pushed them down this list. This should be no surprise to Seminoles fans—last season, they ranked within the Top 10 in pitching but failed to make it out of regionals thanks to a lower-ranked offense.

Finally, just for fun…

Here are the 10 most “unbalanced” teams over the last 10 years. As you might expect, none made it out of regionals. Morehead State was a quick two-and-out in the Louisville Regional after a year in which it clubbed 66 home runs and hit .332 as a team, but allowed 76 and posted a 6.35 ERA.

YEAR	TEAM	OFF	DEF
2015	Morehead State	15th	243rd
2011	James Madison	11th	226th
2016	Western Carolina	34th	239th
2019	Coastal Carolina	5th	198th
2018	Morehead State	31st	220th
2012	New Mexico State	5th	189th
2011	Seton Hall	206th	31st
2019	Fordham	265th	95th
2016	Duke	196th	27th

Here are the 10 best teams in the dataset to not win a title. This is a list Tennessee will look to avoid being on, as the Volunteers currently rank first and third in offense and pitching, respectively.

YEAR	TEAM	OFF	DEF	BETTER TEAM IN FIELD?	RESULT
2011	Vanderbilt	2	2	N	CWS
2015	Florida	1	4	N	CWS
2015	Vanderbilt	4	2	N	CWS, runner-up
2021	Notre Dame	2	5	N	Super Regionals
2016	TCU	4	3	N	CWS
2016	Texas A&M	1	7	N	CWS, runner-up
2012	UCLA	7	1	N	CWS
2018	UCLA	4	5	N	Regionals
2018	Arkansas	7	3	Y*	CWS, runner-up
2013	North Carolina	3	7	N	CWS