ASU Baseball: RPI Outlook

When we last checked in Sun Devil baseball’s RPI for this season two weeks ago, they stood at 23. That is no longer the case. Despite winning the series versus Utah and taking a game from Oregon State, ASU’s RPI stands at 40 on Monday. A midweek loss to UNLV and the one loss to the Utes hurt the team’s ranking as UNLV was 117th and Utah was 118th last week in RPI.

As we stated a few weeks ago based on last year’s regional hosts, the RPI needs to be closer to 20 for Phoenix Municipal Stadium to host.

Here’s a look at the average RPI of hosts from last season:

Average RPI of hosts in 2018: 9.9

Lowest RPI of a host in 2018: 22 (13th seed Texas)

There’s still a chance to boost the RPI as ASU hosts UCLA (1 in RPI) and Stanford (10 in RPI), however, the issue is at this point there’d be 25 percent of the hosts already on the west coast. With UCLA, Oregon State and Stanford nearly a lock to host barring a collapse at the end of the season it makes it tougher for ASU. With UC Santa Barbara emerging as the other pacific coast host, ASU really needs its RPI to climb because UCSB is at 7th.

The other series ASU will need to take is their non-conference road series in Lincoln on May 10th-12th against Nebraska. The Huskers sit one spot behind ASU at 41, and an away series win help stabilize ASU’s RPI closer to 20s. Even better is that Cal has been playing a lot better of late and will also challenge the Sun Devils.

Rest of the schedule (RPI): vs UNLV (111), @ Washington x3 (65), vs UCLA x3 (1), @ Arizona (85), @ Nebraska x3 (41), @ Cal x3 (44), vs Stanford x3 (10)