NCAA baseball rankings are, for the most part, meaningless. Oregon\u2019s rankings earlier in the week is a case in point:<\/p>\n
The more meaningful ranking heading into this weekend\u2019s series with the UCLA Bruins<\/a> was RPI. UCLA\u2019s RPI is the same as their national ranking \u2013 #1. Ducks baseball? Well, their RPI is 27.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n That\u2019s why Oregon\u2019s run-rule drubbing at the hands (and bats) of UCLA should not have come as a surprise.<\/p>\n All facets of Oregon\u2019s play last night fell short of what was needed to compete against the #1 team in the country. Pitching, fielding, batting; all failed to rise to the occasion, and the Ducks lost Game 1 in seven innings, 11-1.<\/p>\n UCLA starter Wylan Moss pitched strong in the complete-game win. Oregon could only muster three hits and their only run came in the fourth inning, when Drew Smith<\/a> hit a sacrifice fly to bring in the Ducks\u2019 sole run of the game.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Will Sanford<\/a> suffered his worst outing of the season, pitching three innings and allowing 6 runs on 5 hits with an ERA of 4.68. The relief pitching was not going to save the day, as Jonah Barkoff<\/a> allowed two runs and Leo Uelmen<\/a> was tagged for the other three runs.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Defensive errors in the third and fourth innings contributed to the six runs that the Bruins scored in those innings.<\/p>\n Oregon baseball will go at it again today in Game 2. If they want to come away with a win, they\u2019ll have to fire on all cylinders \u2013 not misfire on all cylinders. That game is tonight at 6:30 pm PT and can be viewed on the Big Ten Network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NCAA baseball rankings are, for the most part, meaningless. Oregon\u2019s rankings earlier in the week is a case…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,1130,12496,87587,6038,5078,5164,10159,5080,87588],"class_list":["post-694447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baseball","tag-baseball","tag-drew-smith","tag-eugene","tag-ncaa-baseball-rankings","tag-oregon","tag-oregon-ducks","tag-ucla","tag-ucla-baseball","tag-ucla-bruins","tag-youngstown-state-penguins"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116545196133072583","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}