[CTcard]

Boyd Nation, a self-described Mississippi State fan, has endeavored to quantify this with his own power rank called Iterative Strength Rankings (ISR) which he used to analyze the seedings from 1999-2019.

A 25-Year Retrospective -- 1995-2019 (boydsworld.com)

He even devotes a small section to Stanford all by itself, remarking, among other things, that "Stanford has been terribly treated by the selection process".  Most of the jobbing happened in 1999-2003 when Stanford did five straight to Omaha and it was actually our opponents that got hurt more than us, but still.

More relevant to this tourney, in Boyd Nation's ISR for this year, Stanford is #3.  Our two-seed Texas State is #12.  Our three-seed UC Santa Barbara is #9.  That's two other teams in our regional objectively good enough (by ISR, not by RPI) to host their own regionals.  Yikes.

I've learned a lot from Boyd Nation over the years, though haven't checked his site as often since he semi-retired around 10+ years ago. Somewhere he has a long description of the mathematical deficiencies of the RPI particularly for college baseball. 

An interesting bit of that 25 year perspective is that while Stanford comes in as the second strongest team over the time period, it includes all-time decade highs and lows for Stanford.*  
From 1994-2004 (11 years) Stanford finished first in the conference 7 times and never worse than second, made it to the CWS 7 times, and was runner-up 3 times. 
From 2005-2016 (12 years) Stanford had one second place finish, was as low as 10th, had four years below 0.500 in conference, and an average finish of 5.3 (even giving ties the higher option). Now it wasn't that bad, Stanford still had 7 tournament appearances in those 12 years, hosted 2 regionals, made 5 super regionals, made the CWS once, and had two 40+ win seasons. But it was noticeably down from the previous decade and spurred lots of calls for Marquess to call it quits. Interestingly, the current revival got going at the end of Marquess' tenure and Esquer was left with a strong core (but a recruiting hole at the change-over that would have led to a very bad 2020 season had that season happened). 

* Perhaps the 1980s was Stanford's best decade given the two championships. But otherwise, it wasn't quite as strong as the mid-90s to mid-aughts decade.  

Also, the best team in Boyd's 25 year retrospective was Fullerton, a regular Stanford opponent in both the regular season and post season. 
Fullerton has been on a serious down swing just lately (mostly outside Boyd's window). Since they took us out in the regional we hosted in 2018, they have been at or below 0.500 every year. That's not a long time (3 seasons plus about 1/3 of a season in 2020), but still very odd to long time college baseball watchers. And a bit of a blow to our RPI as we play them yearly.

[CTcard]

Boyd Nation, a self-described Mississippi State fan, has endeavored to quantify this with his own power rank called Iterative Strength Rankings (ISR) which he used to analyze the seedings from 1999-2019.

A 25-Year Retrospective -- 1995-2019 (boydsworld.com)

He even devotes a small section to Stanford all by itself, remarking, among other things, that "Stanford has been terribly treated by the selection process".  Most of the jobbing happened in 1999-2003 when Stanford did five straight to Omaha and it was actually our opponents that got hurt more than us, but still.

More relevant to this tourney, in Boyd Nation's ISR for this year, Stanford is #3.  Our two-seed Texas State is #12.  Our three-seed UC Santa Barbara is #9.  That's two other teams in our regional objectively good enough (by ISR, not by RPI) to host their own regionals.  Yikes.

I've learned a lot from Boyd Nation over the years, though haven't checked his site as often since he semi-retired around 10+ years ago. Somewhere he has a long description of the mathematical deficiencies of the RPI particularly for college baseball. 

An interesting bit of that 25 year perspective is that while Stanford comes in as the second strongest team over the time period, it includes all-time decade highs and lows for Stanford.*  
From 1994-2004 (11 years) Stanford finished first in the conference 7 times and never worse than second, made it to the CWS 7 times, and was runner-up 3 times. 
From 2005-2016 (12 years) Stanford had one second place finish, was as low as 10th, had four years below 0.500 in conference, and an average finish of 5.3 (even giving ties the higher option). Now it wasn't that bad, Stanford still had 7 tournament appearances in those 12 years, hosted 2 regionals, made 5 super regionals, made the CWS once, and had two 40+ win seasons. But it was noticeably down from the previous decade and spurred lots of calls for Marquess to call it quits. Interestingly, the current revival got going at the end of Marquess' tenure and Esquer was left with a strong core (but a recruiting hole at the change-over that would have led to a very bad 2020 season had that season happened). 

* Perhaps the 1980s was Stanford's best decade given the two championships. But otherwise, it wasn't quite as strong as the mid-90s to mid-aughts decade.  

Also, the best team in Boyd's 25 year retrospective was Fullerton, a regular Stanford opponent in both the regular season and post season. 
Fullerton has been on a serious down swing just lately (mostly outside Boyd's window). Since they took us out in the regional we hosted in 2018, they have been at or below 0.500 every year. That's not a long time (3 seasons plus about 1/3 of a season in 2020), but still very odd to long time college baseball watchers. And a bit of a blow to our RPI as we play them yearly.