Mercer baseball left out of NCAA tourney, sparking controversy

There are headlines a program doesn’t want to make, and that’s where Mercer is.

“Highest-rated RPI team ever to miss an at-large bid to the NCAA Baseball Tournament” is just such a headline, and Mercer’s attached to it.

The last team meeting of the year ended up being the most brutal, as Mercer watched Monday’s selection show while teams with lower RPIs were picked. As the closest locations — Atlanta, Athens, Auburn, Gainesville — flew by with other selections, hope dwindled.

When the field at Florida State didn’t include Mercer, the Bears’ odds dropped dramatically. Then Starkville — where Mercer made its 2013 trip to the tournament — came and went.

West Virginia was the final host site updated, and when Kentucky was the third team noted, that was officially it.

The social media debate began soon after, as many on X.com and Reddit said Mercer was “robbed,” among other verbiage. There were gripes about Kentucky, Troy, NC State and Texas State, among others, getting in over Mercer. Posts accrued thousands of likes as fans of the sport lamented the end of Mercer’s season. Baseball America published a story calling the Bears’ ommission from the tournament “bad for baseball.”

What did Mercer in, for the most part, wasn’t a surprise: non-conference strength of schedule.

“Really looking at the strength of the schedule and especially non-conference strength of the schedule,” selection committee chairman Michael Alford said on ESPN after the selections. “That was something that stood out to the (committee), and you compare them to other teams like Santa Barbara — who intentionally went out and scheduled tough — you look at Troy, intentionally scheduled tough.

“And looking at the geographic region where Mercer is located, we felt that they had those opportunities to go out and get some games to improve their RPI and strength of schedule. … They had a fantastic season. But when you compare them to other teams who went out and really intentionally scheduled tough games, we felt that the other teams got the nod.”

Despite an embarrassing 1-2 finish in the Southern Conference tournament as the top seed, Mercer’s RPI dropped from only 26th to 28th, and stayed there through dozens of conference tournament games throughout the nation.

Among those who put forth such ever-changing guesses on tournament fields, there was no consensus either way about Mercer’s fate, other than it was going to be close, very close.

The Bears stormed into the Southern Conference tournament having won the regular season title, and with a consensus top-30 RPI and a record number of wins and home wins.

They headed home Friday afternoon after a fairly stunning and humbling visit to Greenville, as The Citadel thumped the Bears 9-2 and 14-4. Mercer won just one game, a 9-8 win over Wofford in between its two losses.

The good news was that the impact on the Bears’ RPI was minimal, dropping only a few spots, and hadn’t changed from No. 28 by the time of the selection show.

Mercer had plenty of good on its resume: 44-15 record, 29-2 at home, a win over top-5 Georgia Tech late in the season. The Bears also won two games against Troy, a tournament team, and played relatively well against top contender Oregon State during a series in Corvallis.

The Southern Conference RPI was strong as well, ahead of Conference USA and Southland, among others, and far ahead of similar mid-major conference Coastal Athletic, Atlantic Sun and Big South.

In 2015, the Bears got an at-large bid with an RPI of 42.

But there were some flaws, too.

While The Citadel launched itself into the top 40 in RPI with its impressive SoCon tournament run, Mercer getting run-ruled in the elimination game while the Bulldogs outscored them 23-6 was a tough blow. 

Mercer had only five games against Quad 1 teams, tied for the third-fewest Quad-1 games of the top 50 in RPI.

The average RPI of teams Mercer beat is 162, fourth-worst of the top 50.

Part of the strength of schedule problem — mentioned plenty in NCAA tournament analysis — is that Mercer played 28 games, fully half of its regular-season schedule, against Quad 4 teams, second-most among the top 100 teams in Warren Nolan (Southeast Missouri played 31).

And 61.4% of Mercer’s wins came against Quad 4 teams. A conference sweep by non-NCAA candidate Western Carolina, a respectable top-70 team, didn’t help.

Mercer’s strength of schedule improved from 120 to 118 after the SoCon tournament, still the third-worst among the top 50 RPI, as per WarrenNolan.com.

Baseball America predicted Mercer getting in, citing Alford’s previous praise of the “eye test” in addition to RPI metrics, though it was perhaps that same “eye test” that could have doomed Mercer if committee members watched the Bears’ games against The Citadel. The magazine had Mercer as a 3 seed at Chapel Hill facing Tennessee.

D1Baseball.com had Mercer as the No. 65 team — the first one out. On3.com had Mercer among the last four in (with TCU, East Carolina and Virginia Tech) and as the third seed in Atlanta. USA Today had Mercer as the No. 3 seed in Gainesville.

Recent postseason history wasn’t a boost to the program’s otherwise solid reputation. Entering this year’s conference event, Mercer is 4-6 in its last 10 SoCon tournament games, getting outscored 93-75.

The Bears were 4-6 in their last 10, outscored 107-82.

Mercer was hoping for its fifth NCAA Tournament bid under head coach Craig Gibson, who had two while in the Atlantic Sun (2010 and 2013) and two in the SoCon (2015, 2019).