Power Rankings
Power Rankings Week 8
It’s actually been an outstanding run of success for the local teams. This is in stark contrast to the past few seasons which did not feature this level of overall success. Out of our coverage area, all but three teams are over .500. I will continue the same format from last week, segmenting by divisions. Division-I: Fordham (Record: 18-9-1, Trending UP) They stayed red-hot, winning two of three this weekend from Rhode Island. The major story of the week was their offensive onslaught on Wednesday against St. Peter’s in which they put up a remarkable 29 runs. Five players record three or more RBI. The previous week, they put up 18 against them. That’s almost unfathomable. In Saturday’s win, Ben Greenberg was lights-out, allowing just one hit over seven innings and th...
Nassau County Class AA Power Rankings (2nd Edition)
As imagined, the top teams in Class AA prevailed in opening week, destroying their opponents on both sides of the ball. Massapequa suffered an opening day loss to Farmingdale, but found a way to bounce back in the next two games of the series. Heading into what should be an exciting week in Class AA, let’s take a look at the new top five teams. 5. Port Washington (3-0) (Last week: Unranked) Coming as a surprise to many, Port Washington swept Hicksville to open up the season, earning them a top five spot in this week’s power rankings. A team that is coming off a couple early exits in the postseason, seems as if they can pose a real threat to their opponents this year in Class AA. At the plate, Port Washington combined for 27 runs. Leading this offensive explosion was Jack Stolpe...
Nassau County Class A Power Rankings (2nd Edition)
Another year, another opening week in the books. A chilly week of baseball included surprising results in Class A, such as Bellmore JFK defeating the back-to-back county champions on opening day and Hewlett coming out of the series with a tie against Plainedge. The winter weather didn’t effect baseball last week, so let’s hope the same happens this week, although there’s another winter storm on the way. Entering the month of April, here are the new top five teams in Class A. 5. Plainedge (2-0-1) (Last week: #4) Although Plainedge didn’t come out of the series with a clean sweep, there was a ton of promise that came along with the first series of the year. After tying Hewlett 5-5 in game two of the series, the Red Devils bounced back in a big way in game 3 of the ser...
Power Rankings: Week 7
This week we are going to switch it up in regards to the format of the Power Rankings. Being that many of the records are similar, I’m going to segment them by divisions. This is meant to simply be a snapshot in time as to where the teams currently stand, with no value in past performance. Feel free to critique. Division-I: Fordham (Record: 15-8-1, Trending UP) The Rams were expected to have a learning curve with their youthful team. They have only one senior (Ben Greenberg), but sometimes when you’re young, you play with no fear. They have gotten off to a great start and have won five of their past six games. The pitching staff has a 3.29 ERA, with the co-aces of Greenberg (3-1, 1.62 ERA) and Reiss Knehr (3-2, 3.37 ERA) leading the way and the combination of sophomore reliever...
Power Rankings: Week 3
Another week of college baseball in the books. Unlike previous years, the Division-I programs have really gotten off to strong starts and dominate four of the top five spots on the list. St. John’s maintains their strangle hold on the top spot–as they have for the past year. Reminder, the list does not factor in strength of schedule, simply a ranking based on level of performance against their given opponents. There’s 14 colleges in our coverage area. Here’s how the top-10 stack up. St. John’s (8-1, Stock EVEN) For a couple days, it appeared the only thing that could stop them was the weather. They traveled to Sacramento to take on UC Davis and the first two games were cancelled due to rain. They played a double header today and won the first game 8-0 to impro...
Power Rankings: Week 2
It was an exhilarating weekend of baseball featuring extra-inning victories and even a no-hitter. Most importantly, it featured plenty of winning for the local programs. Without further ado, here is my best effort to rank their performances after two weeks. *Adelphi, Farmingdale, St. Joseph’s, Old Westbury, Nassau and Suffolk CC have not begun yet and were not eligible for ranking this week. Elite: St. John’s (Record: 7-0, Stock EVEN) Not much more you can say about St. John’s that hasn’t been said. They look like a top-10 team in the nation. They have made easy work of teams of all calibers including the University of North Carolina for the second straight year. This weekend, they were in the Penn State Tournament in Cary, N.C. and promptly shut out Monmouth and U...
Power Rankings Volume 1
With the first weekend of the season in the books, we will debut the 2018 weekly Power Rankings to take inventory of each team that began their season this weekend. From this point through the remainder of the college season, we will post this column each Monday morning. The methodology is as follows: the teams are ranked based upon their performance against their opponents. This mean that teams are not favored due to quality of opponent but simply quality of their own play. Without further ado, we present the first edition of the 2018 Power Rankings: St. John’s (Record: 3-0, Stock UP) Well, the Red Storm have picked up right where they left off in 2017. They dominated the first weekend this season against Campbell University, allowing only two runs in the process. According to the s...
Nassau County Class A Power Rankings (Final Edition + Playoff Predictions)
The final week of the season has ended in Class A, which means chaos is underway. The “first four” of the playoffs feature the 4 lowest seeded teams battling for 2 spots to get into the round of 16. These games will take place on Tuesday afternoon. The round of 16 is scheduled to kick off on Saturday afternoon. After yet again a crazy week of baseball, here are the top 5 teams at the end of the season AND my predictions for the postseason. 5. MacArthur (12-3) (Last week: Unranked) MacArthur was hoping that Garden City would drop one game in the series against Manhasset in order for the Generals to capture a county championship. Unfortunately for them, Garden City swept Manhasset which means that MacArthur has the 6 seed heading into the playoffs and will face their cross town r...
Nassau County Class AA Power Rankings (5th Edition)
Everything went as expected this past week in Class AA, causing only slight alterations in the rankings–basically the top teams stayed hot . With a week of little to no surprises at all, let’s take a look to see if there was any mix up in this week’s power rankings. 5. Calhoun (10-5) (Last week: 4) Non-league games often are a chance for coaches to get inexperienced players playing time and have some fun. However, when you lose a non-league game against a team that’s 2-13 on the season, there’s no excuse for losing. Calhoun lost to Bellmore JFK 5-3 during their bye week, which could result in negative momentum riding into their last week of the season. Sophmore Jake Edwards will look to continue to dominate at the plate this week against Valley Stream Central....
Suffolk County Class AA Power Rankings
With just a handful of games remaining in the regular season, the playoff picture is pretty clear. League II remains pretty murky as Sachem North, Bay Shore, Northport and Connetquot all remain alive in the postseason hunt. The rest of the leagues are more clear. With that being said, here’s this week’s top big-school teams. 10. Bay Shore/Northport (10-5, 10-6) I’m doing it again, because not only do they have similar records, but they both beat Commack. I was willing to give the edge to whoever avoided a sweep, but they both did. Like I said last week, I give a slight edge to Northport because I really think the top of their order is underrated and they backed that up. Frankie Stola had a big 2-for-3 game against Commack with three RBI and two runs scored. Sean Klein rec...
Power Rankings Volume 10
The cream is rising to the top. The local college baseball teams have really begun to play great baseball and things will get really interesting when we get our first dosage of playoff baseball with the Skyline Conference tournament getting underway on Wednesday through Sunday. St. Joseph’s will be hosting the tournament, but home field advantage has not meant much the previous few seasons–they won at Farmingdale last year, Old Westbury won at St. Joseph’s in 2015 and Farmingdale won at Old Westbury in 2014. It will be interesting. The ECC and NE-10 playoffs will be the following week and the America East, Atlantic-10 and Big East will be the week after that. Here’s our 10th installment of the weekly Power Rankings. St. John’s (Record: 31-7, Stock UP) We cover...
Power Rankings Volume 9
This was a rough week for local colleges in general. There was some long losing streaks, especially from the Div-I programs. Still, a couple teams took advantage and will rise up in the rankings because of it. Here’s our ninth installment of the Power Rankings… The Elite- St. Johns (Record: 29-5, Stock UP) They won all three games this week. They are coming off a 15-run offensive attack, which tied their season-high. They already have four players with over 50 hits (Jesse Berardi, John Valente, Michael Donadio, Jamie Galazin) and a team 2.59 ERA. Trending UP- 2. St. Joseph’s (Record: 21-10, Stock UP) They have steadily risen up. After winning four of six games this week, they have proven they are for real including a gauntlet of back-to-back Skyline double headers against...
