My weekly rankings are out for Major League Baseball.

Top 5 teams

And it looks like it might be a long season for these teams:

The 2025 NCAA Men’s Basketball season is over. It all started back on November 1, 2024. And it wrapped up in San Antonio last night. Florida comes from behind to defeat Houston 65-63 to claim its third national championship. Houston appeared to be in control but it seemed to lose its way with its offense down the stretch.

The final four was a matchup of the four best teams in the country, by far. Florida had to come from behind to top Auburn while Houston had a comeback for the ages to beat Duke in the semifinals. Those four teams finish the season in my top 4 although my rankings still have Auburn coming out number 1, but only by the thinnest of margins. It might require a slight tweaking of my code to see if I can correct this. Especially since Florida was the better team down the stretch.

I spent much of the weekend creating Python scripts to automatically generate my baseball reports. I can now generate my TOP rankings by team and individual for batting and pitching.

If you don’t know what TOP rankings are, it’s a stat I developed. I’m not saying I’m the first to ever come up with this. I’m probably not. But I discovered this completely on my own.

What is TOP?

Before we can explain TOP, we have to begin with the basics.

First of all, congratulations to Nova Southeastern University on winning the NCAA Division II National Championship! They were my number one team in Division II for most of the year. Three straight appearances in the championship game and their second title after winning it all in 2023.

In Division I, we are down to the final four teams. Is it a surprise that the top four teams all year all in the final four? All four number one seeds are in the final four for only the second time. Auburn and Florida will be a war. Duke and Houston will be a clash of styles. Houston has a stifling defense, but I don’t know if it can handle Duke’s size.

Yesterday was Opening Day in the Major Leagues. It should be a national holiday! In my post yesterday, I unveiled a new statistic for showing hitting performance, TOP. It combines the ability to get on base, the ability to hit for power, and the ability to steal bases.

Today, I’m going to use the same statistic for pitching. Fortunately, Baseball Reference provides a batting against stat when you look at pitching. What is this? It shows the statistics for pitchers using the normal batting stats such as hits, doubles, triples, homeruns, walks, strikeouts, stolen bases, caught stealing, etc. With this, you can see the batting average, on base percentage, slugging average each pitcher allowed. So it also works for TOP!

Opening Day is here! Well, sort of. The Dodgers and Cubs played a two game series two weeks ago in Japan. That will never make sense to me. I don’t have a problem with them playing over there. I just have a problem with them playing there two weeks before the season begins.

Speaking of the Dodgers, they are definitely the team to beat. They have something like 18 starting pitchers and 20 All-Star calibur fielders. In other words, they are loaded. They have the money. And they’re not afraid to spend it. Seems like some other owners out there should spend more money. MLB doesn’t need a salary max cap. It needs a salary min cap.

The first two rounds of the Division I mens’ basketball tournament is done. We are down to 16 teams. The SEC asserts their dominance with 7 of the final 16 teams. There’s no cinderella team this year, unless you want to count Arkansas from the SEC.

Division I

Rankings of remaining schools in tournament:

Auburn will have a tough matchup with Michigan. Florida should handle Maryland. Houston should get by Purdue, but it might be close. Duke will probably roll Arizona. Alabama and BYU is very intriguing but I think Alabama pulls this one out. Tennessee and Kentucky will be a war. Michigan St. will have their hands full with Ole Miss. Texas Tech and Arkansas will be a good one.

The day is here! The most exciting two days of sports starts today with the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament. Oh I know, it really started Tuesday. But the final 64 is now set as of today. Lets break it down.

South Region

Probably the toughest region. Seven schools are ranked in my top 20. It appears to me that Iowa State is seeded too high, while Michigan and Louisville are seeded too low. If Louisville can get by Creighton, they could be a threat to Auburn, especially the way Auburn has been playing recently.

Conference tournaments are over. It’s time for the Big Dance! DII and DIII have already started their tournament. I’m going to have to disagree with my rankings. Florida is the best team in the country at this moment.

NCAA Division I

The tournament kicks off tonight with two games. The first game is between a pair of 16 seeds: St. Francis (#289, 16-17) and Alabama State (#252, 19-15). The second game is between a couple of 11 seeds: North Carolina (#39, 22-13) and San Diego State (#44, 21-9).

Here are my rankings for 03/10/2025. Even with two losses last week, Auburn remains number one for the week. Florida jumps up to number 2. Kentucky cracks my top 10 for the first time this year. The mid-major tournaments are wrapping up and the power conferences tournaments take place this week.

Top 10 Division I schools:

Top 10 Division II schools:

Top 10 Division III schools:

D1 Rankings
D2 Rankings
D3 Rankings