Oregon State looks to slide into the tournament.
Photo by Matt Pavelek/The Arizona Republic

The NCAA released its weekly college baseball Ratings Percentage Index and it’s great news for the Arizona Wildcats.

Even after losing two out of three to Stanford, even after dropping five consecutive series and 11 out of 16 overall games, the UA is #21 in the RPI.

You know what they say: Strength of schedule is a slumping team’s best friend.

Here’s how each team in the Pac-10 has looked in the PRI the past three weeks:

Why are so many Pac teams rated so highly? Having the #1 team in your league certainly helps.

It’s interesting that OSU is rated higher than both WSU and Stanford, two teams that appear to be in the tournament. The Beavers are very much alive for an at-large bid and they will be extremely motivated when they face Arizona this weekend.

The numbers still say the Wildcats have the third best overall resume in the Pac-10. The Cats don’t pass the eye test right now, but when you look at the proverbial “body of work” the big strings of March and April wins are making up for the May fade.

The projections continue to have the UA safely in the field of 64. Baseball America has a paragraph on Arizona that says the Cats only need to win one game at Oregon State to stay on the good side of the bubble.

But I would strongly advise against risking it.

- – - – -

Here are last week’s Pac-10 results:

ASU won two of three vs. OSU. Scores: 10-4, 6-5, 8-9
The Sun Devils are one win away from a share of the Pac-10 championship and two wins away from the outright title.

Oregon won two of three at Washington. Scores: 11-13 (11 inn.), 5-2, 5-2
In the first game the Ducks found a way to score four runs in the 10th inning…and lose.

Stanford won two of three at ARIZONA. Scores: 3-1, 8-9, 8-4
RPI! RPI!

UCLA won all three at Cal. Scores: 8-7, 12-4, 11-2
You’re never going to believe this, but Cal was involved in sweep!

WSU won all three vs. USC. Scores: 20-7, 18-4, 8-2
The Wazzu baseball team could outscore its football team right now.

How things are standing:

Only 15 combined Pac-10 games remain with 80% of the league attempting to make the tournament for the first time ever.

All hail the RPI.

The Cats fall flat once again.
Photo by David Kadlubowski/The Arizona Republic

Another week, another series loss for the backpedaling Arizona Wildcats baseball team.

Sunday’s 8-4 loss to Stanford left the Cats with their fifth consecutive series defeat. Once again the first game of the series told the story. Arizona is now a perfect 7-0 in weekend series when it wins game 1, and a perfectly imperfect 0-7 in series after dropping the first game.

The UA offense better be careful or Kurt Heyer is going to get a divorce lawyer and sue for lack of support. The Cats have only scored 10 total runs in Heyer’s last five starts. The freshman hasn’t won since Apr. 16 even though his season ERA is still under 3.

Left On Base was the stat of the weekend for Arizona. The Cats reached double-digits in hits in all three games but stranded a combined 28 runners.

A big flaw in the UA offense is the inability to draw walks. The Cats are 9th in the Pac-10 in that department. When you don’t draw walks, and you don’t hit home runs (also 9th in the Pac) you have to string together a lot of hits to put up big innings and you’re susceptible to slumps.

Have the Wildcats slumped themselves out of the NCAA tournament? As hard as it may be to believe, the answer is: Not quite yet.

It’s true that since the Pac-10 merged divisions in 1999 only two teams have made the postseason with losing conference records (Stanford in 2006 and Oregon State in 2007). But it’s also true that the league has unprecedented depth this year.

Five remains the record for tournament teams out of the unified Pac-10 but every indication is that record is about to fall. Before this weekend, Baseball America and Rivals both had all eight of the Pac bubble teams getting in. Arizona was even in the “safely in” category.

How is that possible? How can you lose (at the time) four straight weekends and still have national writers telling you not to worry?

This will sound very familiar to UA basketball fans: Strength of schedule.

The irony is that a schedule that was intentionally toned down for a young team (25 home games to start the year) could end up being what saves that young team from its youthful mistakes.

The Cats had the 6th toughest schedule in the nation before the third Stanford game. Fullerton became Fullerton again after losing to Arizona so the Cats have a 5-6 record against the top 11 teams in the RPI. Add in New Mexico being decent and the aforementioned depth of the Pac-10 and the UA has 13 wins against the RPI top 50, third most in the Pac-10 behind ASU and Stanford. The result is an RPI in the teens before Sunday’s loss.

Can you really count on the Pac-10 getting eight bids? ASU and UCLA remain locks. Oregon is in with its 37 wins and RPI. WSU is in after clinching a winning conference record and getting hot at the right time (9-1 in their last 10 games). Stanford just needs one more win to lock up a positive conference record and move to “in” status.

That’s the standard five bids and it leaves Arizona, Cal and Oregon State trying to swim through uncharted waters. The good news for the fans in Tucson is Cal is actually fading worse than the Wildcats (seven straight losses and 11 out of 15 for the Bears). It makes the final-weekend showdown between Arizona and OSU very interesting.

If you’re the Wildcats you can’t afford to get swept. I don’t care how good your computer numbers are, finishing the season on a 5-14 skid is just begging to be left out. On the flip side if Arizona wins the series it becomes a lock with those pretty PRI numbers.

The gray area is winning exactly one game. Would a top-30 RPI and 33 wins be enough to cancel out a 12-15 league record and 6-9 road record? I don’t know. The stats say to relax but I can easily envision the Pac-10 being “shocked” by only getting six bids while an extra SEC or ACC team goes dancing.

Winning sure would make everything easier.

Rafael Valenzuela and the Wildcats are looking for help.
Photo by Pat Shannahan/The Arizona Republic

And down the stretch they come.

TWIT-Pac wishes there were a Pac-10 pennant race to follow these final two weeks of the regular season. But if you can’t have a tight battle at the top of the standings the next best thing is a bunch at the bottom of the postseason field.

The league’s eyes will be on the three 11-10 teams, the two 10-11 teams, and the one 9-12 team with signs of life. All six teams have a chance to play themselves into the Big Diamond Dance but two or three of them are going to come up short.

Let’s see who is playing where, and what the best possible outcomes are from a Wildcat point of view. The average rankings are from here.

#24.2 Oregon (35-18 / 10-11) at Washington (26-24 / 9-12)
The Ducks have won five straight since getting swept by OSU, but none were against a Pac-10 team.

Who do the Wildcats want to win?
Washington. Scoreboard watching begins in earnest. The Huskies shocked Stanford three weeks ago. Maybe they can take out another tournament contender this week.

OSU (27-19 / 9-12) at #3.0 ASU (43-6 / 16-5)
Friday and Saturday’s games will be broadcast live on Fox Sports Arizona. Two ranked teams in the state including a consensus top-5 team all year and FSAZ finally gets around to sticking a couple games on TV. They couldn’t bump the 27th showing of “In My Own Words: Mark Reynolds” last weekend?

Who do the Wildcats want to win?
Let’s see if we can find a way that ASU does not win the Pac-10 championship. If the Devils lose two of three to both OSU and Stanford it gives them nine losses. That means UCLA would have to win five out of six against Cal and WSU just to tie. Neither of those scenarios is likely. Cat fans should root for Tempe to crush the Beavers’ tournament dreams.

#30.8 Stanford (28-20 / 11-10) at #28.2 ARIZONA (31-18 / 10-11)
The Cardinal has lost five of its last six conference games. The Cats have lost six of their last nine league games. Someone will get better at just the right time.

Who do the Wildcats want to win?
Your Now-Or-Never Wildcats. More on them in a moment.

Be the broom.
Photo by David Kadlubowski/The Arizona Republic

#9.4 UCLA (38-11 / 13-8)
at #29.8 Cal (27-19 / 11-10)
The Bruins are 18-4 this year against schools in the state of California.

Who do the Wildcats want to win?
UCLA. Hopefully Cal continues its sweep-or-be-swept ways, and the Bears wind up on the straw end of the broom this week.

USC (25-28 / 5-16)
at #26.8 WSU (28-18 / 11-10)
The Cougars are 9-4 since being swept by Arizona and have landed in the top 25 as a result.

Who do the Wildcats want to win?
USC. The Trojans have been feistier of late but they haven’t won a road series since March.

The Arizona/Stanford series is the most intriguing one because it’s the only head-to-head battle between Pac-10 bubble teams. Friday and Saturday’s games are at 6 p.m. at Kindall/Sancet and Sunday’s is at high noon.

Arizona’s goal is simple: Win game one. The Wildcats have not won a series all year in which they’ve lost the first game. It’s not a coincidence that the UA has struggled over a four-week stretch in which it’s failed to win any of Kurt Heyer’s starts.

Friday night’s game is monstrous. You could argue it’s THE most important game of the entire season for the Cats. And I think we just did.

For the third straight game in the UA/ASU series a team was held to four runs but this time the Sun Devils got the pitching they needed to make it hold up.

ASU had just enough to get by the Cats.
Photo by Cheryl Evans/The Arizona Republic

The Arizona Wildcats were limited to four hits as ASU claimed a 4-2 victory Monday night to win the weekend and season series.

The Cats wasted a superb pitching performance from starter Daniel Workman who worked into the 7th inning allowing just one earned run.

Someone needs to show Workman a picture of Sparky before every start. The junior has a 2.19 earned run average over 12.1 innings in two starts against ASU, and a 9.47 ERA in nine starts against everyone else. He’s the Mike Jefferson of baseball.

There are no moral victories in rivalry games. Arizona State has baseball bragging rights for another year. But there were positive signs coming out of the Wildcat dugout. The season is not over. The team has not given up. The dream has not died.

That dream is making the 2010 NCAA tournament.

“We talk about it every day,” coach Andy Lopez said. “We talk about it from the very first day we meet in August. It’s always a goal. That’s what you come here for, to be in postseason play.”

The Wildcats have no more room for bad weekends. The upcoming series with Stanford is huge with a capital H and a couple extra U’s. Arizona absolutely has to take two of three games. Get back to .500 in Pac-10 play and the postseason goal is very much in reach.

ASU will be a national seed and stay at home all the way to Omaha. UCLA will probably host a regional. After that?

“The Pac is so jumbled,” Lopez said. “(The tournament) is within reach for five or six teams.”

Cal, Stanford, Washington State, Oregon and Arizona are all within a game of each other in the standings, and Oregon State is loitering a game behind that.

How many Pac-10 teams will get in? Over the past eight seasons the Pac has gotten either four or five teams in every season but one. That one was last year, but it was an odd season in that only three Pac teams finished with both a winning record in conference and overall.

If the Pac-10 quota remains at five it means you have six teams fighting for three spots. Oregon State is included because its RPI is so high (31 as of May 11) and by winning five of their last six league games the Beavers have moved their conference record within striking distance of .500.

It’s worth noting that if Arizona can beat Stanford and OSU to close out the season it would give the UA a series victory over four of the other five middle-of-the-Pac teams. Add in the two wins against ASU and a series victory over Cal State Fullerton and the Cats would be a lock.

Arizona certainly controls its own destiny and Andy Lopez has made sure his players have the tournament in mind . “They know that’s what they’re playing for right now,” he said.

They also know what it will take to get there.

“We’ve got to win some games.”

- – - – -

Here are the results from the other Pac-10 games this past weekend:

OSU won two of three vs. Washington. Scores: 8-6, 7-3, 2-3
The microwavable Beavers are suddenly hot.

UCLA won all three vs. USC. Scores: 13-7, 15-2, 2-1
The Bruins inched within three games of ASU. UCLA really wishes it had that series with the Sun Devils back.

WSU won two of three at Stanford. Scores: 7-8, 4-2, 9-3
This was a back-breaker for the Cardinal in the conference race. Can they bounce back in Tucson with a tournament bid on the line?

Oregon won all three vs. East Tennessee State. Scores: 5-0, 7-6, 17-7
Mister Jennings is not pleased.

The updated standings:

The most recent rankings:

BAS = Baseball America
COL = Collegiate Baseball
NAT = National Collegiate Baseball Writers
USA = USA Today/ESPN coaches’ poll
RIV = Rivals.com
CBCRDI = College Baseball Cumulative Rankings Directional Indicator

Washington State hit the polls which isn’t good for other bubble teams. The rankings only reflect the games through Sunday so Arizona actually moved up thanks to its 1-1 status with ASU at the time.

The bottom of the polls reflect the glut of semi-good teams in the Pac-10. Five of the middlings are in at least one poll but none are in every poll, and OSU is one more good weekend away from getting back in the polls.

Whose destiny will be controlled?

The Arizona Wildcats scored five runs in the 4th inning on their way to a 12-4 victory to even the series with Arizona State.

Joey Rickard hit a three-run home run in that 4th inning and Kyle Simon pitched seven strong innings to pick up his team-leading 8th win of the season.

The victory was the 1,000th of Andy Lopez’s 28-year coaching career.

The 12-4 score wasn’t the only thing reversed from Saturday’s ASU win. In the first game the Sun Devils were able to counteract every Arizona charge. When the Cats scored two in the second ASU answered with two in the third. Immediately after the UA scored two in the 5th the Devils scored two in the 6th.

On Sunday Simon had the answer to prevent the ASU answers. After being staked to a 7-2 lead in the 4th the sophomore right-hander retired the Devils in order in the top of the 5th. When Arizona State crept closer with two runs in the 6th the Wildcat bats responded with two more in the bottom half of the inning to push the lead back to six.

But the most stunning change from Saturday to Sunday was the work of Bryce Bandilla. The Sun Devils had to be salivating when the lefty was called upon to protect a six-run lead with two on and nobody out in the 8th. Bandilla inherited a 2-0 count and proceeded to walk Johnny Ruettiger to load the bases. The Arizona closer then bounced back to strike out Raoul Torrez and get Deven Marrero to ground into an inning-ending double play.

It was the exact opposite of “Whack! In the gap,” which is how Lopez described Bandilla’s appearance in the first game.

With the series even at a game apiece and the season series knotted at two, it sets up a winner-take-all contest at 6 p.m. on Monday. “All” for ASU now includes extra breathing room in the Pac-10 standings as 2nd-place UCLA completed a sweep of USC to put a little pressure on the Sun Devils.

The Wildcats are looking for another resume-enhancing win over the top team in the league as they attempt to differentiate themselves from the six-team jumble of Pac-10 squads trying to land NCAA tournament bids.

ASU will start sophomore RHP Jake Borup (10-1) Monday evening. Arizona has yet to name a starting pitcher.