Beech Tree News Network

LEXINGTON – The first official KHSAA Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) Rankings and the initial stat leader reports for the 2021 baseball and softball seasons have been posted at KHSAA.org.

The RPI (https://khsaa.org/rpi-ratings-percentage-index/) is a tool developed for all team sports by using the official KHSAA/Riherds Scoreboard data. It is provided for a variety of reasons including district tiebreaking and football bracketing, and as a means to increase publicity, interest and promotion. The Board of Control has approved the RPI to be used as a tiebreaking/contest result mechanism to decide seeded district games not played by the deadline.

The RPI rankings are updated on an hourly basis, but are not calculated for teams with missing scores from the previous day or earlier. For the 2021 baseball and softball seasons, COVID cancellations are marked on a team’s schedule as a 0-0 tie but are not factored into the RPI calculations and rankings.

RPI measures a team’s strength relative to other teams, based largely on the strength of their schedules (margin of victory is not a factor). RPI is calculated from the team’s Winning Percentage (WP), the Opponent’s Winning Percentage (OWP) and the Opponents’ Opponents’ Winning Percentage (OOWP). These three components are combined to produce the RPI using the following formula: RPI = (WP * WPVAL) + (OWP * OWPVAL) + (OOWP * OOWPVAL).

The KHSAA has adopted its RPI using the following final calculation:

WPVAL shall be .35 (or 35 percent)

OWPVAL shall be .35 (or 35 percent)

OOWPVAL shall be .30 (or 30 percent)

All out-of-state opponents will be handled in the following manner:

All out of state teams will be assigned a .500 WP for all calculations. Were this not the case, schools would be chasing tens of thousands of opponents of out-of-state opponents over the course of a season, and there is no way to ensure the accuracy of that data.

The .500 figure was selected because it is the average value of opponents’ opponents winning percentages across all sports.

This same value of .5 is also assigned to any in-state home school competing against a member school.

The stat leader reports will be updated every day at approximately 3 a.m., and will include all teams missing stats for no more than two games.

Statistical entry is required of all member schools, and those failing to meet the requirement to enter stats are subject to penalties from the Commissioner, including fines and other actions within the constraints of Bylaw 27. Member schools are solely responsible for submitting statistical information. If a school or individual is omitted, or information is not updated, that means the team in question did not update its statistics through the KHSAA’s online system prior to the deadline.

The requirement to enter statistics, which has been in place for several years, was reiterated to coaches during the online rules clinic. Statistical entry has the benefit of allowing member schools to highlight and promote the accomplishment of their student-athletes, which should be a priority for all involved in school-based sports.

The statistical leader reports can be found at the following addresses:

Baseball – https://khsaa.org/2021-baseball-stat-leaders/

Softball – https://khsaa.org/2021-softball-stat-leaders/