Where Alabama Baseball Would Land in SEC Tournament After Losing Vanderbilt Series

The Crimson Tide suffered a heartbreaker on Sunday.

Alabama baseball players in a game against Vanderbilt. / Alabama Athletics

The Alabama baseball game didn't just lose the game and the series at Vanderbilt when it was walked off on Sunday afternoon. The No. 18 Crimson Tide (36-12, 13-11 SEC) played itself out of the top eight in the league standings, for the time being.

That takes on increased importance with each passing weekend, since the calendar has now flipped to May and the SEC Tournament is this month. The proceedings in Hoover start on May 20, with first-round games for all eight teams in the bottom half of the conference.

No. 15 Vanderbilt, which is 14-10 in the SEC, now sits at sixth. That's exactly where Alabama would have been if it had finished a game it led 7-2 with two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning on Sunday.

The Crimson Tide would be the No. 9 seed in the conference tournament if the season ended following Sunday's results, facing 16-seed Missouri at 9:30 a.m. CT on May 20. Alabama swept the Tigers (0-24 SEC) at home from April 24-26.

There is technically hope for Missouri not to finish the regular season in last place. With six games to go in the SEC regular season, South Carolina (5-19 SEC) could lose for the balance of the regular year while the Tigers win out. It is a slim possibility, but a possibility nonetheless.

The Tigers almost got their first SEC win against Alabama on April 24, scoring five runs in the first inning before falling 7-5. Kerrick Jackson's team lost the subsequent two games by scores of 7-3 and 12-1 (seven innings), respectively.

If that particular No. 9 vs. No. 16 matchup comes to pass, while all else also holds, the winner of that contest would go on to face No. 8-seed Oklahoma (13-11 SEC) on Wednesday, May 21, at 9:30 a.m. Alabama has the head-to-head on Oklahoma owing to a home series win in March, but the league's procedure for sorting three tied teams is different than if just two teams were even in the standings.

Specifically, if the tied teams are common opponents, precedence goes to the greatest total win-loss percentage of games played between the squads. Both of the other 13-11 teams (Auburn is the third) have faced Alabama. The Auburn Tigers would be seeded seventh if the regular season closed on Monday.

The next step among tiebreakers, after common-opponent win percentage, is win-loss percentage of the tied teams against all common opponents. This applies as of this writing because Auburn and Oklahoma have not played one another (and will not, unless the sides meet in Hoover or the NCAA Tournament).

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