How much does a top seed matter? Not much, in county baseball tournaments

While the goal is always a championship, earning the top seed in any high school tournament is an honor.

Whether by a standings, an overcomplicated rating system, a committee, or the league’s coaches, it means that somehow, some way, you’ve been deemed the best in the regular season.

But you’ve still got to go out and win the thing.

With the Bridgewater-Raritan baseball team being awarded the top seed in the upcoming Somerset County Tournament – which begins Wednesday afternoon with a pair of opening round games – just what does it mean?

Well, not much, if you look at the tournament historically over the last eleven seasons.

Dating back to 2010, only two top seeds have won the whole thing: Ridge last year, and Montgomery in 2016.

In fact, in that stretch, the top seed has only reached the finals four times.

The second seed hasn’t fared much better, only winning twice in the last eleven years – Immaculata both times, in 2010 and 2019 – and has only appeared in one other final.

Combined, the 1 and 2 seeds have reached six of the last eleven finals, going 4-3.

And in the span, the SCT has been won once by a 3-seed, twice by a 4-seed, twice by a 6-seed, and once by a 10-seed – Rutgers Prep, in a 7-2 upset of top-seed Montgomery in 2018.

So what does all this mean? And why does it happen?

What it means is simply that there’s good parity in Somerset County, at least among the top-half of the conference. And that seeds don’t mean a hill of beans.

Why? Well, that has to do a lot with when the tournament is seeded. This year, it’s just two weeks into the season. It’s tough to get an accurate read that early, with only a handful of conference games played and, often, even fewer against Somerset County opponents.

And yet, Somerset County isn’t the only place this happens.

In the last 12 Greater Middlesex Conference Tournaments for baseball (they’ve played one more since 2010 than the SCT since they only missed one year due to COVID, while the SCT didn’t play in 2020 or 2021) the top-seed has only won once – Old Bridge in 2019.

And like the SCT, the No. 1 seed has only made the final four times since 2010, going 1-3. Two-seeds have done well, winning all four finals berths in that span.

So maybe it’s just that baseball is a different beast than most other sports. After all, most teams have an ace, but the next arms up can vary widely.

Compare all this to boys’ basketball. Since the SCT began playing a single tournament in 1988, a No. 1 or No. 2 seed has won it all but three times. That’s right, the top two seeds have won 32 of the 35 tournaments (there was no SCT in 2021).

The GMC has had a little more variety, but not lately. The top-seed has won eight times dating back to 2010 – that’s eight out of 13. Overall, a top-two seed has won 18 titles in the 37-year history of the event.