Power Point Analysis: A look at Group 4 baseball standings past the season’s halfway point

County tournament seeding has already started in some parts of New Jersey, and the GMC and Somerset County are a week or two away from setting up their own tournaments.

But now that we’re more than halfway through the regular season, it’s time to start taking a look at where the Central Jersey Sports Radio teams stand, beginning with Group 4. We’ll look at the other groups over the next couple of days.

First, the new formula…

While football has its own system, basketball and other sports this year all had a new wrinkle added to the power point formula this year. Group points are out, with the NJSIAA adopting the idea that group size isn’t a great indicator of a team’s strength. (We agree.) In is the OOWP, or Opponents’ Opponent’s Winning Percentage. That’s the cumulative win percentage of all your the opponents the teams on your schedule played.

Quality points (six for a win, three for a tie) and residuals (three for every win by an opponent you beat, one for every win by an opponent you lost to, with ties being half those values) remain, but that total now will be multiplied by OOWP for each game, and the total averaged by the number of games played.

OOWP is simply the opponents’ opponents’ winning percentage plus .500.

This means if Team A beat Team B – who’s opponents combined for a 49-21 record at this point of the season – Team A would get 6 quality points, 21 residual points and a 1.2 OOWP. (That’s Team B’s .700 winning percentage plus .500.)

Team A would have 27 power points, multiplied by 1.2, or 32.4 power points for beating Team B.

Got it? Good! On to the standings…

Central Jersey Group 4

Hunterdon Central is in the top position here at 7-3, with 18.001 power points, and most definitely benefits from playing in one of the toughest divisions in the state, along with the likes of Ridge, Hillsborough, Immaculata, North Hunterdon and even Bridgewater-Raritan, despite the Panthers’ early struggles. (More on them later.) Highstown is not far behind in second at 10-1, with 17.496 points.

The surprise is that the highest-ranked team here is not one from the GMC Red Division or the Skyland Delaware: it’s New Brunswick, which is playing in the GMC Gold this season and is 6-1 overall, its best start in a long time. The Zebras were 7-9 last season under then-first-year coach Nico Vargas, following three post-COVID seasons where they went a combined 5-39. While a nice seed in the playoffs would be astounding, they’re also just four wins away from their first double-digit winning season since 2011-12, when they went 13-11 under Nick Koman, despite losing their first seven games. New Brunswick is not that far behind Hightstown, with a 16.835 average.

Then, you get the GMC Red teams in a big bunch in positions six through eight, and the way things have gone there, with everyone beating everyone, there could very well be a lot of jostling for position the rest of the way out, with a good deal of movement. Old Bridge sits in fourth (7-5, 16.056), with Freehold Twp. (6-2, 15.84) in between them and three other teams from the GMC Red. There’s Monroe (5-5, 13.729), East Brunswick (5-4, 13.522) and Edison (5-6, 12.922), and then Hillsborough from the Skyland Delaware at 6-6, with 11.783 points. All of them should be easily in the playoffs, but remember, the top eight teams get at least a first-round home game, so with the Raiders at nine in a tight-knit group, one or more of those four teams could get left out on the road.

The bubble teams are another story. We think Sayreville (5-4, 9.734) should make it if they can continue or improve on their pace of wins, as they currently sit in 12th place. But it’s a little more murky for the 15 and 16 teams in the section (the top 16 make it). That’s Franklin (3-5, 8.065) and Montgomery (2-8, 7.816). As usual in power points chases, teams at the top or bottom stand to lose or gain the most. Remember, when you’re a 1-5 team, let’s say, one win doubles your win total and can give you a big jump, where as one more loss is a smaller percentage of your losses, and drops you less.

Also in the mix, not terribly out of the top 16, are South Brunswick (2-9, 7.786) and North Brunswick (1-7, 7.405). A little more than six-tenths of a point separates them from a 15-seed.

North Jersey, Section 2, Group 4

The No. 1 team in the Bellamy & Son Paving Top Ten is looking like a solid No. 1 in this playoff section at the moment. The Red Devils are 9-2 with a 16.986 power point average. They’re a decent amount behind first-place Westfield (7-1, 19.185) but they have two other teams lurking right behind them: Elizabeth (11-2, 16.753) in third and Woodbridge (8-2, 16.447) in fourth. The Barrons – who started the season 8-0 – took a big hit by taking their first two losses of the season Saturday and Tuesday to South Plainfield.

After Columbia in fifth and Scotch Plains-Fanwood in sixth, Watchung Hills (6-3, 12.317) is in seventh, and the Hustlin’ Warriors have a good beat on a top eight finish and a first round home game if they keep playing the way they’re playing. After them, it’s Ferris, Phillipsburg and Bayonne before you get to Bridgewater-Raritan in 11th. They’re the defending sectional champion and overall state Group 4 champion, but struggled out of the game to an 0-6 start. But we mentioned how tough that division is, so even at 2-9, they’re well in the mix for a playoff spot and shouldn’t get left out. Their schedule doesn’t have a single sub-.500 team at the moment, and their two wins have come over the top two teams in their division – Ridge (9-2) and Hunterdon Central (7-3) – so it’s not like they got on the board with some patsy wins. Don’t count them out, even from a top eight seed. Despite their record, even if they don’t finish top eight, they will be the “low seed” no one wants to play come tournament time.

There are a couple of local teams right behind the Panthers. Piscataway (3-7, 9.192) sits in 12th, and after Plainfield (5-4, 8.538) at No. 13, there’s also JP Stevens (3-9, 8.452) at 14, which might need some good wins down the stretch to lock up a playoff spot.

On the outside looking in, Perth Amboy (1-8, 6.592) in 18th place isn’t out of earshot, but a couple of wins could do wonders for the Panthers.

We’ll have continuing analysis Friday and Saturday on sections with Central Jersey Sports Radio-area teams in Groups 1, 2 and 3.