What the Numbers Mean

The two main PEAR metrics measure different things:

The question the Rating answers: if these two teams played on a neutral field tomorrow, who would win and by how much?

D1 baseball (from 2027): the Rating is built from two halves. The first half comes from game results: every margin of victory, adjusted for who you played and where, with blowouts counting for less than close games, plus a small piece for wins and losses alone. The second half comes from the play-by-play: how many runs per game your offense creates and your pitching and defense save, compared with an average D1 team, adjusted for opponent and park. That second half is what the OFF and DEF columns on the ratings page show. It rewards the at-bats themselves, not the luck of when the hits came, so a team that outhits its opponents but keeps losing one-run games still gets credit.

Before the season, the Rating starts from PEAR's preseason projection and moves over to the current season's games as they pile up. By about 19 games per team (late March) it is all this season.

Other divisions (D2, D3 and NAIA baseball, and softball) still use the stats-based Rating: it has a little factor with schedule and results, but it is mainly based on underlying stats.

Either way, the Rating is the team's true talent level, stripped of context. A 30–5 team with a weak Rating probably padded their record against bad opponents.

The Rating is meant to be pretty intuitive, to get who would win, just subtract the Rating values. If Team A is +5 and Team B is +2, PEAR expects Team A to win by roughly 3 runs on a neutral field. Home field advantage adds about 0.8 runs on top of that.

PCR stands for PEAR's Composite Ranking. It tries to identify the most deserving teams. If the Rating answers “how good are you?”, the PCR answers “how good has your season been?”

It's an RPI-style metric that fixes the things I don't like about RPI. Two big ones: some teams in RPI can lose points for a win, and others can gain points for a loss. That shouldn't happen. If you win a game, you should gain ground. If you lose, you should lose ground. The PCR is built around that principle, combining three things:

• Resume Quality (RQI) — The quality of your wins and losses, measured against what a solid-but-not-great “bubble” team would do playing your exact schedule. Beat a team that good teams usually lose to? Big credit. Lose to a team everyone beats? Big penalty. You always gain points for a win and always lose points for a loss — the size of the swing just depends on the opponent. RQI drives the PCR, carrying 75–100% of the weight (a fixed 80% in D1 baseball).
• Strength of Schedule (SOS) — How difficult was your schedule, objectively? PEAR asks: “if an average D1 team played your exact schedule, how often would they be expected to win?” The harder the schedule, the worse that average team would do — and the better your SOS. It describes your schedule, not your performance against it.
• Team Strength (Rating) — A small nudge from the raw Rating (at most 10%; a fixed 6.5% in D1 baseball), so good teams don't get completely buried by a weak résumé, and weak teams don't sneak up the rankings on a fluky win streak.

Being #1 in PCR means: you have the best combination of win quality and schedule difficulty in the country — it's about who you beat, not just that you beat them. Being #1 in Rating means: PEAR's model thinks you're the best team in the country right now, regardless of record or schedule. A team can be #1 in Rating and #50 in PCR, or #5 in PCR and #40 in Rating. That's fine — they're measuring different things.

Quadrant records classify each game by opponent PCR rank and game location. Location matters because winning on the road against a strong opponent is harder than winning at home against the same opponent. A road win over a Q1 opponent is the highest-leverage result there is — the selection committee weighs Q1 wins more than anything else.

PCR should be used for backwards facing analysis, like building a bracket or deciding a hosts. TSR should be used when looking into the future, like deciding who wins and odds to advance. Ranking by Rating answers “who is expected to win?” — it's what drives PEAR's game spreads and tournament simulations. Ranking by PCR answers “who deserves to be in the tournament?” — it rewards teams that played hard schedules and won the games that matter, which is closer to how the selection committee thinks.

When they disagree: high Rating, low PCR means a good team that hasn't built an impressive résumé yet (weak schedule, early losses, or not enough games against top opponents). Low Rating, high PCR means a team that beat good opponents on a tough schedule, but whose margins and at-bats say it is merely solid — in a neutral-site tournament game, expect some regression toward the mean.