Travis Bazzana, the no. 2 draft prospect on The Board at the moment, had a big day Sunday against Oklahoma State. In four at-bats, the Oregon State second baseman hit four balls 108 mph or harder, coming away with a double and two home runs for his trouble. The first of those home runs was crushed so hard that the outfielders didn’t bother chasing it — one of baseball’s great subtle aesthetic signifiers. More than that, the DJ at Globe Life Field was able to spin up the theme from The Natural before the ball even landed:

And now Travis Bazzana gets in on the action!https://t.co/a1pkN1nG65#GoBeavs pic.twitter.com/SOlYsavVyZ

— Oregon State Baseball (@BeaverBaseball) February 25, 2024

That’s how you know it’s gone. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re cursing the obstinance of winter, wishing for baseball to return in earnest, you’re in luck. The Division I college baseball season starts today. The real sickos among you already knew this, and have no doubt been studying Jac Caglianone’s Trackman data exhaustively since Thanksgiving. But if you’re new to the college game, you might not know where to start.

A proper exhaustive college baseball preview takes half a dozen writers weeks to compile. As one guy with less than 4,000 words to work with, I’ve chosen to highlight seven teams I believe will be interesting and/or important to the coming season. I expect all seven to make the NCAA tournament, and my national championship pick is among them, but this is not a College World Series preview or an ordered ranking.

Instead, I tried to add in a little variety, in terms of quality, region, and conference. Most of these teams are interesting because I don’t know exactly how good they’ll be. But I’ll be going out of my way to track them throughout the spring, because I believe they’ll each have an outsize impact on the college baseball landscape. Here they are, in no particular order. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to college baseball conference realignment. For those of you who missed the first class, here’s a quick summary: The people who run college football are drunk with power, and are tearing up decades of geographical and cultural alignment in order to chase the biggest TV deals they can get. Good for them. Unfortunately the rest of college sports — perhaps the whole of American higher education, less those Ivy League dorks whose personal grievances become national news — is merely a vestigial appendage of the Football Bowl Subdivision.

The realignment of 2023-24 leaves two important questions to be answered, one urgent, the other existentially important. The urgent question: What happens to Oregon State and Washington State, the two schools left without a chair by Pac-12 collapse? This question is arguably more important for baseball than it is any other sport, as Oregon State is a national powerhouse. The important question: Can the ACC hold it together, or is it too bound for a Pac-12-type implosion?

We got some clarity on both of those questions this week, as Oregon State and Washington State found a new partnership with the WCC (though not for baseball), while Florida State is taking its first step toward leaving the ACC. Read the rest of this entry »

This World Series has something for everyone: Up-and-coming stars, clutch heroics, veterans hanging around in search of that long-elusive ring. And if you’re like me, you know the most important question of this series is: How can I make it all about a South Carolina Gamecocks team from more than a decade ago?

This is pretty freaking cool!#Gamecocks | #WorldSeries pic.twitter.com/qIozcOe4el

— Gamecock Baseball (@GamecockBasebll) October 29, 2023

On Saturday night, Jordan Montgomery and Christian Walker took the field for a World Series game together. For a second time. Read the rest of this entry »

Lenin might not have actually said: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” But that doesn’t mean not-Lenin was wrong. College football just lived through such a week, as the Big Ten’s addition of UCLA and USC for the coming football season snowballed into an all-out raid on the Pac-12. Oregon and Washington are following the two Los Angeles schools to richer pastures. The Big 12, already in the process of adding four mid-major schools to replace the outgoing Texas and Oklahoma, is swooping in to pick Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah from off the curb. Left with the proposition of propping up a rump four-team conference, Cal and Stanford are being courted by the ACC. Those schools, with their sterling academic reputations, are considered a good cultural fit for a conference that already includes Duke and Virginia; the same could be said about UCLA and the Big Ten.

If those institutions want to keep up the pretense of looking smart, they’re going to have to rename these conferences. An Atlantic Coast Conference with two teams in California? An 18-team Big Ten? A 16-team Big 12? People are going to start to think these jokers can’t count or read a map. But that’s of secondary importance. What this audience wants to know, surely, is what this means for college baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

GAAAAAAH COLLEGE BASEBALL! No intro. Part 1 of my Men’s College World Series preview is here. Go read it if you haven’t. The second installment is below and delivers a brief overview of the four contestants I didn’t address last time: Their record, how they got here, and a brief précis on a key player, as well as a bit of trivia you can pull out to impress your friends or use as an icebreaker at a bar. LET’S ROCK AND ROLL.

No. 1 Wake Forest
Record: 52-10 (22-7 ACC; Won ACC Atlantic regular season, eliminated in semifinals of conference tournament)
Path to Omaha: No. 1 overall seed, No. 1 seed in Winston-Salem Regional (3-0, def. George Mason 2x, Maryland); Won Winston-Salem Super Regional vs. Alabama 2-0

To call this team a buzzsaw would be an understatement. The Demon Deacons are not only undefeated in the tournament, they won those five games by a combined score of 75-16. And those weren’t cupcakes they smashed; Alabama has been one of the hottest teams in the country since former head coach Brad Bohannon was fired for his involvement in a gambling scandal. Maryland was a monster by Big Ten standards and Wake put 21 runs on the board against them. Wake hasn’t lost a weekend series all year, and swept top-10 national seeds Clemson and Miami in the regular season.

Key Number: 0.73.

Wake Forest’s team ERA, 2.84, is not the key number, and that’s because it’s more impressive in context. Having the lowest ERA in Division I is great, but when Tennessee is no. 2 and Virginia and Oral Roberts are in the top 10, whoop-dee-doo, right? Well, that 2.84 is about three quarters of a run lower than any other team’s ERA. Only six other teams have a team ERA under 4.00. And it’s not like Wake is just about defense; the Demon Deacons are also third in Division I in both runs and OBP, and sixth in slugging percentage.

Better Know a Player: Junior RHP Rhett Lowder

It’s a crowded field. Wake had two different position players post an OBP over .500 and a SLG over .800, and the entire weekend rotation made first team All-ACC. I wanted to get creative and pick someone off the wall, but in the end why not go with the team’s biggest star? Lowder posted a 1.92 ERA and struck out 131 batters in 108 innings this season. He has a plus changeup and plus command and will probably be the second or third college pitcher taken in next month’s draft.

Trivia: The ACC is, what do we think, the second-best baseball conference out there? Well, before Virginia won the natty in 2015, the conference’s only Men’s College World Series title came courtesy of Wake Forest in 1955. That’s despite the ACC putting out numerous powerhouse schools; during that drought, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Virginia, and North Carolina (twice) all played for the title and fell at the final hurdle. (Miami won it all in 1985, but that was before the Hurricanes joined the ACC.) As an alumnus of an SEC school with an ACC archrival, and therefore something of an SEC jingoist, I found that streak riotously entertaining and was very sorry to see it end.

No. 8 Stanford
Record: 44-18 (23-7 Pac-12; Won Pac-12 regular season, eliminated in semifinals of conference tournament)
Path to Omaha: No. 8 overall seed, No. 1 seed in Stanford Regional (4-1, def. San Jose St., Cal State Fullerton, went 2-1 vs. Texas A&M); Won Stanford Super Regional vs. Texas 2-1.

Oh God, don’t make me explain this.

Okay, I’m just going to give you the last half-inning of Game 3 of the super regional. The score is tied 6-6, Stanford has already blown two three-run leads in the game and has been running into outs all evening. The inning before, they had a player run into his own bunted ball in fair territory, then had another runner get doubled off trying to tag up on cannon-armed Longhorns right fielder Dylan Campbell. In fairness, it was quite the throw, on the money, off the wrong foot, all the way across the field. If Bo Jackson is impressed, you know it’s good.

Anyway, with two outs, Pac-12 Player of the Year Alberto Rios came to the plate and lined a ball off the left field wall. Rios ran like hell out of the box, rounded first, and then slowed down when — for reasons unclear to anyone watching — the entire Stanford team poured out of the dugout. Rios, convinced he’d just hit a walk-off home run, tossed his helmet up in the air, slowed down, and almost got thrown out at second.

Stanford's Alberto Rios thought he hit a walk-off homer, only to find out that the ball didn't go over the wall, nearly getting thrown out at second.

A near Leon Lett moment. pic.twitter.com/Z0U3XtxM9t

— The Comeback (@thecomeback) June 13, 2023

I’ve never been to Sunken Diamond, but just based on what I saw on TV, it looked pretty dark there. Maybe Stanford got swindled out of its lighting budget by Elizabeth Holmes. That no doubt played a role in confusing Rios and his teammates (as did the mostly white Pac-12 logo), and definitely came into play two batters later. Drew Bowser popped up the third pitch he saw, and it stayed in the air forever. Long enough that any one of four Texas defenders, including Campbell, could have run it down. If any of them could see it.

WALK-OFF??
WALK-OFF??
WALK-OFF??
WALK-OFF??#MCWS x ? ESPN / @StanfordBSB pic.twitter.com/jiG32MVeBT

— NCAA Baseball (@NCAABaseball) June 13, 2023

Because that ball spent about six minutes in the air, and because there were two outs, Rios was pretty much at home plate by the time the ball landed. Stanford went to Omaha, and Texas went back to an offseason of nightmares. Someone in the comments of Part 1 said this was the first college baseball game they ever went to. I cannot imagine.

Key Number: 156.

That, in case you’ve been under a rock over the past week, is the number of pitches thrown by Stanford left-hander Quinn Mathews in his 16-strikeout complete game against Texas in Game 2 of the super regional. As you’d expect, there’s been Discourse on this subject, and here’s my take on the matter.

From the start of college baseball up until 10 or 15 years ago, coaches didn’t give a crap about their pitchers’ long-term health. Complete games of 140 or more pitches were commonplace, as were short rest relief appearances. Kirk Saarloos, now TCU’s head coach, would close on Fridays and start on Sundays when he was at Cal State Fullerton, like a Gen-X Ellis Kinder. My favorite college baseball game of all time, the South Carolina-Virginia national semifinal in 2011, featured some absolutely appalling pitcher usage by both coaches.

But it’s gotten better. Certain schools and coaches got a reputation for blowing prospects’ elbows and shoulders out. They got called out in the media, and had that reputation used against them by other coaches in recruiting. And eventually, many of the worst offenders retired. It was still a real problem as recently as 2018, when Oregon State freshman Kevin Abel won the College World Series by throwing a 129-pitch shutout on zero days’ rest in the decisive game against Arkansas.

I used to be a pitch count hardliner, but my views have evolved over the years for a few reasons. First, pitcher health is an inexact science. We don’t know if pitch no. 118 or 119 will be the one that leads to a torn UCL, and it’s silly to pretend otherwise. Second, many of these pitchers will go pro in something other than sports. If a potential first-round pick starts on two days’ rest, that’s a decision that could cost the kid millions of dollars. If that pitcher is a senior at a no. 4 seed out of the MAAC who’s going to go to go to pharmacy school in the fall, who cares? Third, these games are themselves inherently meaningful. Most of the players involved — even the majority of the ones who do go pro — will never participate in a bigger game after leaving college. In order to win these games, limited additional risk is sometimes appropriate. This last point can either be lost on or irrelevant to many observers who focus solely on professional scouting and development, and are frequently the biggest pitch count scolds.

Would I let Paul Skenes, the best pitcher in college baseball, throw 124 pitches in a five-run game against Tulane? Absolutely not. But it’s not the end of the world, and it’s a lot better than how LSU coach Jay Johnson managed his staff on his last trip to Omaha, with Arizona in 2016. I wasn’t wild about Texas using Big 12 Pitcher of the Year Lucas Gordon out of the ‘pen against Stanford two days after he’d thrown 110 pitches. But for a short relief outing, with the season on the line… just don’t make a habit out of it.

This isn’t Wayne Graham and Augie Garrido’s college baseball, in short, and in many borderline cases I can at least see the coach’s logic.

But 156 pitches? In 2023, by a guy who’s going to be a Day 2 pick? It’s indefensible, no matter how heroically Mathews performed under those conditions.

Better Know a Player: Junior OF Alberto Rios

The guy who almost synthesized DeSean Jackson and Fred Merkle was absolutely the player Stanford wanted at the plate with the season on the line. In 61 games this year, Rios hit .387/.491/.715 with 18 home runs and 23 doubles. He’s also not afraid to grind; he was hit by 11 pitches this season, second on the team. Having a 1.200 OPS is all the more impressive when you consider that this is Rios’ third season at Stanford, and heading into 2023 he’d never even gotten a hit. In his first two years with the team, he’d played in just eight total games, going 0-for-7 with a walk.

Trivia: The West Coast used to be the nexus of college baseball, but historical powerhouses like Southern Cal, Cal State Fullerton, and Arizona State have fallen on hard times as the money and talent has flowed toward the SEC. Nevertheless, Stanford is making its third straight trip to Omaha, and is the only returning team from last year’s Men’s College World Series.

No. 5 LSU
Record: 48-15 (19-10 SEC; Finished 2nd in SEC West, eliminated in third round of the SEC Tournament)
Path to Omaha: No. 5 overall seed, No. 1 seed in Baton Rouge Regional (3-0, def. Tulane, Oregon St. 2x); Won Baton Rouge Super Regional 2-0 vs. Kentucky

LSU was the no. 1-ranked team in the country from the preseason until early May, on the strength of having presumptive first overall pick Dylan Crews in the outfield, as well as the clear top two incoming transfers: Skenes and third baseman Tommy White. This in addition to a strong freshman class and a group of returning veterans — including Crews and first baseman Tre’ Morgan — who were coming off a season that would’ve been strong by most programs’ standards. That included 40 wins, a 17-13 conference record, and a trip to a regional final.

But LSU is not most programs; it is one of the most storied, best-resourced teams in the country, perhaps the best-resourced team in the country. And second-year head coach Jay Johnson, to his credit, built a roster commensurate with those expectations.

It’s not without flaws. The pitching staff after Skenes is vulnerable, particularly in the bullpen. And LSU lost two of its last three regular-season series. This is not the best team in the country, not the kind of unwavering, merciless killing machine Wake Forest built. What LSU is, however, is the most talented team in the country, a top-five offense, with the best pitcher in the field. It’s been tested by the kind of outrageously tough schedule every SEC team has to go through; of those 15 losses, 12 came against teams that made the NCAA Tournament. That includes all three of LSU’s regular-season nonconference losses.

Key Number: 188.

That’s how many batters right-hander Skenes struck out in just 107 innings this year. Of course, if you’ve been keeping up with your college baseball coverage here at FanGraphs Dot Com, you already know about Skenes, whom I interviewed before the season.

Triple-digit fastball, slider that stops just before the plate to ask for directions, good change-up. Skenes is listed at 6-foot-6, 247 pounds and looks four inches taller and 40 pounds heavier on the mound. And yet he’s shockingly athletic for a guy that big; he was a catcher until recently, and told me he missed being on the other side of the battery. In terms of talent as a college pitcher, people have compared him to Stephen Strasburg, which I think is a little ambitious. But I agree, there is not a pitching prospect this good in most draft classes.

Better Know a Player: Sophomore 3B Tommy White

I’d argue that the Tigers don’t just have the biggest star in college baseball, they have the three biggest stars: Skenes and outfielder Dylan Crews, the two top college prospects in the draft, and White. Skenes gets plenty of attention because of his extremely GIFable repertoire, while Crews shot to the top of everyone’s draft board because he had a .570 OBP this year and can probably play center field in the pros.

But don’t sleep on White, who had a monster freshman season at N.C. State last year before transferring to LSU in the offseason. He hit .377/.439/.750 with 22 home runs and 22 doubles, both tops on one of the best offensive teams in the country, and did so while transitioning to third base full-time after splitting time among the corners and DH as a freshman.

Trivia: Dani Wexelman tweeted this fun fact yesterday and I don’t think I can beat it: When LSU’s current juniors were freshmen, the Tigers opened the season against Air Force. There, Crews hit his first collegiate home run… off of Paul Skenes.

Tennessee
Record: 43-20 (16-14 SEC, Finished fourth in SEC East, eliminated in first round of conference tournament)
Path to Omaha: No. 2 seed in Clemson Regional (3-0, def. Charlotte 2x, Clemson); Won Hattiesburg Super Regional 2-1 vs. Southern Mississippi

The Vols got their spot in Omaha the hard way; they beat no. 4 national seed Clemson in the best baseball game that’s going to be played anywhere in 2023, I’m sure of it. Tennessee rallied from two runs down with two outs and the bases empty in the top of the ninth inning, when Zane Denton hit a three-run homer to take the lead after being down 0-2 in the count. Then Clemson came back in the bottom of the ninth to tie; the two teams were down to their last strike in that inning three times between them and both survived. Both teams escaped a bases-loaded, no-out jam in extra innings before Tennessee finally broke through in the 14th inning, tying the program record for longest game.

It was a tense affair, with both sides exchanging words throughout; Clemson outfielder Cam Cannarella was tossed in the 13th inning for running afoul of the NCAA’s absurd rules about taunting. (John Calvin took a look at what college umpires are supposed to call and said, “You need to loosen up a little bit there, bro.”) But it was nice to see the two orangest teams in baseball come to a compromise when they went head-to-head: Tennessee wore black jerseys, Clemson purple.

The Vols then had to come back to win back-to-back elimination games after dropping the super regional opener to Southern Miss. But they’ve played with their backs to the wall all year.

Key Number: 23-14 (5-10).

On April 18, Tennessee lost by seven runs at home to a Tennessee Tech team that ended up finishing 13 games below .500. The Vols had just been swept by Arkansas the previous weekend, and their conference record sat at 5-10. After that loss to Tennessee Tech in April, the Vols won their next nine games by a combined score of 108-33, including sweeps of Vanderbilt and Mississippi State that brought their conference record back over .500. They’ve won 20 of their past 26.

The slow start followed by a rapid turnaround stands in sharp contrast to 2022, when the Vols started 31-1 (their second loss was, again, a midweek defeat to Tennessee Tech) and ended up as the no. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament. But things slowly deteriorated, culminating in a disastrous super regional against Notre Dame. Star outfielder Drew Gilbert was ejected for arguing balls and strikes in Game 1, and because player ejections carry an automatic one-game suspension, Gilbert missed the rubber match and the Vols lost.

And I guess this is as good a place as any to mention the one thing you need to know about Tennessee: They’re the most hated team in college baseball.

In the SEC, it’s easy for teams to have boom-and-bust cycles. LSU is always good. Vandy, Florida, and Arkansas have always been good under their current head coaches, and basically everyone else has ups and downs. Because this is the SEC and two thirds of the conference gets into a regional every year, “down” is a relative term, but still.

Tennessee was like that until Tony Vitello became head coach in 2018. The Vols have won 40 or more games their past four full seasons, went to Omaha in 2021, and had the aforementioned historic regular season last year. Vitello coaches an aggressive, hard-hitting, hard-throwing brand of baseball. Angels flamethrower Ben Joyce played for Vitello at UT, where they called him the “Volunteer Fireman,” even though he had a teammate who also threw 100-plus named Chase Burns.

Vitello’s team plays with a lot of energy. They celebrate, they needle their opponents, they talk back to umpires (in 2021, Vitello got tossed from a College World Series game). ESPN color commentator Kyle Peterson said during the Clemson game that the Vols aren’t afraid to “wear the black hat.” Which is both a lovely euphemism and an excellent distillation of what makes Tennessee unique. In every other sport, there are teams that are comfortable playing the bad guy. They go right up to the edge and sometimes over it, and if their opponents or other fans get angry, too bad. No one likes us, and we don’t care.

Baseball teams, by and large, don’t do that. And I have no idea why. Ironically, the Astros were getting close to mastering the kayfabe villain role right up until the moment they got caught stealing signs, at which point they folded instead of doubling down. I think Tennessee is an exciting, engaging, provocative team. This is a minority opinion. College baseball fans, generally speaking, come in two cultural flavors: frothing, blinkered partisans and buttoned-down decorum fetishists. These two disparate strands have two things in common: They’re incredibly touchy, and they think the Volunteers are a bunch of jackasses.

So yeah, maybe Tennessee is evil. But sometimes a little evil is just what the game needs.

Better Know a Player: Sophomore 2B Christian Moore

Moore and his double play partner, Maui Ahuna, have been everywhere this postseason. Moore was the MVP of the Clemson Regional, where he hit four of his 17 home runs this season.

T4 | GIVE ME CHRISTIAN MOORE

The Vols break through with a solo shot from No. 1!!

? https://t.co/wdMVEjqcCo#GBO // #OTH // #BeatClemson pic.twitter.com/fsP478lSBh

— Tennessee Baseball (@Vol_Baseball) June 3, 2023

In total, Moore is 9-for-21 this tournament, with those four home runs and three multi-hit games. Over the full season, Moore hit .313/.458/.627, and led the Vols in OBP and stolen bases. If Tennessee is able to score along with LSU in their first-round matchup, Moore and Ahuna will have to drive the offense.

Trivia: More on Vitello and the boom-and-bust nature of Tennessee baseball. Vitello’s first regional appearance in 2019 broke a 13-year tournament drought for the Vols. He’s now made the tournament four years running. One more will tie the program record of five straight, set between 1993 and 1997 by teams that featured, among others, Todd Helton and R.A. Dickey.

The Men’s College World Series starts at 2 p.m. ET on Friday, with TCU-Oral Roberts.

As much as I love a partisan crowd in a playoff game, there’s something to be said for a tournament that has a dedicated home. Having experienced firsthand both the Men’s College World Series in Omaha and the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, the cultural ecosystem that springs up around these festival sites is unlike anything else in baseball. College baseball fans know the quirks of Charles Schwab Field, they’ve walked the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge from Omaha to Council Bluffs, Iowa, they know the jello shot leaderboard at Rocco’s Pizza. (Whatever else happens in baseball this season, nothing will be funnier than LSU fans finding themselves in a drinking competition with Oral Roberts fans.)

I can’t recommend it enough, even to watch on TV. My pitch for a mixed college-pro baseball fandom remains: College teams are playing meaningful games while MLB teams are still in spring training, and they play high-stakes postseason games during the meaningless major league doldrums of May and June.

Yes, high stakes. You want to know what a big deal this is? Here’s University of Tennessee right-hander Chase Burns, stomping out a rally in the seventh inning of his team’s latest win over Southern Mississippi with a trip to the College World Series on the line:

M7 | CHASE BURNS IS AN ELECTRIC FACTORY!!! ????????

102 by 'em and Tennessee wiggles out of the seventh with a 4-0 lead!!#GBO // #OTH // #BeatUSM pic.twitter.com/HrRt24Lfuu

— Tennessee Baseball (@Vol_Baseball) June 13, 2023

This guy pumped in 102-mph gas, then stomped off the mound positively convulsing with adrenaline. I have never been as excited about anything in my entire life as Burns is to spend at least a week of his summer vacation on a work trip to Nebraska. If this doesn’t get you amped up, you might actually be dead. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s pull back the curtain a little. I’ve been covering baseball full-time for about 10 years now, and in that time I’ve basically written five types of article over and over. Every sportswriter cranks out game stories and interview-based features, and at least two or three times a week, every FanGraphs writer pens a focused topical analysis punctuated by charts and jokes. I’m no different. Category no. 4 involves Political/social/economic commentary, since our sport is governed by the society it exists within, and should be analyzed accordingly.

Which brings up category no. 5: I become fixated on something weird or trivial that nobody else in the world cares about. And rather than throw out a joke tweet and forget about it like a normal person, I spend days and days finding, compiling, and analyzing data in a vain attempt to discover the truth. If a truth as such even exists. Then, indifferent to whether the readers of FanGraphs Dot Com — i.e. all of you fine folks — give a tinker’s damn about the subject, I post the results on this little corner of the internet.

Be warned, this is a category no. 5 post. Read the rest of this entry »

I didn’t really see the first pitch of LSU’s season. I was watching on TV, but the ball just sort of teleported from Paul Skenes’ right hand to Brady Neal’s glove. Maybe it was a trick of the lighting or a glitch in the stream. Or maybe it’s the fact that the enormous 20-year-old decided to start off his season with a 99 mph fastball.

Skenes looks like what he is: the Friday night starter for the no. 1 team in the country and a likely first-round draft pick. Not only is he one of the country’s top pitching prospects, but he can handle the bat as well, hitting .367/.453/.669 with 24 homers in 100 combined games over his first two collegiate seasons. He’s not what basketball types like to call a unicorn. Most college seasons feature some elite two-way player, a Brendan McKay or a Danny Hultzen or the like, trying to pitch and slug a blue-blood program to the national title and himself into the top 10 picks in the draft.

What makes Skenes unusual is how recently he started seriously considering baseball a real career opportunity. At 6-foot-6 and 247 pounds, he might look like he was born to throw 99 mph for a living. But this time last year, he was committed to quite a different vocation. Read the rest of this entry »

If there’s a clear no. 1 biggest college baseball program in the country, I’m not going to offer my opinion on what it is. Not because I don’t have an opinion on the subject, but because sharing it — no matter what answer you give — tends to invite dozens of message board posters to find out where you live and hide spiders in your car.

Regardless of who’s no. 1, LSU — in terms of tradition, program success, resources, developmental track record, and fan support — has to be up there.

In 2022, former Arizona and Nevada head coach Jay Johnson took over for the recently retired Paul Manieri, who’d made five College World Series in his 15 seasons in Baton Rouge, and won the 2009 national championship. Results in Johnson’s first year were in the neighborhood of what Manieri accomplished in his final few seasons: The Tigers went 40-22 (17-13 in SEC play) before falling to Southern Mississippi in a regional final. Whether that’s viewed as a failure, a minor disappointment, or a step in the right direction, one thing is for absolute certain: It’s not where LSU wants to be. Read the rest of this entry »