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College  | Story | 5/4/2017

Weekend Preview: Week 12

Patrick Ebert
Jheremy Brown
Photo: Scobel Wiggins




Perfect Game Top 25 | PG/Rawlings Player/Pitcher of the Week
College Spotlight | PG College Player Database

The 2017 college baseball postseason is in sight with only three weekends remaining before conference tournament action begins. There aren't nearly as many high-profile series this weekend as there was last, and two teams in the Top 10, North Carolina and Virginia, have the weekend off after playing single midweek games on Tuesday.

Texas A&M, who re-entered the Top 25 this past week, will face a stiff 'welcome back' test in the form of the Mississippi State Bulldogs, who are licking their wounds after losing their series at home in Starkville to Auburn. Two other key matchups will occur in Morgantown, West Virginia as Texas Texas travels to face the Mountaineers in a key Big 12 matchup, and Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where Southern Miss will host C-USA rival Florida Atlantic.

Perfect Game as always will be providing scouting insights from a handful of locations, most notably Ann Arbor, Michigan as the Wolverines host Ohio State. Stay tuned this weekend for updates.


Top 25 in Action
Rk. Team Opponent Location
1 Oregon State home vs. California Corvallis, OR
2 Louisville at Notre Dame South Bend, IN
3 North Carolina No games scheduled NA
4 Texas Tech at West Virginia Morgantown, WV
5 Florida home vs. Ole Miss Gainesville, FL
6 Kentucky home vs. Georgia Lexington, KY
7 Virginia No games scheduled NA
8 Auburn home vs. Alabama Auburn, AL
9 Clemson home vs. Nevada Clemson, SC
10 Texas Christian home vs. Texas Fort Worth, TX
11 Long Beach State home vs. Cal Poly Long Beach, CA
12 Louisiana State home vs. South Carolina Baton Rouge, LA
13 Stanford at Arizona State Tempe, AZ
14 Mississippi State at No. 19 Texas A&M College Station, TX
15 Cal State Fullerton at Hawai'i Honolulu, HI
16 Arkansas at Tennessee Knoxville, TN
17 Michigan home vs. Ohio State Ann Arbor, MI
18 South Florida home vs. East Carolina Tampa, FL
19 Texas A&M home vs. No. 14 Mississippi State College Station, TX
20 Houston home vs. UConn Houston, TX
21 Arizona home vs. Washington Tucson, AZ
22 Maryland at Illinois Champaign, IL
23 Wake Forest home vs. Boston College Winston-Salem, NC
24 Southern Miss home vs. Florida Atlantic Hattiesburg, MS
25 Missouri State at Southern Illinois Carbondale, IL


Eagles claw for C-USA supremacy

Southern Miss went 4-0 last week, moving up one spot in the most recent update to the Perfect Game/Rawlings College Top 25. They likely would have moved up further had they not gone 2-3 the previous week in which they lost their weekend series, at home, to Old Dominion. The bottom line is that we felt Southern Miss continued to belong among the ranked after winning their previous five conference series, which included wins over Rice, FIU and Louisiana Tech.

Last season the Eagles appeared in six different renditions of the PG/Rawlings College Top 25, and were moved in, and out, on three separate occasions. They ultimately did not appear in the final rankings, and also did not appear in the preseason rankings this season as at the time it seemed uncertain how they would replace the lost production of Tim Lynch and Jake Sandlin, the team’s top two hitters.

First baseman Dylan Burdeaux (.341/.404/.530 with 17 doubles and eight home runs) continues to pace the offense, and Taylor Braley has remained healthy to provide valuable contributions to both the offense (.315/.453/.562 with 10 homers) and pitching staff (4-2, 4.21 ERA with a  54-to-16 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 51.1 innings). However, it has been the immediate plug-and-play progression of freshman outfielder Matt Wallner that has made the biggest difference in making up for the losses of Lynch and Sandlin.

Wallner is the best freshman in the nation that most people have never heard of. He’s slashing .345/.466/.691 in 46 games, 45 of which are starts. He leads the club in home runs with 14 and is second in RBI with 46, just behind Burdeaux. He has committed only one error while playing mostly left field and has also made an impact as a pitcher, although he hasn’t taken the mound in recent weeks.

A 6-foot-5, 220-pound athlete from Forest Lake, Minn., the Eagles can thank North Dakota (where he was originally committed) for removing their baseball program to have Wallner’s services this year. He showed very well in fall ball after being drafted in the 32nd round of the 2016 MLB Draft by his hometown Twins.

He leads all freshmen with 12 home runs this season, and is also on top in on-base and slugging percentage. His bat has heated up in C-USA play, hitting .392 with 11 of his 14 home runs coming against conference opponents. Those 14 home runs are the best among freshman in the nation, and are tied for the 14th most of any player from any class. He is also among the national leaders in slugging percentage (.691, tied for 17th best).

Southern Miss’ offense, thanks in large part to Wallner, is lethal, with a .312 batting average through last weekend’s play (16th best in the nation), 62 home runs (tied for eighth best) and a cumulative .502 slugging percentage (fifth). While the pitching staff hasn’t been as good (4.43 team ERA) they have been more than good enough to support the offense, and they have a legitimate ace in Kirk McCarty (7-2, 3.66 ERA in 11 starts) to go along with a shutdown stopper at the back end of the bullpen in Nick Sandlin (6-1, 1.43 ERA with five saves in 19 appearances).

Currently 16-5 in Conference USA, the Eagles host the 15-6 FAU Owls this weekend at Pete Taylor Park in Hattiesburg with first place, and possibly a spot in the Top 25, on the line.

– Patrick Ebert


Reinforcements for the stretch run

Power is the topic of this section and it’s a common trait between Houston’s Seth Romero and Oregon State’s Drew Rasmussen. Both feature premier fastballs and sharp secondaries that have established their names on the draft radar and each have the next three weeks to help determine where they’ll be selected come June. Romero is coming off a month-long suspension for violating team rules while Rasmussen made his first appearance in 2017 after succumbing to Tommy John surgery in 2016.

If you need an example or proof of the adage “the rich get richer” than look no further than the Oregon State pitching staff, the nation’s leader in ERA for the majority of the season (currently sporting the only sub-2.00 ERA in the country at 1.89), Pitching Coach Nate Yeskie received another weapon with Rasmussen returning to the mound. It was a quick, but clean, 2/3 innings of relief work on Friday in a 3-1 win over USC and reports have his fastball touching as high as 98 mph in his 10 pitches.

Prior to needing surgery Rasmussen was a weekend rotation piece who would sit in the mid-90s with a solid feel for his secondaries, though with the way the Beavers are rolling he may end up being a go-to option out of the bullpen. However he factors into their plans, the nation’s best pitching staff just got that much better as Rasmussen shows one of the biggest arms college baseball has to offer and looks to establish himself as the potential early round pick he was prior to injury.

For the last month or so the Houston Cougars have been without ace lefthander Seth Romero though that ended Monday as Houston’s Vice President of Athletics Hunter Yurachek announced Romero "met all conditions required during the term of his suspension" and was eligible to return to action immediately. Although not as statistically effective as Oregon State's pitching staff, Houston is currently 18th in the nation with a team ERA of 3.28.

Romero took the mound on Tuesday and logged 2 1/3 innings, giving up one earned run while picking up the loss despite pitching well overall in a midweek contest against Sam Houston State.

Exactly how Head Coach Todd Whitting plans to use Romero the rest of the way remains to be seen as the Cougars host a talented Connecticut Huskies team this weekend. What Romero will bring – whether in the starting rotation or out of the bullpen – is a physical presence with a mid-90s fastball and one of the best sliders in the country, attributes that have had him in top-10 overall talks in regards to the upcoming MLB Draft throughout the spring.

Without a doubt the overall velocity in college baseball will tick up ever so slightly this weekend with both Rasmussen and Romero taking the ball for their respective teams as both look to firmly establish themselves as early round picks in the draft this June.


First-year coaches take SEC by storm

61-30. That’s the combined record of Kentucky and Mississippi State during the 2017 season. The significance of this record? Both the Wildcats and Bulldogs are led by first-year head coaches in Nick Mingione and Andy Cannizaro, two skippers who have their teams playing well above preseason expectations.

Heading into this weekend Mingione’s ‘Cats are sitting in sole possession of the SEC East with a 14-7 record while Cannizaro has #Hailstate tied for first in the West with Auburn with a 14-7 record of their own. It’s safe to say that both first-year coaches have maximized the potential of their clubs, have brought a new flavor to the dugout and have some serious momentum leading into the postseason.

Cannizaro’s path is cut from the ever-trending cloth which is hiring talented scouts/cross-checkers to a recruiting role, exactly what the former Tulane star has done. From the Yankees scouting department to Paul Mainieri’s recruiting coordinator, Cannizaro has brought an aggressive approach with him to Starkville and it’s showing through his players.

Look no further than the offensive production from Brent Rooker, who has been playing at an entirely different level this spring, hitting .413-19-67 with 17 stolen bases. Aggressive and confident, consider this: Rooker had just two career stolen bases heading into 2017. Cannizaro’s players are believing and have done whatever it takes to win, even if it’s jumping on the mound – like we’ve seen with primary hitters Jake Mangum, Cole Gordon and Brant Blaylock – plugging the holes in a pitching staff that has seen 11 players go down with injury.

The mojo is flowing in StarkVegas and Cannizaro is at the center of it.

Jump to Lexington and you will find Nick Mingione who made his way to the Wildcats after serving as the recruiting coordinator under John Cohen at Mississippi State. He has built up an impressive resume and brought together a staff of Jimmy Belanger and Roland Fanning last summer, giving Kentucky three quality coaches and hard-nosed recruiters.

On the field the Cats are hitting .315 (best in the SEC) as a club with six everyday players hitting north of .300, while their ERA of 3.39 ranks fourth-best in the conference. In fact, Kentucky is leading the conference in all three categories of the triple slash at .315/.424/.493, up from .270/.329/.413 a season ago. How’s that for making your presence felt in your first year as Head Coach?

Neither Kentucky nor Mississippi State are going anywhere in the future either, as both Mingione and Cannizaro, along with their staffs, are world-class recruiters who not only identify and commit big talent early, but they also manage to get a nice portion on campus.

If you’re a fan of these programs sit back and enjoy.

– Jheremy Brown
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