The reverberations from Oregon State’s stunning run to consecutive College World Series titles in 2006-07 continue to be felt throughout the Pacific Northwest—and beyond.

Not only has that program’s unlikely success given the Beavers immense national credibility, enabling it to open the same recruiting doors as all the bigwigs in the sport, but its impact has been especially felt close to home. Most profound, it has spawned the re-birth of two once-vibrant, but dormant college programs in the area.

Baseball was re-established as an intercollegiate sport at Oregon, Oregon State’s chief in-state rival, effective with the 2009 season, and Division I baseball has resurfaced more recently at Seattle University, effective with the 2010 campaign.

The continued evolution of the summer West Coast League, whose hub franchise is based in Corvallis, Ore., home of the Beavers, is due in no small part either to the wave of notoriety and goodwill that came from Oregon State’s success on a national stage.

Had everything gone completely according to form, the Beavers might well have been an early favorite alongside Louisiana State, Texas and Virginia to capture yet another College World Series title this year. But key injuries to a potentially lethal pitching staff may have sidetracked those ambitions, and actually left more questions than answers for head coach Pat Casey and his coaching staff.

At one point, it looked like Oregon State might have as many as six or seven pitchers selected in the first 3-4 rounds of this year’s draft, with a handful more in the top 10.

But those ambitions may have been scuttled when lefthander Josh Osich and righthander Taylor Starr, possibly the best raw arms on the Beaver staff, face an uncertain 2010 season after once profiling as possible first-rounders.

Osich, an Idaho prep product whose fastball has been clocked up to 98 mph, underwent Tommy John surgery in January and will miss the upcoming college season. Lingering arm issues and Osich’s inability to command his breaking ball consistently had already limited him to just five starts in his first two years with the Beavers. Moreover, he has yet to win a game at the college level.

Starr made just one appearance in 2009 before also undergoing Tommy John surgery. His fastball has been clocked as high as 94 and, when healthy, had shown indications of being a dominant closer.

With all the uncertainty surrounding Osich and Starr, the top arm on the OSU staff this spring will probably belong to righthander Tyler Waldron, who transferred into the Beaver program after his freshman season at Pacific. He went 6-4, 4.15 with 70 strikeouts in 93 innings in 2009 as a sophomore at OSU, and is capable of much more as he has a live arm, an advanced approach to pitching and the ability to mix four pitches effectively.

The OSU staff also includes the likes of lefthanders Tanner Robles and Kraig Sitton, along with righthanders James Nygren, Jake Peavey and Kevin Rhoderick—all juniors who have drawn early-round draft interest at various stages of their careers. Peavey and Sitton were unsigned draft picks a year ago.

Though the potential dominance of Oregon State’s vaunted collection of arms is no longer as much of a certainty as it once was, potentially jeopardizing the team’s chances to return to Omaha this season, the Beavers will still attract far and away the most attention from scouts this spring than any other Northwest school.

But other Oregon and Washington colleges have seen an upsurge in talent, too, over the last 3-4 years (coinciding with Oregon State’s CWS success) and it’s due in no small part to their ability to hold on to the area’s best prep talent. In the past, high-powered college programs from Arizona and California, specifically, would routinely raid the area of its elite high-school talent.

Now Oregon State, not to mention Gonzaga, Oregon and Washington State, are not only securing the best talent in their own backyard, but throughout California and almost all the Western states. A once-inconsequential program like Gonzaga has become relevant with its ability to develop a lucrative pipeline to Arizona, which should yield a prominent first-rounder in 2011 in lefthander Ryan Carpenter.

The upshot of the resurgence in baseball in the Northwest is that Gonzaga finished first overall in the West Coast Conference in 2009 for the first time ever, and made its first NCAA tournament appearance since 1981. Similarly, resurgent Washington State, once the area’s most prominent baseball factory but a Pacific-10 Conference doormat in recent years, also made its first foray into regional competition for the first time in 19 years in 2009.

It should be only a matter of time before fast-rising Oregon, with its lucrative connection to Oregon-based NIKE, becomes a major player. In just their second season, the Ducks already have a roster brimming with young talent. Washington has fallen out of favor since the departure of ace pitcher Tim Lincecum, but the Huskies have made impressive strides in re-tooling their program with a new coaching staff in place for 2010.

All this speaks to the growing impact that Oregon and Washington Division I schools are making nationally as talent sources, but Idaho’s Lewis-Clark State, with 16 NAIA titles to its credit, continues to be a major player in Northwest baseball circles.

Unfortunately, there are no D-I baseball programs in Idaho, Montana or Wyoming, but a rising baseball program at the University of British Columbia, just across the Canadian border in Vancouver, is beginning to make some significant noise.

Meanwhile, we’ve included the Pacific Rim states of Alaska and Hawaii in this conversation. Alaska, for obvious reasons, will never be a college-baseball factor but the state continues to flourish as a summer-league destination for top prospects.

On the other hand, Hawaii remains largely on the outside looking in. The University of Hawaii (the lone Division I program left in the state) continues to try and recapture the magic that made the Rainbows a national contender on a recurring basis a quarter century ago. But NCAA tournament appearances have been few and far between in recent years, as has the school’s impact on the draft.

The program’s fortunes are largely tied to the island’s ability to generate home-grown talent, which hasn’t been in plentiful supply in the last decade. The Rainbows continue to wait for that next wave of domestic talent to surface, much like occurred 12-15 years ago when a succession of premium, early-round draft picks came from Hawaii high schools.

UH’s best talent for the 2010 draft remains lefthander Sam Spangler, an unsigned 20 ^th -rounder a year ago. Spangler, though, attended high school in New Mexico. A year from now, the Rainbows will take some solace as they’ll have a legitimate home-grown prospect in second baseman Kolten Wong.

With that as a backdrop, here’s how we size up the college talent from the Pacific Northwest and Pacific Rim for the 2010 draft.

PACIFIC NORTHWEST/RIM: IN A NUTSHELL